Somebody Has to Pay for This

Today on NRO

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. The Truth about Gaza.

STEPHEN MOORE: Radical Greens want a power-free world — and President Obama's policies are moving us toward it. A Future without Electricity.

TOM ROGAN: If Russia was involved in the MH 17 crash, as seems likely, we need to acknowledge and stop their brutality. What to Do after MH 17.

JOHN FUND: Playing pool in Colorado rather than visiting the Texas border is not very presidential. The Obama Albatross.

SLIDESHOW: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

July 18, 2014

Somebody Has to Pay for This

By the time you read this, it's possible the world will know more about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. But some of the pieces are starting to come together.

1. Pro-Russian separatists have been shooting down Ukrainian planes with increasing frequency in recent months — up until now, military transports and cargo planes.

2. Thursday the Russian separatists bragged about shooting down a non-passenger plane shortly before the Malaysian flight disappeared: "In the vicinity of Torez, we just downed a plane, an AN-26. It is lying somewhere in the Progress Mine. We have issued warnings not to fly in our airspace."

3. The Russian separatists have the kind of advanced surface-to-air missiles and launching system needed to hit an airliner traveling at this high altitude.

4. The Ukrainian government's security agency released audio of an intercepted phone call, allegedly showing Russian separatists and Russian intelligence officers discussing the shoot-down:

Igor Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. Group Minera. It fell down beyond Yenakievo (Donetsk Oblast).

Vasili Geranin: Pilots. Where are the pilots? …

"Greek": Is there anything left of the weapon?

"Major": Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper.

"Greek": Are there documents?

"Major": Yes, of one Indonesian student. From a university in Thompson.

Militant: Regarding the plane shot down in the area of Snizhne-Torez. It's a civilian one. Fell down near Grabove. There are lots of corpses of women and children. The Cossacks are out there looking at all this.
They say on TV it's AN-26 transport plane, but they say it's written Malaysia Airlines on the plane. What was it doing on Ukraine's territory?

Nikolay Kozitsin: That means they were carrying spies. They shouldn't be f***ing flying. There is a war going on.

Could this audio be doctored or falsified in some way? Yes, although it would represent an enormous risk on the part of the Ukrainian government.

Barring some other piece of evidence, Occam's Razor suggests that Russian separatists thought they were firing their missiles at another Ukrainian plane that wasn't a passenger airliner . . . and promptly killed 298 people. Reports continue to suggest 23 of the passengers were Americans.

This is not something random and terrible happening to strangers, citizens of other countries, living lives far from here. This was murder of 23 Americans, guilty of nothing worse than booking a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, who had nothing to do with the dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

Every one of those deaths is an outrage; the deaths of some of those non-American passengers may also have far-reaching consequences:

About 100 of the 298 people killed in the Malaysia Airlines crash were heading to Melbourne for a major AIDS conference, conference attendees have been told.

Delegates at a pre-conference in Sydney were told on Friday morning that around 100 medical researchers, health workers and activists were on the plane that went down near the Russia-Ukraine border, including former International AIDS Society president Joep Lange.

Russian president Vladimir Putin didn't order the separatists to shoot down the airliner. But his intelligence agencies and military have provided all kinds of support to these separatists. To borrow P.J. O'Rourke's metaphor, Putin gave whiskey and car keys — and powerful explosives — to teenage boys. The disastrous consequences were not hard to foresee. You can see it in the absurd, nonsensical, instant justification by one of the speakers that if the plane is labeled, 'Malaysia Airlines,' it must be a disguise for a spy plane. Putin didn't commit murder; just reckless endangerment.

There will be a lot of debates and discussions about what the United States can or should do in response to this reckless, deadly decision. But let's begin by asking, if we had the opportunity to reach out and strike 23 Russian separatists involved in the decision to launch this missile, would we do it? I'd like to think so. Fighting a war is not inherently evil, nor is stupidity, but the combination of the two is a fertile ground for evil. These guys need to be taught a lesson, and it's not clear who can teach them.

Commercial airliners fly — usually quite highly — over dangerous or not-so-friendly parts of the world all the time. Right now commercial jets are avoiding Eastern Ukraine. Should they avoid Syria, too? Iran? Iraq? Afghanistan? If so, you've just cut off India from Europe.

These guys need to pay — and Putin needs to see consequences of his reckless support of these dumb, brutal goons.

Moe Lane: "I never thought that I'd see the day that the US government would just shrug off a no-fooling war crime committed against our citizens."

Meanwhile, in Gaza…

Thursday, Israeli reserve Colonel Miri Eisen -- former deputy head of IDF's combat-intelligence corps, former assistant to the director of Military intelligence, etc. did a conference call on the tunnel attack by Hamas fighters that preceded Israeli troops moving into Gaza.

His comments suggest that when we see footage of the Gaza Strip, we're only seeing a fraction of the Hamas infrastructure — quite literally.

All of the city of Gaza, throughout the different urban areas, which is so much a part of the Gaza Strip when you look at it from outside, these low-ranking urban areas, one, two, three-story houses all have a subterranean aspect. You've seen some of the tunnels that they have tunneled for a mile or two from the Gaza Strip into Israel because those we've exposed, but we have full intelligence information about the subterranean ones that they've built underneath the city. That's where Ismail Haniyeh did his tape, the tape that he showed a couple of days ago. It's where they do their press conferences. Everything is underground. Now, that dilemma in that sense is to attack that, and there are different physical capabilities that could do so. But the damage . . . to everything around it would be enormous and Israel will not do that.

Charles Krauthammer:

Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.

"Here's the difference between us," explains the Israeli prime minister. "We're using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles."

. . . We routinely hear this Israel–Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent "cycle of violence." This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows the proudly self-declared raison d'être of Hamas: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.

No-Drama Obama, Even When the Situation Calls for Some Drama or Urgency

I'm just going to turn it over to two of Ace of Spades' bloggers, Gabe Malor and then Ace, for articulating those ominous, half-formed thoughts lurking in the back of our heads.

Here's a paraphrased summary of some of Gabe Malor's Tweets from midafternoon Thursday:

The problem isn't that Obama didn't 'react instantly.' Part of the problem is that he didn't act decisively previously. But another big part of the problem is that Obama and his team refuse to cancel a photo-op in response to events.

A few days after insisting that he's not interested in photo-ops, it's clear that this is a presidency largely driven by choreographed photo-ops.

Obama has given nobody any reason to believe he's capable of responding decisively even when given time. Sure, we get it, Obama's powerless. That doesn't mean the right answer is to continue with his previously scheduled burger and fries.

As I noted, this is part of a pattern, going back to the Underwear Bomber, Fort Hood and the Benghazi attacks. Something dramatic, sudden, and terrible happens, and the president sticks to the previously established schedule -- continue the Hawaiian vacation, make the shout-out at an event with supporters, go to Las Vegas for the campaign rally. All of that looks like petty political silliness when life-and-death issues are going on elsewhere. (I remember Obama doing his ESPN March Madness brackets as the Japanese were desperately trying to avoid a devastating meltdown at the Fukushima reactor. I realize there wasn't a ton that the president could do about a nuclear crisis on the other side of the world, but it just seemed . . . out-of-touch, solipsistic, unserious, and un-presidential. Had Japan experienced the worst-case scenario, how would historians look upon the American president goofing around with sportscasters at that moment?)

It's as if Obama thought President Bush constantly overreacted to terrorism and national-security-related developments, and so he's decided to never over-react.

And then Ace takes it from there (some language cleaned up):

Look, I'm just going to say directly what Peggy Noonan sort of implied and what people are kind of worrying about, silently:

People are beginning to become alarmed that the president may not be mentally well.

This is [really] weird. There are people who don't give a [hoot] at all about social conventions or expected modes of behavior or conforming to anyone else's expectations of what one is supposed to do at one's job during a time of crisis.

We call these people crazy.

When someone shows up for work wearing nothing but a bathrobe and cowboy hat, we don't tweet #TheBearIsLoose; we ask Human Resources to have a check 'round.

As someone — was it Redsteeze? — asked yesterday, just how severe and deadly does a crisis have to become before this president will cancel his appearance at a party fundraiser? Is that even conceivable?

On Greta earlier this week, I said President Obama had mentally checked out of his own presidency. We've seen President Obama angry — when he talks about Republicans who don't believe in climate change, he's incredulous, sarcastic, snarky, and mocking — he's really steamed.

Watch him in the coming days. Does he seem really angry about this plane being shot down?

Does he seem as angry as this guy was, another time, another place, when another Russian killed hundreds by shooting down a passenger airliner?

ADDENDA: I wanted to close out the week with a funny, cheery, light-hearted Jolt. Yeah, so much for that plan.

Maybe this weekend is a good time to step away from the computer:

Technology, used correctly, can help with increased productivity as it allures us with its endless possibilities. However, the downside is information overload (not to mention the addictive properties). Being overly connected robs us of the present moment. While social media is great, make sure you are putting more time and energy into living your own life than watching other peoples lives unfold online. Life in this moment is the most rewarding. Set healthy tech boundaries and stick to them. And, then watch your happiness levels soar.

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