Why the weapon used to destroy Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 nearly guarantees Putin’s guilt

Since the conflict with separatists in eastern Ukraine started just this past spring, this raises the question: Are the people who shot down the Malaysian airliner pro-Russian separatists—or are they Russian air-defense officers who trekked across the border to assist their ethnic brethren? Either way, it’s not the case that Putin simply encouraged the rebels to fight and supplied them with missiles, making him indirectly responsible for the shoot-down; it’s that his officers are directly responsible, either by training the separatist shooters or by being the shooters themselves.

The proof of Russian involvement lies in the weapon used to down the plane.

That doesn’t mean, as some are wailing, that Putin or the shooter is a “mass murderer” or a “war criminal.” Nobody believes that the crew manning the SA-11 in eastern Ukraine meant to shoot down the Boeing 777. Whether because of human error, mechanical error, or the “fog of war” in its manifold layers, these things happen when civilians wander into (or over) a battlefield, usually through no fault of their own.