Flight MH17: Truths and lies

[dropcap]O
[/dropcap]n the 13th October, the Dutch safety board announced that the MH17 flight was downed by a Russian made Buk missile. This may not seem particularly surprising.
The West has been quick to condemn the Russians and the pro-Russian rebels, and that condemnation has been widely disseminated throughout most, if not all, of the media. The Western media is decided; Russia did it. Russia is evil.
The report, however, does not apportion blame. There is a suggested area from which the missile came, but any attempts to assign an origin to the missile would probably be erroneous.
Currently, the situation involves a game where several large groups point fingers at each other, each crying that the other group did it. Evidence is ignored, because it is superfluous to each group’s purpose.
And then there is the fact that a civilian plane was allowed to fly over an active warzone. Why? 16 Ukrainian aircraft had been downed by the rebels, but the Ukrainians hadn’t closed the airspace involved.

It was sheer madness, or perhaps arrogance. 160 civilian flights went over that warzone; three were close to the MH17 when it was hit. British carriers flew over the fly-zone simply to reduce fuel costs. And Russia is the enemy.

The real culprit, I think, will never be known or found. Any investigation will be accused of being biased, as the Dutch report also has been – there is some basis to this. On the one hand, the West is innately biased against Russia, and on the other, it appears that many fragments of the plane were taken from the site by either the Ukrainians or the rebels.
Simply, I think the countries involved don’t care about who died, or even who was and even is at risk; they care about who they can blame. The crash is an easy, emotive political tool. The deaths of 296 people is something that can be used.

As soon as that level of people are killed, people are upset. It’s a simple, yet powerful logic. One which politicians and the media can use to fuel anti-‘insert-group-here’ inclinations in their people.

The very fact that a no-fly zone wasn’t enacted shows how little the different parties cared about the human cost of this conflict.
Sure, someone shot this plane down, perhaps accidentally or perhaps not. However the fact is, there were no preventative measures to stop people dying.
My earlier point that the real culprit will never be found is perhaps a little all-encompassing – everyone involved in this conflict is culpable for these 296 lives.