The shooting down of flight MH17 is a tragedy for all those involved, Whether it was an horrible case of mistaken identity, a system malfunction or a callous and barbarous act, it is still incredibly wrong. This is not the concern of my post. I look at the media reports, the politicians, the outrage they are all aiming at Russia and the Ukrainian/Russian separatists and my mind immediately goes to 1988 Iran Air Flight 655 and the USS Vincennes. At the time the US government and its allies attempted to portray this as self defence, the media were (in relation to MH17) extraordinarily quite.
To quote Wikipedia
The U.S. government issued notes of regret for the loss of human lives and in 1996 paid reparations to settle a suit brought in the International Court of Justice regarding the incident, but the United States never released an apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing. George H. W. Bush, the vice president of the United States at the time commented on the incident during a presidential campaign function (2 Aug 1988): "I will never apologize for the United States ? I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.
And yet here we are, the US is baying for revenge and recriminations over a very similar incident, the only difference, It and its western Allies are fully supportive of the newly installed Ukrainian regime (brought to power in a fascist led putsch), which makes it politically expedient to forget the past.
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"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand" Karl Marx
18 Jul 2014, 8:14 pm
