These things should all be dealt with equally, no matter who the perpetrators are and who the victims.
Now I do believe that Russia probably supplied a missile system to Ukrainian separatists who then shot down an airliner, however I do not believe that they wanted to shoot down that airliner. It seems much more likely that they were paranoid idiots.
If you look at all the different political responses to airliners being downed by military recklessness, the one thing that seems consistent is the complete lack of consistency.
It was shot down during joint Russian-Ukrainian trainings, missile was sent from Russian base... but somehow Ukraine got all the blame?
But unlike MH17, the US took the downing of the Iranian airliner right on the chin and didn't try to deflect. They went to court (ICJ), paid the victims, and punished those responsible. It's too bad we don't see that with MH17. I wonder if we will ever see those responsible punished.
No formal apology was ever even issued, no liability was accepted, those responsible were decorated, not punished. The US paid the value of the Jet they shot down and some money per victim but never admitted any guilt.
That's because no one person was directly responsible. Even for assholes like CAPT Rogers (who certainly did everything he could to get his ship into a bad situation [1]), no Navy commanding officer wakes up in the morning hoping to get to push the button on a civilian airliner. There was much more that went into Iran Air 655 than a rogue captain [2].
And while there's plenty of room for blame to go around (we could ask the same question of military officers in 1988 as we do of Russia today: Why did you have this advanced weapons system in the hands of people so seemingly untrained and aggressive?), simply lopping off heads because something horrible happened is no more just than mob rule. There's a reason we don't simply fire everyone involved with civil aviation crashes, for example.
The "decorations" you refer to were given as a standard element of completing a tour at a duty station. They are given to everybody who completes a tour at a duty station, with the type of decoration being dependent upon rank.
You're right that the actions of the U.S. remain unacceptable, but I think we would all be happier if we could get either the separatists and/or Russia's GRU to pay the families of the victims and pay Malaysian Airlines to replace the Boeing.
I mean, even the U.S. could be bothered to do that for a nation they had been literally fighting in the waters of the Persian Gulf! Last I checked Russia wasn't in armed conflict with the Netherlands or Malaysia.
[1] http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993-08/vincennes-... (Don't be fooled by USNI here, this piece is damning of CAPT Rogers) [2] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-4...
Russia did not shoot down that jet, that's definitely not confirmed by anybody or even seriously suggested, it was most likely downed from Eastern Ukraine by separatists or by Russian troops operating under the 'republic of Donetsk' flag (in so far as such a thing actually exists).
The Ukraine is not Russia, but is very well possible that the unit was manned by Russian 'advisors' and/or that it was actually the property of the Russian state. This will hopefully all come out in time. If and when it does I hope that the results will not further de-stabilize the region.
In my opinion those responsible for the Iranian passenger jet affair should have been taken off-duty immediately and sacked without a pension. Essentially the US has sanctioned such behavior since there were no penalties.
You don't get ahead by comparing yourself with the likes of Russia and the GRU or the Separatists, you only get ahead by asking yourself what the right response should be to such actions. And as such I don't think the US has the moral high ground when it comes to incidents like these.
Putin is a bandit, his buddies are no better. But at least they're not fooling anybody (at least, so I hope). And Captain Rogers should have been discharged without honor, that would have sent two messages at once: to the rest of the service that the US does not tolerate such cowboy actions and to the rest of the world that they will punish those that perpetrate them.
That would have given the US some right to be harsh with Putin and/or the separatists.
As for giving advanced weapons systems in the hands of untrained and aggressive people: I note that captain Rogers was probably highly trained but also very aggressive and that he too made a similar call so the Russians are no better than the Americans about who they give their advanced weapons system to, separatists and highly trained commanders are all not immune to making very terrible errors of judgment.
I'm actually more hopeful about those responsible in the MH17 affair to be brought to justice than those in the Iranian passenger jet incident (if that were to happen one would think it would have happened by now).
How appropriate, as that is all the world has asked for from Putin. I mean, Obama could figure out why you don't give advanced weaponry to the "good guys" in Syria, what aneurysm did Putin have to give both SA-11 sets and the intensive training to use the same to a bunch of poorly-led and poorly-trained separatists?
We'll ignore for now the command links amongst separatist leaders reaching back to Russia, because even if those were completely absent the question would remain valid. "Moral high ground" or not...
This will cut Russia off from one of their strategically more important harbors. So from a geopolitical point of view stirring this up was a fairly dumb mistake, the EU (and Obama) figured they could slip this one by but Putin found a way to foment unrest in the Ukraine at the expense of lots of lives.
Stability: good, global silly chess games: bad.
Putin will hang himself and his buddies too given enough rope and enough time. Yank his chain and he'll react, and he'll gain local popularity because of the general publics non-interest in world affairs. So in my not so humble opinion this is all just dumb war mongering and a potential set-back for 30 years or so of slowly improving relations and it will likely take decades again to recover the lost ground if we don't get a nice little war in the Ukraine, Crimea and Moldova region before then.
Which would lead to a bunch more nationalism in Russia, potentially a new cold war and a whole lot of lives lost besides.
That region is a very bad hotspot and to start moving chess pieces around there is about as stupid as encouraging Taiwan to finally really break off from the Chinese, Backing either Pakistan or India against the other or by sending arms and money to Tibet.
I'm sure my elected leaders think they know what they're doing but I fear they are simply not capable of thinking ahead far enough when it comes to consequences of actions.
And that includes your elected leaders as well.
I'm fully going on the assumption here that the lines of command reach all the way back to Russia, and I'm also very sure that they never ever thought they were downing a passenger jet. The fall-out from this will have extremely serious consequences (as it should) but I fear that a lot more lives could be lost if this situation is not handled properly. I know people all over the world and Ukraine is not an exception. My friend Dima (Dmitry) there lives in one part of the country and has family in the other. Another friend of mine is married to a lady from there. This is a lot closer to home for me than it probably is for you and it bugs me that people here pretend that the Ukraine is far away and that this will not affect 'us'.
Of course it will affect us, and the response so far has been just this side of dumb. The EU structurally underestimates the still very formidable military might of the former USSR, is living with a wounded bear on its doorstep and has now kicked this bear in the proverbial testicles.
Lots of people have already died as a consequence (including those in that plane) and it starts to become harder and harder to see a path to de-escalation.
Putins end-game (if I'm any judge of affairs like these, which I'm probably not) is that he'll 'keep the peace' because Europe can't afford it, which will result in permanent Russian army presence in fairly large numbers in the eastern part of the country, which will be a military backed re-affirmation of the former status quo.
And then Europe will have to back away from their plans of annexing the Ukraine, which they likely will do but not easily (they can't for political / image reasons).
This will still have all kinds of risks but it will at least extinguish the fuse. As long as the Russians are playing proxy there is still a way out of this, as soon as the gloves come off and they roll a few divisions into the Ukraine all hope of resolving the situation without an all-out confrontation with Russia will be lost. I highly doubt Europe and the US are both capable and have the political stamina to pull off such a confrontation.
Kids playing with fire.
But they started massive campaign trying to blame Ukraine. Fabricated Spanish air dispatcher account and clueless theory that Ukraine tried to shoot Putin out of the sky were just a few examples.
However, the real jewel of this campaign was a briefing of Russian Ministry of Defense where their high brass officials openly spread a bunch of lies. That was kinda scary. I mean, North Korea scary.
They were definitely in another reality.
My main point still stands though. The US acknowledged the mistake and took measures to make sure it didn't happen again. Will we ever see the same from MH17?
These things should be dealt by LAW and JUSTICE and you should not link one to another because if you do then you end up justifying the USSR crimes because Nazi Germany did this!
UPD: A crime should be a crime in all countries. The problem is that some countries use other's crimes as an argument. I said "things should NOT all be dealt with equally" because the judgement should base not on what others think about this but what the moral and the law says.
This, of course, isn't how the world works. But if you believe it should be, it's hard to accept the Russians are the only ones who have crimes to answer for - they just seem to be the only ones being brought to account.
>The point is, that if something is illegal for one party, it's illegal for all. - in some countries the law doesn't work and this country's elite don't act basing on the law and justice but use manipulation (like my example with USSR and Nazi Germany) to justify it's actions which results in more bad things.
Example USSR-Germany is a parallel to what some Russians are stating: like the current law on blogging is okay because the US initiated similar law too. Bloggers, free media and readers are in fact victims of this manipulation because the US has nothing to do with Russia's internal policy. And still some Russians use this argument as a justification of this law.
Please read my previous comment thoroughly.