Cadet Bonespurs starts a war with Iran

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Iran didn't spontaneously decide to start shooting missiles at civilian aircraft. There is a sequence of events here and America is morally and causatively involved every step of the way.

Maybe not, but considering that this plane departed from Teheran to Kiev the Iranian military acted just downright dumb. For me there's simply no excuse for the mistake to confuse an airplane which departed from a domestic airport to a neighboring country with a hostile missile.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

A former Air Commodore (equivalent to a one-star brigadier general in the US or Canadian military), writing in The Times takes a look at how easily this can have happened:

Nervous trigger fingers and a degraded missile system are a recipe for disaster | News | The Sunday Times

Nervous trigger fingers and a degraded missile system are a recipe for disaster new Nick Bray Imagine a situation in which an Iranian missile battery is part of the protection umbrella for Tehran and ...

www.evernote.com

Meanwhile, here's what the Iranian military have to say

Brig-Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace commander, said a missile operator had acted independently and alone, mistaking the plane for a "cruise missile" as there had been reports that such missiles had been fired at Iran.

"He had 10 seconds to decide. He could have decided to strike or not to strike and under such circumstances he took the wrong decision," Gen Hajizadeh said.

"He was obliged to make contact and get verification. But apparently, his communications system had some disruptions."

Gen Hajizadeh said the military would upgrade its systems to prevent such "mistakes" in the future.

He said he had "wished he was dead" after being told of the missile strike.

Gen Hajizadeh also said a request had been made for a no-fly zone in the area before the incident but, for reasons that are unclear, this was rejected.

He said he had informed the authorities about what had happened on Wednesday, raising questions about why Iran had denied involvement for so long.

Iran plane crash: Demands for justice after admission jet was shot down

Iran admits it "unintentionally" shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane, after days of denial.

www.bbc.co.uk

So that seems to suggest that the hapless missile operator, who was clearly working under very difficult conditions, wasn't adequately supervised, for whatever reason, even though his superiors must have been acutely aware of how dangerous the situation was after their request to have the area made a no-fly zone had been refused -- a decision that, at least with hindsight, requires some explanation.

 

[Kara Spengler]

And now all the people who claimed Iran was the grown up in the room can go and eat their feet.

Umm, they were. Their population was demanding a response and they did the EXACT response that was legally allowed, would satisfy their population, warned us in advance (so there were no casualties), and immediately said that was the end of their response.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Compare the way Iran handles this mistake with the Russians and the Malaysian plane they shot down over the Ukraine with a missile a few years ago. The evidence in that case is overwhelming. But they still play Shaggy's "Wasn't me" over and over again.

So yes, Iran handles the tragedy as a grown up. They admit their military has blundered big time.

A comparison to Russia and Malaysia 17 is damning with faint praise really. Two days before the announcement of responsibility, Iran's transportation minister - the government agency in Iran responsible for investigating incidents like this - proclaimed that it was "scientifically impossible" for any missile to have shot down the plane. The very day before the announcement, the government of Iran was saying on national TV that it wasn't shot down, there were no missiles and any claim that there was is purely American CIA propaganda. That same day, Ukrainian investigators just arriving in Iran complained that the Iranian government had already cleared away all of the substantial crash site debris - with a bulldozer - and whatever tiny scraps were left were freely being picked through by scavengers and souvenir-hunters, leaving them absolutely nothing to investigate. You ask me, that's not the work of a government that intends to handle the tragedy "as a grown up", it's the work of a government that intends to imitate Russia's example.

It seems to me the civil government was all-in on denying an accidental military strike until the military itself suddenly and unexpectedly broke ranks and fessed up.

 

[Ishina]

Maybe not, but considering that this plane departed from Teheran to Kiev the Iranian military acted just downright dumb. For me there's simply no excuse for the mistake to confuse an airplane which departed from a domestic airport to a neighboring country with a hostile missile.

A nation on red alert, after a member of government was publicly and proudly assassinated, waiting with asses clenched for the next US airstrike, while the president of the USA threatens to bomb civilians on twitter, is a situation hectic and combustable enough to generate all kinds of mistakes like this. Whether that's an excuse for it or not I suppose is a matter of perspective.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

If they are on red alert, they should either shut down civil air plane traffic or train their soldiers better. Either way there's no excuse for it - how can an airplane which is roughly headed outbound from Iran to northwest be mistaken with a cruise missile?

The path of a cruise missile would come from a very much different angle and would be inbound.

 

[Kara Spengler]

If they are on red alert, they should either shut down civil air plane traffic or train their soldiers better. Either way there's no excuse for it - how can an airplane which is roughly headed outbound from Iran to northwest be mistaken with a cruise missile?

The path of a cruise missile would come from a very much different angle and would be inbound.

Maybe if the US had not put them on red alert is the first place?

Either way we are both saying what should have happened given the benefit of hindsight. Obviously that information was not available at the time. This is why a full investigation and that is what Trudeau said today Iran appears to be making progress to (the first investigators are headed there right now). Is donnie open to it for his part?

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

The US is to blame for risking the world peace by murdering the Iranian General.
IMHO America is not to blame for the unfortunate action taken by the Iranian military by launching that missile against a civilian airplane.

Which, like I said a few pages ago, wouldn't have happened had we not have assassinated their top general.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I think that, whoever else is to blame, whoever in the Iranian military or government decided to refuse the Air Defence Unit's request that the airspace be closed during the heightened alert really has some explaining to do.

On the face of it, it seems an act of criminally irresponsible recklessness. And then cynically lying about it until the military, quite rightly, could contain their anger no longer, and went public ... that's utterly wrong.

I keep on thinking, too, about what the poor missile controller who actually fired the missile must be going through, since he (I assume it's a man, in Iran) had clearly been put in an impossible position by his superiors -- it just doesn't bear thinking about.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Are you fucking kidding me???

Opinion: Trump wins his standoff with Iran | Washington Post

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Are you fucking kidding me???

Opinion: Trump wins his standoff with Iran | Washington Post

The article is, perhaps not surprisingly, by Marc A. Thiessen, the WaPo's house idiot contrarian, and I think regular WaPo readers would feel disappointed if anything under his byline was anything other than complete MAGA nonsense.

 

[Arkady Arkright]

Absolutely. But, that doesn't negate the negligence here. They should have shut the airport.

You may be right about closing the airport. OTOH, the US news is full of stories about B52's going to Iran, and the radar signatures of the B52 and the 737are reportedly similar...

 

[Arkady Arkright]

I keep on thinking, too, about what the poor missile controller who actually fired the missile must be going through, since he (I assume it's a man, in Iran) had clearly been put in an impossible position by his superiors -- it just doesn't bear thinking about.

If it had been the other way round the americans would have given him a medal anyway (Vincennes, anyone ?)

 

[Kara Spengler]

Are you fucking kidding me???

Opinion: Trump wins his standoff with Iran | Washington Post

Note that is an OpEd. I assume you know the saying about opinions and assholes?

 

[Eunoli]

You may be right about closing the airport. OTOH, the US news is full of stories about B52's going to Iran, and the radar signatures of the B52 and the 737are reportedly similar...

That just seems like more reason to have closed the airport.

In saying that they should have closed the airport, I am not clearing the US of blame. I'm just saying that they should have closed the airport.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Note that is an OpEd. I assume you know the saying about opinions and assholes?

Is that like posting on the internet?

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Are you fucking kidding me???

Opinion: Trump wins his standoff with Iran | Washington Post

Well we can discuss what we want, fact is that indeed at the moment Trump has really maneuvered Iran into a corner and changed the game. Alone that they've acknowledged that they shoot the Ukrainian airplane more than clearly shows this.

The question is what he is going to do from now on.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Iranians pissed about their governments handling.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

"Maneuvered".

 

[Veritable Quandry]

"Maneuvered".

Stumbling around in the dark and accidentally kicking someone is, technically, a maneuver.