Rush to judgment
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington president Reagan leaped on the shooting
down of the Korean aeroplane with the zest and celerity of a younger politician. The news had barely reached here before he had told a group of reporters that 'words can scarcely express our revulsion at this horrifying act of violence'. Not even deep burrowing rodents on the Wyoming prairie could escape knowing how the Administra- tions viewed this particular mass murder.
The Secretary of State gave a statement heavily weighted with snippets from our in- telligence agencies which conveyed the idea that the Russians get their kicks by shooting down loaded airliners. Then the President, taking wing from Santa Barbara, flew back to his capital to talk to various politicians and get on the television to the nation to play tape recordings of the Russian air force pilots talking to their base. Since no sub- titles were provided as Mr Reagan and one hundred million of his fellow citizens listen- ed to this Slavic gibberish, it was difficult to know if this was indeed the smoking gun proving the true nature of the ursine brutes who dwell on the banks of the Moskva.
What was omitted was a discussion of why they murdered 269 people with malice aforethought. What Mr Reagan has not been telling us is why the communists shot down that plane. Another Korean Air Lines plane flying within a few minutes of Flight 007 had no less than four United States Senators on board. Why didn't the Russians shoot that one down?
The pathological Right said the plane was 'Have you noticed that BR's explanations about missing trains are about as convincing as the Russians on missing airliners?' shot down because Congressman Larr McDonald, who also was the chairman the John Birch Society, was on it. 'There n a real question in my mind that the Soviets may have actually murdered 269 passengers on Flight 007 in order to kill LarrY McDonald,' said the Wrong Reverend Jerd., Falwell, the presiding spirit of the Mori' Majority. Correct or no, Mr Falwell's eX; planation of what happened over the Sean Okhotsk the other night makes better sense than Mr Reagan's, which is that from tU to time, more or less on a random basis, tke Russians shoot down an airliner. You've heard of Russian Roulette, haven't Yoll?„ Some of the important people in 01,' President's party did not have their faculties paralysed by the rush to indigna"
on. Men like Senate Majority Leader n
Howard Baker was fool enough to suggest we suspend judgment until more fact are known. That appeared in the tenth Para' graph of a subsidiary story appearing ria page eight of the Washington Post. Wha„I were getting the attention were statemen'', by our more dumb-headed politica] celebrities imploring the American PeOle to make sure this newest act of Soviet bar: barism would not become the occasion ° yet 'more appeasement' of the Marxist' Leninist-collectivists. You would think that a nation which has fought two major wards I and countless minor skirmishes, °Oen h hidden, against communism, and whic" spends a third of a trillion dollars a year °Pr military preparedness, would not think °t itself as a nation of spineless appeasers; bail nowhere is Neville Chamberlain as we known and remembered as he is here.
Even for Mr Reagan, who cannot faulted for understatement when it corne' to discussing the Russians, the language Wasp a trifle shrill. 'The Korean airlit massacre,' as he termed it, was a small-sca'd" atrocity in this century of mass-produ, homicide. Apparently the Administratt°,1: pounced on it as the emotional device needs to get its arms appropriation, specifically the MI missile, through Con; gress. That's what his peroration Iva about ... 'Give me my missile moneY. .A But even before he read his perfervwf lines to the television camera, plenty °,'s stuff was coming out to qualify peoPle judgment on what the Russians had don,e,' It was learned that the United States di! have an espionage or electronic surveillaneee plane in the general area on the night th Russians took out the 007. In fact the Or; mur about such planes had got so loud tba.s Mr Reagan had to try and deal with it in speech. He admitted there had been such 8 plane in the vicinity but it had flown av4IY long before the lethal instant. It's usually a mistake for a man in M: Reagan's position to start discussing Pai; ticulars as he did. It only encourages pe°P to question and think critically. Thus, whem talking about why the Korean plane IDIP:r have been so far off course in Russian at_ space, he moved attention to aspects ofth: business that we need some better answer. for. Mr Reagan speculated that human Cr' mnPuter would explain why 007 was where " ought not to have been. But the chances that happening are next to zero. Flight 47 was equipped with a navigational com- Puter which is not programmed by hand. A tape cassette with the plane's route, a stan- dard one called Romeo 20, is fed into the computer. If it fouls up, there are two other cmnPuters loaded up and ready to do the tame job of guiding the plane to safe har- h°nr. Therefore, since Mr Reagan has rMight it up, he had better find another exnlanation for why that plane flew the course it did. There are other disturbing questions. Last Year the Federal Aviation Commission asked the Department of Defence to use its long range Alaskan-based military radar to they civil flights to the Far East to be sure ,! were not wandering into air space for- to them. This has been enough of a WOrry for
American government airline
IS to carry a warning saying, 'Aircraft infringing upon non-free flying territory May be fired on without warning.' The question is, did our military know itue the Plane was off course in space where was in imminent danger of being destroyed? The military must have known --th Otherwise, how can they be so sure, after the event, where the plane had gone, where Russian fighters were, etc? But then 'my, for God's sake, didn't the American military or the Japanese military warn 007 it i,.as dangerously off course, that it was be- ,Thug followed by hostile Russian warplanes? _IneY knew they were hostile because they 7.ere listening to the Russian pilots. Why aldret. they out of therte;varn that plane to get the hell i„ T,Lhese questions take on a degree of irony h" the light of Mr Reagan's speech in which ae °,nsligates the Russians for ignoring the itc'enl practice of helping 'mariners or Pilots lost at sea'. He's right, you should 112l shoot them down, but shouldn't you :uso warn them when you know they are in
terrible peril?
to As weapon delivery systems are revved up i 80 faster than a speeding superman there ds le:ss and less time for people to make the Tehelsion whether to shoot or not to shoot. at will have to be left to computers pro- berammed to fire the big rockets whenever sertain s. configurations appear on the radar vvc.reett t ith the That obviously was not the case Russians this time, but their rigidi- 0Y of response foreshadows the future two Years down the road when the we.;ve, r, faster missiles are put in.Computers In do the deciding and computers do not 'n"Pe judgment. They are yes/no, zero/one doachines. One blip on the screen and they don't fire: two blips on the screen and they to Mr Reagan may be right about the im- . orality of what the communists did, but tallrey were within their rights as these things poewg.ellerallY understood. Every sovereign choosesthe right to butcher whomever it on its own territory, within its own cur space, Such is the law of nations.
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