"Felony murder" in international affairs? — if there were such, the US would be guilty of it — in the Iran-initiated Ukraine airline shoot down

© 2020 Peter Free

 

11 January 2020

 

 

Let's put this into step-by-step perspective

 

The US assassinated an Iranian general with a drone-delivered munition in Iraq.

 

In the reasonably immediate aftermath of that attack — and during (or just after) Iran's relatively harmless "display" counterattack — Iran mistook a Ukrainian passenger plane for a counter-counterattack's incoming American missile.

 

One hundred seventy-six people died.

 

 

From a legal perspective

 

Under American law, someone who illegally creates circumstances that lead to murder is guilty of felony murder.

 

Even if the initiating perpetrator did not pull the trigger in the subsequent event.

 

 

Ergo

 

The United States' assassination of General Soleimani began the predictable aftermath that led to the airline shootdown murders.

 

The Soleimani execution foreseeably set the stage for the "fog of war".

 

This foreseeable confusion being especially so, in that Iran cannot be expected to have the electronic self-defense sophistication and skill that American armed forces possess.

 

Iran can also be expected to expect wildly provocative American attacks, given the many decades of American actions against it. The Trump Administration's especially hostile bluster merely adds to the taut strings tension.

 

In short, from a prosecutor's perspective:

 

 

the American Soleimani execution

 

directly caused the imminent circumstances

 

that led

 

Iran to mistake a planeful of innocents for another US-initiated attack.

 

 

Under American law

 

Guess who joins Iran in being guilty of these 176 airline murders?

 

 

The moral? — Is the United States "a shining city upon a hill"?

 

Or is it something consistently much less inspiring?

 

Aggressive US cowardice in foreign affairs is ethically revolting. And, in this particular case, doubly illegal.