Editorial : Military conflicts shot down MH17

Passenger flight MH17 crashed on Thursday from a height of 10,000 meters, with all 298 onboard killed. All sides agreed it was shot down by a missile. But no one has claimed responsibility for the disaster.

Russia pointed its fingers at the Ukraine government, while Kiev claimed that the militias were to blame. The militias declared that they were not capable of shooting down a plane from that height. The Western media are already relating the tragedy to Russia, with British newspaper The Sun blaring on its front page that it was "Putin's missile."

So far, all these accusations are in line with the political stance they have always been adhering to. But no indisputable evidence has been provided.

The real culprit to blame, in fact, is the chaotic situation in Ukraine following the Crimea crisis. What Putin has said, that the tragedy would not have happened had there been peace in Ukraine, does make some sense.

Similar cases in the past involving civil passenger aircraft being shot down were also related to political tensions during those times. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, a Soviet fighter jet blew a South Korean passenger flight out of the sky. In 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, the US navy shot down an Iranian civil airliner near the Strait of Hormuz.

People thought such tragedies had become history. Now they have appeared again on the new "battlefield" in eastern Ukraine.

The fact is that humans can never control the extent of irrationality and destruction during political and military conflicts. Once the evil of war comes out of Pandora's box, it is very difficult to put it back in.

The US army has mistaken civilian sites as military targets many times in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, causing huge civilian casualties. But each time the US simply apologized, or just ignored it, and got away with it. That is the nature of war.

While feeling sorry for Ukraine's current situation, we believe the way to permanently prevent tragic disasters of this kind is to restore peace to this country.

The Western countries have been active in advocating and supporting the "democratic revolution" in Ukraine, so as to lure the country to become the frontier outpost of the West's geopolitical expansion.

Ukraine has paid a huge price.

We sincerely hope a thorough investigation can be conducted over the MH17 incident, and the culprits behind the tragedy are revealed.

The political factors of the tragedy also need deep examination. Pointing fingers at each other will not help solve problems. Ukraine and the world need peace more than anything else.