The specific circumstances of the Buk-launched missile attack on a Malaysian civilian airliner, flying over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border on its otherwise routine journey from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, are still murky. We only know that somebody shot that plane down and, in doing so, slaughtered innocent people from all over the world, perhaps including Americans.
Regardless of intent, regardless of missile origin, no valid excuse exists for rocketing a commercial Boeing 777. None! As Russia and Ukraine blame each other, 295 souls no longer have living bodies. Their families deserve answers, accountability, and ultimately, reparations both from those responsible and from their enablers.
My prayers are with those families on this awful day of massive, preventable sorrow.
Unfortunately today isn’t the first time something like this has happened–and as you’ll learn from the video below, not even the second. Despite my youth at the time, I recall the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 incident of 1 September 1983 well—and just as well, the strong American and international response to that act of evil. Whether this means anything or not, a factual common denominator was that these barbaric deeds of cowardice and terror occurred over or very near Russian territory.
I do know that a volleyball game of blame between Ukraine and Russia won’t fix this recurring problem. Strong leadership by the free world’s most powerful voices is the only potential solution, in terms of insistence on investigative openness, uninhibited evidence-gathering by international experts, reassurance of victims’ families that justice will be sought and served, and the dogged pursuit of that goal; otherwise, such attacks will happen again. What do I mean by this?
Here’s an example of exactly the kind of decisive, direct, unambiguous, crisis-response leadership that we had in America for the KAL massacre, and which we need again today.
May the answers be found and provided openly to the world just as surely and clearly in the coming days that, as you can see, were delivered directly to us by a great world leader in 1983.