A Time to Apologize

By Paul Iddon

In light of the 23rd anniversary of the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 over Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes - one feels as a gesture of improving bilateral relations with Iran - the United States should formally make an apology, not to the present Iranian government but to the Iranian people themselves.

U.S.S. Vincennes firing a missile.

The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 is often cited as the primary incident that showed Iran that no matter what it would not be allowed win its war against Iraq, upon accepting a UN mandated ceasefire agreement Ayatollah Khomeini likened it to drinking a chalice of poison. The Ayatollah had launched a counter offensive war against Saddam Hussein following the Iraqi Army being forced out of Iran in 1982, as this war dragged on thousands of Iranians died in suicide waves trying to capture significant holy cities such as Basra and Karbala in Iraq, many of them victims of what would become a pointless and prolonged war with no overall positive outcome.

After taking the ceasefire Khomeini seized an opportunity less than a year later when he issued a fatwa on novelist Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses offering $2 million to anyone who murdered him, this effectively took attention off the fact Khomeini had lost a holy war waged in the name of Islam.

While then US President Reagan did express regret to the loss of lives in the Iran Air 655 disaster he continually asserted that the Vincennes was operating in international waters, Vice President George H.W. Bush on the other hand vowed never to apologize for the United States, stating among other things that he didn't care what the facts were, supporters of the Iranian regime and those who always seize with glee the opportunity to slander US action often cite the fact that the crew were awarded medals for essentially murdering civilians, those said medals however were rewarded for the effectiveness of the US naval vessels in engaging small Iranian gunboats in surface engagements throughout the Earnest Will naval operations.

Today the United States and Vietnam have taken the first steps in a joint effort to completely clean up the Agent Orange contamination, 12 million gallons of Agent Orange were poured over Vietnam during that war, this joint clean up effort is symbolic a gesture of looking to the future and not remaining bitter and spiteful over the past.
Making a highly publicized and formal apology to Iran would also be a symbolic gesture to moving forward, it could be conducted in a similar manner to British Prime Minister David Cameron's formal apology to the people of Derry for the Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland in 1972 - which saw British paratroopers shoot dead 13 protesters in the Bogside Area of Derry City.

It is of the authors opinion that at present it would not be ethical for the United States to apologize to a dictatorial regime like that of Khameini's on behalf of the Iranian people whilst said regime continues to brutally crush even peaceful regime opposition groups that model their non-violent protest methods after those of the Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution of 1989.

Rick Steve's cleverly summed up the political tension and feud between both the United States and Iran in one of the lectures he made after his visit to the latter, he very eloquently and poignantly pointed out that in the United States one politician can hum 'bomb bomb bomb Iran' to the beat of the Beach Boys song 'Barbara Ann' and another from the polar opposite party say that if Iran takes a certain action they will simply 'obliterate them', he then went on to say that he thinks this is politicians in both these countries shoring up their bases and their people against the other by using fear in order to drive their own political agendas, to an extent he is absolutely right.

The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 whether accidental or not was an attack against every Iranian, any Iranian could have been on that flight that fateful morning, any Iranian could have had loved ones or relatives on that flight that morning, therefore it was in all technicality an indiscriminate and heinous attack on Iran's civilian population and should be recognized as such regardless of whether or not it was truly accidental or intentional.

That being said the fundamental moral point is that this can't be properly done until the Iranian people are all given the opportunity to elect and appoint who they wish to represent them in an authentically democratic and pluralistic manner, when they have such representation then it would be appropriate for the United States to issue a formal apology and offer its hand in friendship for a more promising and beneficial future for the respective peoples of the two nations whose relationship over the last few decades has been turbulent at best.