OTHER COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : Operation a Success, but the Patient Died

The loss of 290 civilian lives is, of course, a terrible human tragedy. The real question is not why the Vincennes fired but why the Iranian authorities launched a civilian aircraft into a combat zone and toward a U.S. warship. This is the same Iranian regime that for eight years has been fighting one of the most barbarous wars of modern history, including sending waves of its own children across mine fields. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his fanatic followers have made blind hatred national policy and given savagery a bad name.

There is no solid evidence that the Iranian authorities deliberately set up Flight 655. But, given their contempt for human life, it is entirely possible. If they saw tricking a U.S. ship into shooting down a civilian airliner as a way of embarrassing the United States and bringing pressure on it to quit the Persian Gulf, then doing so would have been quite in character.

To conclude from this incident, appalling though it is, that the United States should either sheath its sword in the gulf or fail to protect its ships and men would be to draw a disastrously wrong lesson.