[nness]

> Or the US navy crew who received medals after shooting down the Iranian airline.

You make it seem like they received the medal for having shot down the plane. In reality, those who were awarded medals, were awarded Tour of Duty medals for their time spend in a combat zone. I believe the distinction is important, particularly since that class of medals are routinely awarded to individuals during their time in the military.

[ck2]

If a police officer shot and killed innocent bystanders, should they get achievement awards for doing their job otherwise?

My answer would be no, you failed at your job regardless.

Same thing with military.

[mason240]

They didn't fail. They were ordered to shoot down a plane, and they shot it down.

[maaku]

That's a very narrow minded position.

Gosh I hope you never screw up even once, cause you'll never live it down.

[tobltobs]

I assume you are american. Would you be also so generous if the majority off killed people would be americans?

[maaku]

Wtf does being American have to do with anything? And no, it doesn't make a lick of difference. The given situation was a fighter pilot who shot down a commercial airliner under orders later at some point in his career being given a medal for some completely, 100% unrelated reason. Maybe he deserved to be tried for war crimes. Maybe he also deserved that medal. Can you see that this is not cognitive dissonance?

[nness]

It wasn't actually. Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down via a SM-2MR surface-to-air missile. Its the first paragraph on the Wikipedia article.

This is an insanely important distinction, since a fighter pilot would have had the opportunity to visually inspect the craft beforehand. Where in this case, the accident was made due to incorrect system information which misidentified the aircraft as being anything other than a commercial airline.

[ZoFreX]

He didn't screw up once, he was criticised for being over aggressive and initiating fights on multiple occasions.

[maaku]

Who are are talking about?

[72deluxe]

Would you say that making a mistake in software is equal to taking a human life?

[maaku]

Depends on the what the software does.

[72deluxe]

Not sure why the downvotes, but I think for the application software that probably 98% of us here write, it isn't as important as we'd like to believe in comparison to a person's life.

Either that or life is really really cheap.

[evilduck]

If you were the developer for a Therac-25, yes, yes I would.