Something is wrong with the standard of proof we're willing to accept for extremely serious accusations. There's a cost to credibility and a need to weigh available evidence calmly before approving or criticising potentially deadly government action.
On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Like many of those who had been following the conflict in the area, I immediately blamed pro-Russian rebels for the strike. They initially appeared to celebrate the crash of what they thought to be a Ukrainian military plane. Ukrainian forces in the area had no reason to shoot at anything in the sky. The rebels did not have an air force, and their Russian sponsors, for deniability's sake, never provided them with air support.
Today, almost three years later, I am sorry I jumped to conclusions. The official investigation by the Dutch Safety Board confirmed that the missile which downed MH17 had been launched from rebel-held territory. But accumulated evidence pointed to the possibility that it could have been Russian servicemen, not rebels, who had sent the missile into the sky. There's no certainty one way or the other.
One might argue the distinction is unimportant. Russia was hit with international sanctions following the MH17 crash, because it's responsible for the actions of its proxies as if they were its own. Yet there is a not-so-subtle difference between badly trained irregulars obtaining and misusing a powerful weapon -- and a regular air defence unit using its skills on a civilian aircraft. The latter scenario is much scarier than my speculation at the time about what happened. And it's a possibility I didn't entertain.
I have since tried to be extra careful with stories in which a culprit is identified based on circumstantial evidence. One involved the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The early identification of the hackers was made by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Inc. US government agencies didn't gain access to the DNC servers until after all traces of the attacks had been removed, and the intelligence community has since failed to produce any public evidence of Russia's involvement.
CrowdStrike, however, has been quick to jump to conclusions. Last December, I described my misgivings about the quality of CrowdStrike's analysis, after the firm published a report claiming that hackers affiliated with Russian intelligence had contaminated a piece of software used by the Ukrainian military for a certain type of howitzer -- and that 80% of these howitzers had been destroyed by pro-Russian forces as a result. Last month, CrowdStrike corrected the report, deleting the most sensational bits, including the allegation that the supposed malware infection had led to the artillery losses.
I'm still waiting for specific evidence of Russian government involvement in hacking the DNC and delivering the spoils to WikiLeaks.
Accepting these stories on faith is relatively harmless. But buying the US Trump administration's version of the April 4 chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun in Syria's Idlib Province isn't, because it can lead to deadly missile strikes and bombing raids. Proof that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad perpetrated the attack is flimsy, but somehow it has gained universal acceptance.
Evidence that dozens of people at Khan Shaykhun were exposed to a nerve gas such as sarin is overwhelming. Local and Turkish doctors had verified it. It is, however, much harder to pin the attack on Mr Assad. Since 2013, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has monitored the Syrian regime's compliance with a pledge to surrender its chemical weapons. While some issues remain, and the Assad government has been asked to clarify them, the OPCW is satisfied that Syria has destroyed all the chemical production facilities that it has declared and to which it still has access.
"The security situation still continues to preclude safe access both for the Syrian Arab Republic to destroy the remaining aircraft hangar, which stands ready to accept the explosive charges, and for the Secretariat to confirm the condition of the two stationary above-ground facilities," the OPCW's March report stated. In other words, this particular facility is outside the area controlled by Mr Assad.
There was no clear motive for the Syrian regime to use sarin at Khan Shaykhun. It and its ally Russia could have inflicted more damage on the rebel-held town by conventional means. Since 2013, Mr Assad has only been accused by the United Nations and the OPCW of using chlorine in two separate attacks -- but chlorine wasn't supposed to be destroyed with Syria's chemical arsenal because it has non-military uses.
The White House has released a National Security Council document blaming Mr Assad for the Khan Shaykhun attack. It contains no evidence, to "protect sources and methods", but the nature of the evidence is described. The US government has information that Syrian Su-22 planes had been in the area "approximately 20 minutes before reports of the chemical attack began", and that "personnel historically associated with Syria's chemical weapons programme were at Shayrat Airfield in late March making preparations for an upcoming attack in Northern Syria, and they were present at the airfield on the day of the attack".
Neither of these findings constitutes a smoking gun. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will investigate the attack; it may be able to collect a more convincing body of evidence, as the Dutch Safety Board did in the MH17 case. But the Trump White House has already acted, hitting Shayrat Airfield with cruise missiles which, according to the Assad government, killed a half-dozen people.
Russia did itself no favours by presenting an alternative version of the events of April 4. It claimed that Syrian bombs had hit a rebel-owned sarin warehouse. This version is unconvincing: Sarin components are stored separately, and blowing up a warehouse that contains them wouldn't produce the nerve agent. That the Russian military's claims were so easy to refute doesn't, however, mean that the Assad regime launched the attack. It only means that Russia is overeager to protect Mr Assad and avoid a direct confrontation with the US.
The unpopular Trump administration, constantly kicked for its unproven Russia ties, seized the opportunity to hit a Russian ally in a seemingly criticism-proof cause. But a thorough investigation by an international agency without a political axe to grind should be the only trigger for retaliatory action.
In a conflict like the Syrian one, evil is so thick on the ground, and represented by so many diverse groups, that ill-considered retaliation against one bad actor can help others and make things worse. And if these moves turn out to be unjustified, consequences can be as disastrous for the public trust in institutions, as was the case with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
There's no need to rush to judgement. Investigations will run their course, and truth will out -- or at least as much of it as necessary for practical purposes. The final MH17 report is evidence of that. (©2017 BLOOMBERG VIEW)
Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist based in Berlin.