Blame-Game Against MAS Yet Again

Crop field close to the area of MH17's crash site.
(Pic Courtesy of New York Times)

The graphic was taken by one of the first journalists at MH17’s and 298 women, men, children and little infants final resting place. White cotton on sticks is being used to mark the location of where passengers lay idle, over an area measuring more than 20 kilometres in radius, as a result of the plane disintegrating from an altitude of 33,000 feet. Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times has a shivering, spine-chilling take on the impact of MH17, available here (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-plane-leaves-trail-of-debris.html)

Some though, have been quite outrageous in their response to this most tragic of accidents, frantically searching for any angle, mostly unsubstantiated, into taking pot shots against Malaysia Airlines for flying over a ‘war zone.’ Restraint and that ‘humanness’, is apparently not easy to find in Malaysia. 

It is most disheartening too, that heading this bandwagon are political leaders, and from the opposition at that! Yelling at MAS (under the guise of posing a question) to ‘explain why they flew over a war zone’ (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152596269259170&set=a.10151905029024170.1073741830.52329039169&type=1&theater&notif_t=like) through both Facebook and Twitter, is incredibly unacceptable in any standard and reasonable society. 

The blame-game has been played ever so often has become mundane. One has to realise this tragedy is a different disaster altogether compared to MH370. 

This route has been used time and again, under guidelines by the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Authority) and Eurocontrol, with Aeroflot 86 (flights), Singapore Airlines 75, Ukraine International Airlines 62, Lufthansa 56, and Malaysian 48 in this past week. Critics have to digest the situation by looking at it as a whole, and not slamming MAS because, and only because that is a hobby to some. 

Arguments of shellacking the victim while minimising the stare at offenders is, to my view, a narrow-minded and opportunistic view, which has been adopted by leaders and followers. Thankfully though, many more Malaysians have stood together and rightfully correcting opinions such as these. 

Previous catastrophes have shown that offenders try as much to cover up their tracks (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/07/17/when-airliners-get-shot-down-facts-get-skewed-quickly/), and the last critics should be doing in respect of those who lost their lives, is further knocking MAS which is already down, but not displaying that sort of intellect when speaking of those who allegedly pulled the trigger. 

But if this continues though, when some keep whacking for the sake of pleasure, there isn’t much Malaysians can hope for, but be brought back to the memory of those white cottons at MH17’s resting place.