Entropy, a F-14 is no threat to a cruiser, shooting it down is thus no self-defence, still trying to shoot it down equals trying to kill the pilots and since that happened without a state of war or similar it's an attempt to murder them.
One might discuss the difference between murder and manslaughter in this case, but that's about it.
About the repeated bombing of civilian concentrations with the "muzzle flash, self defence" excuse: There's no way how counter-attacking is safer than flying away with afterburner. Thus it was no self-defence. Furthermore, those pilots can be expected to know that no 57 mm AAA was with any degree of likeliness the source of the muzzle flashes, and anything below that (basically only 23mm, 14.5mm, 12.7mm or 7.62mm) is pretty much ineffective unless the aircraft was really, really low. In that case, attacking would again be the least safe path of action.
The U.S. military has a pattern of using wrong "self-defense" claims as an excuse for when trigger happiness went wrong or when it was eager to kill at the fringe of the ROE. I know that it's not the only military with this defect; others have reacted similarly in Afghanistan and Iraq, even the Bundeswehr. It's a discipline and leadership issue.
Well, guess which nations did the most in terms of aggressions since the invention of the UN.Originally Posted by Entropy
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