But being a superpower means never having to say you’re sorry. So even though the US expressed “deep regret” eight years later and agreed to pay $61.8 million in compensation after the case wound up before the World Court in the Hague, it refused to accept legal liability or issue a formal apology.

Histories are ignored written by the victors.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/no_author/whos-to-blame-for-flight-752/

By Daniel Lazare
AntiWar.com

Who’s to blame for downing Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752? Everyone’s pointing the finger at Iran. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that it must take “full responsibility,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is demanding an official apology, while even Iranian protesters are calling on Supreme Leader Ali Khameinei to resign.

“Regime change is in the air,” ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton gleefully tweeted. “The people of Iran can see it.” Because Iran fired the missile that killed 176 people, the government must pay the supreme penalty.

But how different things looked three decades ago when the USS Vincennes fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile at an Iranian airliner carrying 16 crew members and 274 passengers over the Strait of Hormuz. No one called on the United States to apologize, and no one demanded that the government be overthrown. To the contrary, there was barely a murmur when Ronald Reagan defended the downing as “a proper defensive action” while Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that the ship had done nothing inappropriate.

“It is my judgment, based on the information that is available to us, that the commanding officer conducted himself with circumspection,” Crowe said. He added that Vincennes Captain William C. Rogers “followed his authorities and acted with good judgment and at a very trying period and under very trying circumstances.”

This was despite the fact that the airliner was over Iranian territorial waters, that its radio transmitter was “squawking” on a civilian frequency, and that it was ascending rather than swooping down low for an attack. Even though the admiral said that Rogers was blameless, he struck other navy men on the scene as so aggressive that they began referring to his high-tech ship as “RoboCruiser.”

“Having watched the performance of the Vincennes for a month before the incident, my impression was clearly that an atmosphere of restraint was not her long suit,” a nearby ship commander named David Carlson wrote a year after the incident. “Her actions appeared to be consistently aggressive and had become a topic of wardroom conversation. … The Vincennes was never under attack by Iranian aircraft.”

But being a superpower means never having to say you’re sorry. So even though the US expressed “deep regret” eight years later and agreed to pay $61.8 million in compensation after the case wound up before the World Court in the Hague, it refused to accept legal liability or issue a formal apology.

Compare that to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s statement that Flight 752 was a “great tragedy and unforgivable mistake” or Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Salami’s emotional confession: “I swear to almighty God that I wished I was on that plane and had crashed with them and burned but had not witnessed this tragic incident.”

At least Iran admits it was wrong whereas the US remains unrepentant…

The pressure on such defense units must have been immense as they scanned the skies for signs of an overwhelming US counterattack. The missile operator had just a few heartbeats to make a choice that could be catastrophic either way.

If so, where does responsibility lie – with the operator or with a superpower that needlessly brought the region to the brink of war in the first place? After all, it was the US that massively violated international law. And it was the US that put Iran in a position in which it had no option but to defend itself even while fearing the worst if it did. Marauders who invade a home are responsible in most states even if the owner responds in ways that are unwise or inappropriate. Why shouldn’t the US be responsible as well?

Yet everyone is too busy blaming the victim to notice the elephant in the sitting room. The real problem is not Iran but a United States that grows more reckless and aggressive by the day. The more the world blames the victim, the more it rewards Trump. And the more it rewards Trump, the more it insures US policy will only grow even more out of control.

The action in the Persian Gulf is not over. In fact, it’s barely begun.

Be seeing you