Iran Air 655

In early July, 290 people aboard a regularly scheduled Iranian airliner were killed because a top-of-the-line U.S. Navy cruiser was unable to identify it correctly. The captain of the USS Vincennes, apparently believing his vessel was about to be attacked by a hostile F-14 fighter, fired two Standard-2 missiles at the passenger plane, and 290 civilian lives were lost.

In the first days after the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655, questions, accounts, and contradictory government statements--from both Iran and the United States--abounded, and the currents of debate around the incident were almost as difficult to track as those of the Persian Gulf waters themselves.

The ship's commanding officer, Capt. Will Rogers III, was informed by the most sophisticated electronic technology available that an approaching plane was hostile and descending. He issued repeated warnings, and he notified his superiors of the potential combat situation. But the pilot of the Iranian passenger plane failed to respond to Rogers' warnings. Capt. Rogers certainly was aware that 37 American sailors were killed in May 1987 when the USS Stark did not respond to the threat of an Iraqi jet. The Stark's captain was retired.

Under volatile conditions, commanding a ship ill-suited for the Persian Gulf, with only minutes to make decisions, Rogers probably had only two choices: destroy the approaching craft, or risk his ship and crew. He was trapped between what the $1.2 billion electronic system told him and the options that system presented to him--and those options were narrowing with each passing second. Waiting, so it appears, until he could wait no more, he fired on the plane and eliminated what he believed to be a threat to the lives of the sailors under his command and to the ship he captained.

Once the destruction of the civilian plane was confirmed, the Reagan administration launched a media campaign of damage limitation. It set about to establish two concepts in the perception of the incident: that the U.S. destruction of the Iranian airliner bore no important resemblance to the Soviet Union's destruction of a Korean airliner in 1983; and that the president was not personally identified with the details, consequences, or responsibility for the incident.

THE QUESTION of responsibility, however, is the question that hangs over the shooting down of Iran Air 655. Why did 290 Iranians die?

When in 1987 the United States accepted Kuwait's invitation to reflag and protect Kuwaiti ships in the gulf, it was trying to reassure its pro-Western allies made uneasy by news of secret arms deals with Iran. And reassurance indeed was needed.

When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, the United States professed neutrality, but made no great efforts to bring an end to it through international boycotts of weapons sales to the region. A weakening of both revolutionary Iran and Soviet-allied Iraq was not an unpleasant consequence, and the United States was primarily concerned with ensuring an uninterrupted flow of oil to the industrialized Western countries and with restoring a U.S. military presence in the region.

But early on in the war, the United States provided intelligence to Iraq to counter Iranian advances on the ground. And investigations revealed that Reagan officials offered weapons to the Iranians in exchange for U.S. hostages, even after leading an international crusade to refuse the demands of Iranian hostage-takers. U.S. policy in the gulf was riddled with inconsistency.

The broadening of the mission of the gulf-based naval vessels in April, to assist any neutral shipping, was also part of "showing the flag." The Vincennes--the best of the revitalized, assertive, and electronic U.S. Navy--represented that policy.

But along with the high-profile military presence came an increase in U.S. military commitment, which meant an increase in risk. Last May, Capt. Rogers was questioned about the stationing of the Vincennes in the gulf, and, prophetically, he replied, "There are many threats out here, and maybe the worst one is the possibility of someone making a mistake. In a confined area like the gulf, and with the weapons on hand, the potential for disaster is incredible."

The implications of the technological dilemma Rogers faced--the "potential for disaster"--are more grave than was admitted in the days following the incident. The incorporation into the U.S. military arsenal of sophisticated electronic technology like the Aegis system is the very core of the Reagan defense buildup.

From battlefield anti-tank weapons, to sea-based radar systems, to nuclear weapons and the Star Wars plan itself, the Reagan administration has thrown dollars at the development of military-related technology because technological superiority represents the "comparative advantage" of U.S. forces over the Soviet military. That same pursuit for technological superiority also drives the research, development, and deployment of nuclear systems, both strategic weapons and small-scale theater nuclear weapons.

If the Aegis system was unable to prevent the destruction of an Iranian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf, the prospect of regional conflicts escalating into nuclear confrontations must be considered significant in other volatile pressure points--the Middle East, Europe, the Korean peninsula--where the fog of uncertainty is likely to be as thick as the fog of battle.

THE SHOOTING DOWN of Iran Air Flight 655 was indeed tragic, but it must be said that the 290 Iranian lives lost will take their places in the foreign policy legacy of the Reagan presidency. Whether in the Persian Gulf or in Central America, the stock in trade of the Reagan era has been arms deals, proxy war, and the sending in of troops and ships; perhaps only the INF treaty will stand as an exception to the Reagan rule. The legacy of this administration will be that it had no foreign policy; this presidency had only an international military policy that it applied to foreign countries.

But perhaps the most tragic, and damning, element of this legacy is that so many lives were lost on Reagan's "watch"--and with so little purpose. Two hundred and ninety Iranian civilians are now dead, due to ill-considered policies in the gulf; in October 1983, 241 U.S. Marines perished in a Beirut bombing while they were stationed in a war zone with no clear purpose other than making a statement by their presence. And across the globe in Central America, thousands of Nicaraguans have been killed, maimed, and tortured by an army established by the Reagan administration and unable to survive unless propped up by U.S. dollars and material.

In the aftermath of the shoot-down, the president decided to offer reparations to the victims' families. However, the president framed his initiative as a kind of international volunteerism: Ronald Reagan, as he has so often at home, saw people who were hurting, and he responded. But the substance and tone of his offer demonstrate what has become the key characteristic of this administration--the evasion of responsibility.

Joe Lynch was assistant editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.