MH 17: Some Perspective
The planet is alight with newspaper articles, comments, tweets, Facebook posts and blog articles about the terrible tragedy of Flight MH17 over the Ukraine.
A terrible tragedy, for sure. I am sure you all have prayed for the victims, and may the Lord have mercy of their souls.
(No, they are not going to go to Paradise just because they met an untimely death. No, really…).
Perhaps it would be, though, useful to put such tragedy in its proper place.
1. No sensible man can doubt that the aeroplane has been taken down by mistake. Actually, occasions like this are, if you ask me, very good to tell people who think sensible from the usual conspiracy theorist; of which, there is no doubt, there will be an awful lot around before the sun has risen again. (There are people who think Jews are behind 9/11. The mother of the idiot is always pregnant. But I digress…).
As I was saying, reasonable men will, today, all say that this has been a very tragic mistake. Terrible as the loss of life is, there is still a difference before the involuntary killing and the willed murdering of hundreds of innocent people.
2. 298 dead is around the number of a couple of major Boko Haram actions in some village in, say, Nigeria. Village, alas, not exposed to twitter and Facebook, and in which the Buggers Broadcasting Communism have no great interest. Those people are, though, all intentionally murdered, in cold blood, by people moved by blind religious fanaticism and the purest, most evil blood lust. They seem to be, almost invariably, Muslims. Or you could compare with the numbers of people (not only Christians) massacred by ISIS in Iraq and Syria; or by Islamist fanatics in Libya and Egypt only in the last two years. I assure you, in this perspective, 300 is not an impressive numbers.
It seems to me that the Buggers Broadcasting Communism – and most of the others – not only look at massacres as they would a field of wheat (=wondering what the harvest will be), but clearly prefer those tragedies in which not only the media impact is assured, but some enemies of them (here: Mr Putin) can be accused. There is no clear evidence of Russian involvement, but the BBC et al. are all full of condemnations coming from all over the planet; this morning I have even read a proposal to (further) sanction the Russians if they have provided the weapons to the rebels. Which, ipso facto, makes the West liable to auto-sanctions for almost all the major African conflicts and civil wars of the last 50 years.
The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.
Now let me make a thing or two clear: if Putin has given such weapons to the rebels (which I personally doubt, seen the level or expertise, technology and costs involved), he did it so that they can take down military aeroplanes, that is: legitimate military targets; something which, by the way, has been happening regularly in the last weeks with far less sophisticated weaponry (the shoulder-carried “manpads”). The same is, of course, true of the other side, which had announced only days ago a massive deployment of “Gadfly” missiles, and one wonders how well trained their personnel is.
A terrible tragedy, no doubt.
But in the end: a mistake.
Let us not confuse with the countless Christians (and not only Christians) butchered with a very clear criminal intent from Muslim fanatics, in cold blood, whilst the BBC et al entertain us with the evil Putin.
Mundabor
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Posted on July 18, 2014, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Traditional Catholicism and tagged BBC, MH 17, Putin, Ucraine. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
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Mundabor,
1./ Many eminently sensible people would doubt just that. A strangely narrow perspective you take. You’re a well-read and sensible man yourself, so I won’t labour the point but to say that from Nero’s inferno to the Reichstag blaze, from Northwoods to the Gulf of Tonkin, history is littered with the murky world of “false flag” violence inflicted on the innocent in the name of power and the furtherance of war, which it does no-one good to dismiss as merely the product of paranoid “conspiracy theorists”. “Cui bono?” is the sensible man’s guide. Perhaps an accident in this case, perhaps not – I don’t have access to the evidence. Your insults are flying fairly thick these days, I might say.
2./ Fair point well made.
Cui bono is also the excuse for crap thinking of all kind.
But again, a sensible person will always be able to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable. In this case, it is unreasonable to think anyone would kill 300 people in order for another to be accused to have killed them by mistake, as every reasonable person must be able to see. This, apart from the risk of being found out, which by the use of sophisticated missile technology is a very real possibility.
I hope, by the way, that you don’t think Nero burned Rome.
M
My gentle Mundabor. As you have noted so well… our “news media” are only looking for ‘entertaining’ news and, of course, news that fits in with their political agenda. As you have pointed out, the technical sophistication involved in weaponry necessary to shoot down a plane at 33,000 feet would imply a certain sophistication in the user. Yet it is not inconceivable that the aircraft was brought down due to the stupidity of the weapon handlers.
Nor is it inconceivable that it is another created incident to raise tensions, “stir the pot” and distract and incite civilian “voters” to continue making their miserable “leadership” choices.
Here in the United States where everyone over the age of about seven has a cell phone, a car, or both, use of these highly complex but relatively easy to use technologies all too often results in (highly predictable) ‘accidents’ involving the combination of the two. We even have laws forbidding using the two at one time. Yet stupidity regularly trumps common sense. How many last telephonic words are, “oh… no”?
We do not suggest that auto manufacturers or cell (sell?) phone makers be held liable for mis- and illegal use of their products. (Although there are movements afoot to make gun manufacturers liable for misuse of theirs….) As you point out- if we want to hold Russia liable for this (and it might just as easily been a US made missile) then we in the West are equally liable for all those millions(?!?) of murders committed by individuals with foreign bullets and locally made machetes.
Put more concisely- I agree with you.
Just by the way. Are you familiar with Ann Barnhardt?
Thanks, but I do not think it would be in the interest of anyone to do something universally despised. Killing Bambi never makes of one a hero.
M
Quite right. Remember, too, that in 1988 the US shot down an Iranian Airbus by mistake–with all our costly technology and training, these things happen. A prayer from a Catholic Ukranian rite, which I attended long ago, mentioned “those who travel” today. That’s a worthy prayer….of course it sounds better in Old Slavonic!