The US lawyer and Fox News presenter Greta Van Susteren caused a tiny kerfuffle with her uncivil and careless remark last week that Thailand was "the lamest country of the day".
She went far beyond that in remarks about how it took the Royal Thai Air Force 10 days to come up with important radar data on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. She had choice adjectives for our top officials: pathetic, awful, cruel and jerks. But then she got into the gutter.
Ms Van Susteren switched from nasty to insulting critic when she applied her comments on alleged official incompetence to malign the whole country. "Shame on Thailand," she said, "that same country the world rallied to help when they got hit by a tsunami in 2004." If this were a debate, Ms Van Susteren would be disqualified for scapegoating, false accusation, intimidation and use of non sequitur. One can only imagine the twisted thinking that went on in that lawyer's mind to make the illogical connection of tsunami aid for stricken victims to possible incompetence of a few top military officers and the defence minister.
The Foreign Ministry announced it would register Thailand's displeasure. Spokesman Sek Wannamethee said this would take the form of a letter protesting against the commentator's "hastily drawn-up conclusions". This will not help Thailand. The unpleasant fact is, name-calling aside, the core of Ms Van Susteren's comment was correct. The Royal Thai Air Force, the military high command and caretaker Defence Minister Yingluck Shinawatra did let the country and the MH370 search down.
The sequence of events is damaging to that military hierarchy. Air force radar operators saw a northeasterly bound airplane make a bizarre turn to the west. That information was not passed to Malaysia for 10 days. In fact, a week later, air force spokesman AM Monthon Sutchukorn still claimed "the first and last time" Thai radar saw the flight was when it took off from Kuala Lumpur.
That was wrong. Malaysian and other radar operators were eventually able to confirm that Flight MH370 had gone west. The lack of Thai effort meant several wasted days of hunting in the wrong place for the plane.
Authorities made several errors, starting with the defence minister. Ms Yingluck had the duty to order the entire armed forces to check and recheck all possible records for any trace of the flight, or any suspicious events. The armed forces heads should also have issued orders to double-check for any information that could involve Flight MH370.
Foremost among such a search, of course, were the radar records. Military and civil authorities have equipment scanning the skies from numerous locations, 24 hours a day. In the event, a defence radar operator had seen Flight MH370 turn off-course. As later stated, it posed no threat to Thai airspace and was unremarkable — at the time. A dozen hours later, however, it was potentially the most important radar reading in the aviation world.
After 10 days and a request from Malaysia, authorities acted. Air Force commander Air Chief Marshall Prajin Juntong tried to pass this off as a routine operation. More alarmingly, neither the supreme commander nor the defence minister seemed to take any notice. So everyone can rest assured no changes will be made to this unresponsive, unimaginative and unacceptable system.
Ms Van Susteren was rude, crude and deeply offensive. But at least she cared enough to comment and bring to light this deep failure.