Not really. The Soviets shot down KL-007. They recently shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine and seized Crimea. The Russians are increasing their harassment of our planes and ships and flying near our airspace.
The Turks warned the Russians days ago that they would not tolerate incursions into their airspace. The Russians ignored it and paid the price. WWIII won't happen because of it.
He did not express the least bit of sorrow for the loss of two aircraft or the violations of the Geneva convention in killing pilots and shooting down rescue helicopters.
Sorrow for what? Do the Russians express sorrow for our casualties? The pilots were killed by the rebel groups within Syria who were being bombed by the Russians. The helicopter is fair game. They are fighting non-state actors who are not signatories to the Geneva Convention.
Turkey might want to think real hard about ever again locking a fighter born radar on a Russian plane, that is in Syrian airspace. That is a deliberate hostile act under anyone's rules of engagement, exacerbated by Turkey's demonstrated willingness to shoot. And, this is not a cat and mouse game. The Russians are in Syria on serious business.
And the Turks are serious about enforcing their airspace. The Turks are pretty tough customers. The Russians mess with them at their own peril.
"Not really. The Soviets shot down KL-007. They recently shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine and seized Crimea. The Russians are increasing their harassment of our planes and ships and flying near our airspace.The Turks warned the Russians days ago that they would not tolerate incursions into their airspace. The Russians ignored it and paid the price. WWIII won't happen because of it."
How sure are we about the Russians ( Putin ) greenlighting the Pro-Russian separatists to take down that airliner though? It seems like a stretch in this day and age of information flow. Obama or Kerry telling Turkey to shootdown a fighter plane is one thing, but a passenger jet? Man, I don't know. I just can't imagine that level of evil from anyone except Jihadists. I mean, what would he gain from it except anger and bad press? But anyway, we might finally get a dump of information about Obama, Clinton, Kerry and their shenanigans from a pissed-off Putin. So just maybe some of these things will become clear.
I'm not sure the KAL incident is a good parallel, and it certainly doesn't make the case for Turkey, in fact it kinda makes the opposite point IMHO. I learned a lot about KAL-007 the hard way, from knowing the family of two victims, a woman and her infant child ( yes, it was that terrible, the grief profound, not until 9/11 did I see anything approaching it ).
You see, the Communist propaganda was flowing freely. They planted stories about Langley using passenger flights like that one for recon, stories about the fighter pilot dutifully warning the airliner, wings tilting, lights flashing, the whole nine yards. But it was predictable kitchen sink distraction. And to some degree it worked. We had many dopes over here receptive to the nonsense ( like with the grassy knoll and the Apollo landings ) and repeating it so the victims got hurt coming and going.
Point is though, the shootdown was bad. There was no reason to take it down. KAL was a passenger flight, non-military, non-Intelligence, but even if it were it still would not have been a legit target. This was years after the Blackbirds came online ( the Soviets knew all about them since they tried to splash them continuously ) and an absolute eternity since Powers' U-2. And of course there were lots of satellites. Hence, if we wanted to light them up and look at their defenses we could have done it successfully in countless ways. Using a passenger plane was a ridiculous lie. The shootdown was simply bad.
So what some here almost seem to be doing is saying that the since Turks allegedly warned the Russians therefore they had it coming. This is similar to how the Soviets and their American fellow travelers tried to minimize the KAL murders. But it fails since the plane was no threat to Turkey. They were not going to bomb Istanbul ( I mean Constantinople, sing it with me ) No-one shoots down intruding aircraft unless it is a serious threat, or perhaps to teach a lesson and make a provocative point ( Reagan F14's splashing Libyan Russian fighters in the Med ). The disinformation from Turkey and/or Obama is just as much a strawman as it was with KAL-007. There is just no sound reason for shooting it down. You might light him up. You might throw up some flak. You might launch some missiles closeby. You might scramble interceptors. You might escort him down. You might mess up his electronics. You could just point a laser pointer in the cockpit. Anything short of a shootdown, unless there is a different, more provocative reason instead. It sure is starting to smell like a power play, and the hypothesis that Obama wants to change the focus back to Assad and stop Russian action in his defense, and is willing to use NATO as a pawn is very provocative indeed. It is also reckless.
Interesting tidbit. Not too long after KAL, that idjit Geraldo Rivera tried to do show where he planned to bring out the families of the KAL victims to the site of the shootdown in the Sea of Japan, no doubt to get their grief on camera. The family I know, he also happened to know, and he did try to capitalize on that friendship. They declined, as well as many others since I never again heard about this "show". It demonstrates how despicable he, and all major media clowns are. He got his comeuppance with the Al Capone vault thing later. :-) Of course, Fox News, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity have all since decided he really is a fabulous journalist worth putting on the air anyway! And sure enough, during the Friday the 13th terrorist attack he used his frightened daughter who was in Paris as a prop in an emotional segment as we expected he would have done with KAL-007.
When they shot down KL-007 the Soviets also broke the rules. In fact, it was a renegade general who violated orders from his superiors to check out whether it was a civilian aircraft and directed that the plane be shot down since no one knew where it came from.
We also took a deep breath and did not start WWIII over that one.
The helicopter is fair game. They are fighting non-state actors who are not signatories to the Geneva Convention.
Huh? It is the non-state actors who loose their protection not that state actors pursuing them. Of course the non-state actors are not party to the Geneva Convention. They are and should be treated as outlaw murderers. Wanted - dead rather than alive.
And the Turks are serious about enforcing their airspace. The Turks are pretty tough customers. The Russians mess with them at their own peril.
Someone violates your airspace and you chase him out or force him to land. You don't shoot him down after he has already left your airspace.