Merc:
The year is 2012.
You are invited to recall that in politics, change is the rule, and perception is a tool, not a reality. What perceptions were in 1988 and what they are in 2012 are subject to change for whatever reasons one can invent.
See Milo's point. The Captain answered for his actions to his chain of command, who had every opportunity to choose to take criminal steps. Such things have happened before. The decision made at the political level were that, among other things, his actions did not involve him losing any of his people, nor his ship, no matter how badly that went for the people in the Airbus. Unlike KAL 007, he did not have a chance at a VID. (That doesn't exonerate his decision making, however: see the long debate in United States Naval Institutes Proceedings, if you are actually interested).
To restate the point: the final decision on his fate, court martial or not, was not well received even by all of his own peers. Some agreed that he was, by our system, set up. Others considered his judgment so bad that it warranted at the least relief from command. Still others suggested more than that, on the basis of the authority/accountability mix of being a Captain at sea.
Note that you may wish to consider: when a CO of a ship has a collision at sea, even if nobody dies, it is common to see him relieved of command.
Compare that to shooting down an airliner, even by accident.
You must thus factor in the POLITICAL issue before you go any further, because his ship being there was MASSIVELY POLITICAL in nature. The political climate in the US had a non trivial influence on this case, and that climate was informed in part by a dislike, to say the least, of Iran and Iranians since the Hostage situation when the Ayatollah and his crew took over.
Attempting to analyze this in absence of that element of the problem strikes me as naive.
Just as an aside: are you from Argentina, or just living there?
If you are of Argentina, I find it droll for you to assert a point on "principles" given the rubbish from that end of the world on the Falkland Islands. I also see that Frau K has tried on this nonsense yet again.
POLITICS: it dirties everything it touches.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 17th Jul 2012 at 20:04.