Shooting Down an Airliner is the Grossest Criminal Negligence, Not an Accident

Shooting Down an Airliner is the Grossest Criminal Negligence, Not an Accident

It is only the most inhumane and irresponsible political maneuver for the Trump Administration to use the word ‘accident’ to describe the shooting down of the Ukrainian Air flight as it left Tehran for Kiev, Ukraine.  Anybody who would give control of a surface-to-air missile without a 100% certainty that it could never be used against a civilian plane has committed Gross Criminal Negligence.  The entire chain of command should be arrested, tried, sued, and severely punished for that act.  It certainly is outlawed by any and all conventions of war.

There are so many violations of common sense and military protocols that could have led to this tragedy.  Why was the missile battery located anywhere near a civilian airport?  Why weren’t the flight paths for takeoff and landing not programmed in as off limits to any military guns or missiles?  Why wasn’t the public civilian flight schedule not given to the missile batteries, along with probably web based flight delay data?  Why wasn’t the battery hooked up with the Air Traffic Control to check if a flight in question was civilian, or an enemy incursion?  The airplane would normally be sending out its location on the civilian tracking system.  It would also have warning lights.  The international aviation community should ban all flights to Iran until they can demonstrate that they have completely revamped their air defense system with all possible warnings and safeguards built in, and all of their personnel have been properly trained and tested.

Their will be many trails of investigation that would verify a double missile launch.  Since they showed up on US radar, there must be records on Iranian military and airport radars.   The video of the explosion is convincing, and judging the distance and colors, could be identified as to what surface-to-air missiles were used.  The battery that fired them all know about what they did, as well as they may have notified higher command of their ‘success’.  Since it was Iranians and Canadians with Iranian links that were killed, this must be on the civilian and military consciences, and there will be leaks.  Any external parts of the aircraft would show identifiable chemical traces of the standard explosives used in particular surface-to-air missiles.  The pattern of spread out parts, and any external indentations, would evidence an explosion.  Iranian investigators can visit the missile bases that could be involved, and count the weapons.  There also would be chemical traces on whatever launchers were used.  It’s really hard for us to imagine what it must be like to live in a country which is trying to cover up events.

This is so unlike the Eastern Ukrainians armed by Russia, and presumably poorly trained, shooting down a Malaysia Airliner in 2014.  The Air Ukraine flight was hit by a battery right next to Iran’s main airport in Tehran.  We don’t even know if any of the important Iranian government or religious or military officials were on that aircraft.  

The United States ship USS Vincennes of the Persian Gulf fleet also shot down a civilian Iran Air flight 655 in 1988, killing 290 people.  This was shot down in Iranian airspace, along the usual flight path, shortly after departing the Bandar Abbas airport, and broadcasting its location on the civilian radio frequency.  This also was against the rules of war and common sense precautions.  You would think that Iran would have learned from this act.  President Reagan apologized for the attack, and paid the Iranian victims families $61.8 million, out of a total settlement of $131.8 million.

Only the Trump Republican administration and Senate, which tolerate 40,000 firearms deaths a year and over a 100 a day in America, in order to get campaign contributions from that industry, which could label such a tragedy an ‘accident’.  They also go on scaring gun owners that Democrats are going to take their guns away, in order to get their faction of votes, since a third of American households own guns.  The analogy to the airline murder is the inability of Trump and the Republican Senate to pass a Red Flag Bill, which does sequester the guns of those who are irresponsible, threatening, or a danger even to themselves.  It is also analogous to not banning semi-automatic assault weapons. 

I don’t even want to get into Trump’s insanity of whether a single American death or injury would be an excuse to start a world war against Shia Muslim countries.  All of those on the airplane were innocent and wonderful people who did not deserve to die during this fake war scare initiated by Trump’s unjustified whim for an assassination.  This is the now responsible President who not only allows the 40,000 gun deaths, and also the 64,000 drug deaths, and has done little to lower drug prices, but who also does as much as he can to end the Affordable Care Act medical coverage for 20 to 30 million Americans.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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