Everybody Loves A Martyr

In today's news:

Iranian state television reported Monday that a plane crashed in Tehran, killing 28 members of the elite Revolutionary Guard, including high-ranking officers.

The plane crashed shortly after taking off from an airport in Tehran, the report said. It did not specify when the crash occurred or give further information about those killed.

The Revolutionary Guards are an elite group in Iran, widely believed to be strongly influential under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According James S. Robbins at The Corner, crashes like have been an almost yearly occurrence for Iran during the past few years:

• Today an Iranian transport crashed carrying members of the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards.
• In January 2006 the head of the Pasdaran ground forces and several other high ranking officers were killed in another plane crash.
• In December 2005 yet another transport went down, the passengers mainly journalists traveling to cover naval maneuvers.
• In 2004 a planeload of Iranian aerospace scientists were killed in a plane crash.
• In 2003 a troop carrier crashed killing 276 Pasdaran.

In response to the 2005 crash and the journalists who died, President Ahmadinejad said:

What is important is that [the crash victims] have shown the way to martyrdom which we must follow.

Robbins' point is Iran's apparent lack of aviation expertise precludes our trusting them with nuclear capability.

I'm wondering about the great mileage you can get out of the martyrdom card. In this case, we're not even talking about someone who knowingly died for a cause. Somebody goofed and a plane crashed. A tragedy is one thing--if it happens too often, it's incompetence. But using the "M" word, is a guaranteed shortcut to making heroes.

Update:

Soccer Dad points out a post last year from Ocean Guy based on his own experience during the mid 1980's, when he was deployed in the Persian Gulf on a British frigate during the Iran-Iraq Tanker War. He describes other examples of Iranian technical incompetence that may scare rather than amuse in light of the nuclear arms they are likely to acquire. Ocean Guy writes:

The attitudes and the procedures in place in the Iranian Navy defined their military environment. That environment tolerated, even encouraged such cavalier handling of destructive technology. Whether from ignorance or carelessness the outcome is the same. That environment has likely changed very little. The Iranian Armed Forces are almost entirely self grown and self-trained. They've had little input from modern professional fighting forces. There is little chance that any truly professional forces have emerged in the past 20 years. It's more than likely that the Iranian forces are just as unprofessional and just as technically inept, and probably even moreso, than they were then.

Technorati Tag: Iran and Ahmadinejad.