July 21, 2014  

MH17 – A one-off disaster or an inevitable by-product of modern warfare?

Heard of Iranian Air Lines flight 655? It was a regular daily flight from the Iranian town of Bandar Abbas to Dubai, which on 3rd July 1988 had 290 on board, though maybe significantly only 39 non-Iranians. It was brought down with all 279 passengers and crew killed by a US fired missile from USS Vincennes. Captain Will Rogers III, a career naval officer, was in command of the Vincennes. He was awarded the Congressional Legion of Merit.

Vincennes was a guided missile destroyer of the US navy, whose crew failed to distinguish between a civilian airliner and an expected Iranian attack force. However, a fellow senior officer in the Gulf hinted that having such a gung-ho commander in the field was at the minimum a risk. Despite the “disaster” a couple of years later Rogers was promoted to be commander of the US Naval Tactical Training Group responsible for training officers in handling combat situations.

The United States and President Reagan got away with this incident amazingly scot-free in terms of worldwide condemnation or criticism. In most people’s language this was a war crime and although considerable compensation was paid, as far as I know the US has never apologised. At the UN, the then Vice-President George Bush argued that it had been an accident of war.

And yet in all the comments on the missile attack on MH17, I have not seen a reference to the Vincennes incident. Comparisons have been made with the Soviet destruction of Korean Airlines KAL007 with the loss of 269 lives off Sakhalin in 1983 and the Ukrainian downing of Siberian Airlines flight 1812 in 2001, with the loss of 88 lives, but not the Vincennes. I rather suspect that says something about the soft power of the US as opposed to the “soft (power) weakness” of Russia.

These four “military incidents” alone have claimed 945 civilian lives over the last 26 years. I don’t know how many have died in air crashes, where the military have not been involved, but I wouldn’t mind betting that military incidents are the single most important cause of aircraft disasters. Perhaps we should spend as much time on how to avoid such fatalities as the designers and engineers spend on improving aircraft safety and performance – no flights within 1000 miles of combat zones, higher levels of locking devices on missiles, passenger involvement in flight path choices?

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About Tony Belton

Labour Councillor for Latchmere Ward 1972-2022, now Battersea Park Ward, London Borough of Wandsworth Ever hopeful Spurs supporter; Lane visit to the Lane, 1948 Olympics. Why don't they simply call the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, The Lane? Once understood IT but no longer

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