[A-List] Civilian Plane Shoot-Downs and International (In)Justice

[Bill Totten]

>From 007 to Rwanda

by Edward S Herman

Z Magazine (May 2009)


It is enlightening and sometimes even amusing to see how the treatment of
the shooting down of civilian planes is politicized, and how in this area,
as in so many others, the media propagandize in the service of the
government's agenda and party line. On the humorous side, consider the
following New York Times editorial statements: On the Soviet shooting down
of Korean Airlines Flight 007 on August 31 1983: "There is no conceivable
excuse for any nation shooting down a harmless airliner". This is "cold
blooded mass murder", and the editors ask "whether the Kremlin accepts its
responsibility for a minimally decent international order" {1}. On the
Israeli shooting down of Libyan civilian airliner in February 1973: "No
useful purpose is served by an acrimonious debate over the assignment of
blame for the downing of a Libyan airliner on the Sinai peninsula last
week" {2}. On the shooting down of Iranian Airbus 655 by the USS Vincennes
in the Persian Gulf in July 1988, the New York Times editors found that in
this case, "while horrifying, it was nonetheless an accident. On present
evidence [that is, on the claims in the immediate official account], it's
hard to see what the navy could have done to avoid it" {3}.

Now, in fact, the Soviets didn't know that 007 was a civilian airliner, a
point that the Reagan administration quickly learned from pilot tape
exchanges, but suppressed; but it took almost five years for the Times
editors to admit this as "The Lie That Wasn't Shot Down" {4}. The Times
itself didn't learn this by its own investigative effort, but based on
somebody else's use of the FOIA. So they had quickly denounced the Soviets
based on a lie that they themselves failed to uncover; whereas in the case
of the Israeli shoot-down of a Libyan civilian airliner, it was recognized
from the beginning that the Israelis knowingly shot down a civilian plane,
but this didn't bother the editors at all - in this case no "barbarism" or
"cold-blooded murder", but rather apologetics for cold-blooded murder.

In the case of the Iranian airbus shoot-down, here too, in the editorial
cited above the editors' biases approach the humorous: the official
account is unquestioned; the editors fail to note that the USS Vincennes
was in the Persian Gulf to assist our ally Saddam Hussein in his war
against Iran, and they make poor Saddam the victim in this war, not the
aggressor (they speak of "Iran's futile eight year war with Iraq"). For
many years the Times failed to mention the fact that David Carlson, the
commander of a nearby US warship, published a letter in the US Naval
Institute's Proceedings of September 1989 on "The Vincennes Incident",
which claimed that the Iranian plane had been in it's proper flight
corridor, that Iranian behavior in the area "was pointedly
nonthreatening", and that Captain Rogers had a reputation as aggressive
and the Vincennes as a "Robo-Cruiser". The Times did have a news article
reporting on the hero's greeting that Captain Rogers received on his
return to San Diego {5}, but never had an editorial comment on this, nor
on his receipt of a Legion of Merit reward for his "exceptionally
meritorious conduct". Imagine what the paper would have said if the pilot
who shot down 007 had received similar treatment in the Soviet Union.

It might be argued that this was all editorial opinion, and did not
necessarily impact news. But this would be quite wrong. The failure to
uncover the "lie that was not shot down" or to report David Carlson's
comments on Captain Rogers and his action were first class news failures.
The variation in intensity of coverage was also closely correlated with
editorial bias. The New York Times had 147 articles, covering 2,789 column
inches on the 007 case in the month of September 1983 alone. For ten
consecutive days the paper had a special section devoted to the case. And
with all this coverage it succeeded in suppressing a great deal of
relevant context and critical opinion. By contrast, the shooting down of
the Libyan plane by Israel in 1973 and the Iranian airbus in July 1988
received much more muted coverage, and no special sections were devoted to
the shoot-downs. Coverage escalated with the shooting down of Pan Am 103
over Lockerbie in December 1988, just six months after the destruction of
the Iranian airliner.


Plane Shoot-downs and (In)Justice

Plane shoot-downs by the United States or one of its clients seem never to
result in punishment for the villains or justice to the victims. But when
the United States or one of its clients is the victim, punishment and some
kind of "justice" is often forthcoming. Thus, in the case of Israel's
shooting down of the Libyan airliner in 1973, no Israeli was punished or
even threatened, and in fact the Israeli Prime Minister was welcomed in
Washington only a week after this shoot-down, and without the intrusion of
painful questions. On the other hand, after the 007 shoot-down, in
addition to the widespread publicity and denunciations of this "barbaric
act", a boycott of Soviet airflights was organized by at least sixteen
countries, Soviet officials desirous of attending UN meetings were
harassed, and there was a marked cooling of relations between the Soviet
Union and the United States and its allies.

Similarly, while the United States suffered no penalty whatsoever for
shooting down Iranian airliner 655, and the responsible Rambo captain of
the Vincennes was greeted as a hero and given a medal of honor for his
outstanding service, there was serious action carried out by the
"international community" against the alleged organizers and participants
in the shooting down of Pan Am 103. There was naturally a suspicion that
the destruction of Pan Am 103 was Iran-based, given what the United States
had done to Airbus 655, and there was soon a consensus of investigators
that the act had been carried out by a noted terrorist group, the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), led by
Ahmed Jibril. This group had cells in West Germany, had used bombs such as
that employed on Pan Am 103, and airport security in Frankfurt was lax.
The working hypothesis of an Iranian involvement was supported further by
a claim by Western security officials that Iran had offered a $10 million
reward for a retaliatory act.

But then, as relations with Saddam Hussein deteriorated in 1989 and 1990,
and the United States sought better relations with Syria and Iran in the
run-up to the first Persian Gulf War, Western officials quietly abandoned
the Syria-Iran connection, followed by a fairly rapid shift from
"definitive" proof of PFLP-Syrian-Iranian involvement to "definitive"
proof that it was a Libyan act. As Paul Foot noted, "The evidence against
the PFLP which had been so carefully put together and was so immensely
impressive was quietly but firmly junked" {6}. Libya provided a suitable
new culprit, as it was already on the US-UK hit list and had been
subjected to a series of efforts at "regime change", a hostility based on
its independence, support of the Palestinians and other dissident forces
(including the ANC and Mandela in their resistance to apartheid South
Africa), as well as occasional support of anti-Western terrorists. So
Libya it was.

The Libyan connection lasted in pristine condition from 1990 into 2007,
during which time Libya was subjected to intensive vilification, costly
sanctions imposed by the Security Council, and a highly publicized trial
in the Netherlands that resulted in the conviction of a Libyan national
for the Lockerbie murders, with further bad publicity for Libya and
Kaddafi, and a payment of several billion dollars in victim compensation
that Libya felt compelled to provide (although still denying any
involvement in the shoot-down). All this despite the fact that many
experts and observers, including some victim family members, felt that the
trial was a political event and a judicial farce that yielded an
unwarranted and unjust conviction. {7}

UN observer Hans Kochler called it "a spectacular miscarriage of justice";
Robert Black, a Scottish legal authority on the case, spoke of "an
astonishing miscarriage of justice". This belief in the injustice of the
court decision was greatly strengthened in June 2007 when a Scottish
Criminal Cases Review Commission issued a decision that found the 2001
trial and decision flawed and opened the way for a fresh appeal for the
convicted Libyan. If this decision is validated, the world will be left
without a party responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing, but with the
strong likelihood that attention will be refocused on the PFLP and its
sponsors, Syria and Iran. Is it not an amazing coincidence that this
second turnaround occurs as Libya becomes more acceptable to the United
States and its allies and these Western powers are now retargeting Syria
and Iran?

But is it not equally interesting that with the United States a victim the
alleged perpetrator can be subjected to multi-year abuse, costly
sanctions, billions in expenses, and court actions against it that can
never be mobilized against the United States and its clients for similar
or analogous shoot-downs? Enemy shoot-downs are barbarism, US and client
state shoot-downs are at most "tragic errors".

It is also revealing that the individual victim in the Pan Am 103 case,
Abdel Basset Al al-Megrahi, almost surely innocent, and suffering from a
terminal case of cancer, remains imprisoned and cannot obtain release via
bail, early pardon, or based on medical or humanitarian considerations.
This is reminiscent of the ICTY's treatment of Milosevic, who could not
get urgent medical treatment in Moscow even with a Russian guarantee of
return (he died two weeks after the denial). It contrasts with the ICTY's
permission of the indicted Kosovo Albanian war criminal and
hands-on-killer Ramush Haradinaj to leave the Hague in 2005 in order to
engage in a political campaign in Kosovo. Haradinaj was also eventually
exonerated by the ICTY, helped along by the unexpected deaths of two
witnesses, but based more fundamentally on structured ICTY bias. In short,
there is a stream of evidence that international (in)justice is a function
of power and affiliation.


Rwanda and the 1994 Shoot-down-Assassination by Our Man (Kagame)

On April 6 1994, a plane was shot-down as it approached Kigali airport,
killing the presidents of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana and of Burundi,
Cyprien Ntaryamira. This was followed by the mass killings, the "Rwanda
genocide", and a closely paralleling conflict between the Rwandan army
associated with the Hutu dominant government of the murdered president
Habyarimana and the rebel forces of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led
by Paul Kagame. This assassination and war were the culmination of years
of conflict that began with the invasion of Rwanda by elements of the
Ugandan army in October 1990. Paul Kagame, who had been Uganda's head of
military intelligence, led the 1990 incursion [small sic here - see Note*
below - cm/p], and his Ugandan forces, most of them Ugandan citizens and
Tutsis, many earlier exiled from Rwanda, broke off from the Ugandan army
and became the patriotic RPF.

This invasion, and the further warfare, ethnic cleansing, and political
and military penetration into Rwanda, was supported by the United States -
Kagame had actually trained at Fort Leavenworth - and Kagame's and the
RPF's advances and successes were very much a result of this superpower
backing, which flowed into support for the RPF by Kofi Annan and the UN,
the IMF and World Bank, and Britain and Belgium (in this process the
United States was deliberately displacing the French from Central Africa,
just as it had displaced Britain in the Middle East). It also meant
support of the RPF by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other supposed human
rights groups.

Given US support, the invasion of Rwanda by Uganda in 1990 was never an
issue at the UN, just as the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Israel's
invasion of Lebanon in 2006 were not issues - in contrast with Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, which elicited immediate UN
condemnation and responsive action. It was also never an issue for HRW,
which focused on alleged human rights violations by the government under
attack from Uganda and being subjected to serious RPF-based and US-backed
subversion from within.

A problem for Kagame and his US supporters was that Tutsis were only some
fifteen percent of the Rwanda population, and large numbers of Hutus were
extremely hostile to the RPF, as the RPF's invasion and ethnic cleansing
in northern Rwanda, and ethnic cleansing by Tutsi forces in Burundi, had
created a huge refugee population. Thus there was no chance that Kagame
and the RPF could win a free election, which had been scheduled under a
1993 accord for 1995. Power could be won only by a violent RPF takeover.
Is it not remarkable that this power was won by Kagame in just three
months time in 1994, by violence, thus precluding the need for any free
election? Isn't it amazing that he and his Tutsi army and supporters won
such a decisive victory in the face of an alleged "genocide" being carried
out by the losers? Isn't it amazing that all serious evidence points to
more Hutus than Tutsis being killed during this high killing period?

Isn't it remarkable that following this Kagame victory he and Uganda's
Musevemi (another US protege) have repeatedly invaded the Congo, stealing
and helping others steal in a resource rich area, killing vast numbers,
but again with no impediment on the part of the United States or
"international community"? {8}

This brings me back to the plane shoot-down of April 6 1996. Again, the
convenience of these de facto assassinations for Kagame and the RPF, and
its US-UK-Belgian supporters, was noteworthy and remarkable. It
precipitated the mass killing that followed over the next several months.
In the US mainstream, this was blamed on the Hutus and Hutu government and
paramilitaries, but there are acute problems: It was the Hutu
head-of-state that was killed, and therefore hardly his doing. It was the
RPF that won the ensuing conflict in little more than three months, again
remarkable if the assassination and aftermath violence was planned by the
Hutu government. The United States fought to have UN troops withdrawn from
Rwanda just at the time the supposed genocide by the Hutus was getting
underway in April 1994, which the Hutu government opposed but Kagame
supported. For Samantha Power and other apologists for the standard model
- Hutu aggression and genocide, Kagame as reactive and defensive - the
United States just "stood by". But they had armed Kagame, weakened the
Rwanda government, and were clearing the ground for the planned coup and
takeover by their client. By another remarkable coincidence, just the
previous year Tutsi officers in neighbouring Burundi assassinated their
Hutu head-of-state, Melchior Ndadaye, a development celebrated by the RPF.

Still more telling, an investigation of the shoot-down by Michael
Hourigan, an Australian lawyer employed by the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), reported in 1996 that there was compelling
evidence provided by three RPF participants that the plane had been shot
down by Kagame's RPF forces. When Hourigan gave this information to Louise
Arbour, at that time chief prosecutor for the ICTR, Arbour, after
consulting US officials, closed down the investigation and ordered
Hourigan to destroy his files, on the ground that investigation of this
matter was outside the ICTR's jurisdiction. This was false, as even
Richard Goldstone, the former ICTR prosecutor (and long-time friend of the
US State Department) insisted. Subsequently, in 2003, Carla Del Ponte, a
successor chief prosecutor of the ICTR, proposed a new investigation of
this key 1994 assassination. But she couldn't persuade Kofi Annan to
support her and was soon removed from her position.

Although this assassination precipitated a celebrated genocide, no
Security Council investigation and action has been taken over the ensuing
fifteen years. This April 1994 event was, as Richard Goldstone stated,
"the trigger that started the genocide". But if the "trigger" was pulled
by Our Man Kagame, the entire scenario of a Hutu-planned and implemented
genocide is called into question. It follows that given US power, with
people in service to that power like Louise Arbour and Kofi Annan (et al),
and with the mass media and human rights intellectuals bamboozled and/or
following the flag, any attempts to investigate this shoot-down are
quashed, and it will not produce any UN Tribunal such as the one just
begun in The Hague to deal with the 2005 assassination of the Lebanese
leader Rafik al-Hariri.

The rule remains firm: Impunity for the crimes of the United States and
its agents and clients; US and client targets available for
investigations, trials and punishment in accord with the rule of a
politicized system of international (in)justice.

Notes:

{1} New York Times editorial, "Murder in the Air" (September 02 1983)

{2} New York Times editorial, "After Sinai" (March 01 1973)

{3} New York Times editorial, "In Captain Rogers Shoes" (July 05 1988)

{4} New York Times editorial (June 18 1988)

{5} Robert Reinhold, "Crew of Cruiser That Downed Iranian Airliner Gets a
Warm Homecoming", New York Times (October 25 1988)

{6} "Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice", Private Eye (May/June 2001),
page 10

{7} For details and analysis, see John Ashton and Jan Ferguson, Cover-Up
of Convenience [Mainstream: 2001]; Neil Mackay, "UN Claims Lockerbie Trial
Rigged": Sunday Herald, Scotland (April 08 2001):
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0408-01.htm or
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0408-01.htm; Edward Herman;
"Lockerbie and the New World Order Rule of Injustice", Z Magazine
(December 2001): "http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/12789"
or http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/12789 .

{8} For details on these matters, Robin Philpot, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism
Dies Hard (E-Text as posted to the Taylor Report Website, 2004 -
http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/ ); Edward S Herman and David
Peterson, The Politics of Genocide (Monthly Review Press, forthcoming);
and Keith Harmon Snow, "Hotel Rwanda: Hollywood and the Holocaust in
Central Africa" (November 01 2007):
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=47 or
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2006/11/16/2505462.html .

http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/3/4170825.html


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