Cui bono? Who benefits? Who stood to gain? That is the first question everyone should ask with any potential crime (although of course it’s not the only one). Yet, that is the question that is being generally ignored regarding the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Instead, the western media leaps to “whodunnit?” only to immediately answer their own question with, “Well obviously either Russia, the separatists, or both.”

The reason for this is obvious. If they were to even consider the “qui bono?” question, they would have to admit that there is virtually no way that either Russia or the Donetsk separatists could possibly have expected to benefit from downing an airline full of internationals. There was no strategic value in it, and they couldn’t have expected it to be blamed in western media on anyone else or to do anything other than galvanize world opinion against them. Therefore, if either did do it (which is highly unlikely, given that the Russians were not directly fighting in the area, and the separatists were most likely not prepared to reach a flight at that altitude, given the limitations of their equipment and experience), it was almost surely by mistake.

This does not eliminate any culpability and liability they might carry, but it does make ridiculous their characterization by some as mustache-twirling super-villains, on the part of the Russians, or crazed international terrorists, on the part of the separatists, out to murder any citizen of the free world who wanders into their grasp. It should also knock the legs out from any attempt to use this tragedy as a justification for the U.S. to increase intervention, for the E.U. to increase sanctions, or for world opinion to deny the separatists’ right to self-determination.

If the Ukrainian government downed the plane (which they were fully equipped to do), it might have been by mistake on their part as well, but not necessarily. That is because they, in contrast, could very well have expected to gain by downing the plane, for precisely the opposite reason: namely, that it was very likely that the western media, already sympathetic with them anyway, would pin the blame on their enemies, as of course they actually did.

The situation is similar to the gas attack that was almost used as casus belli by the U.S. for bombing Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Especially after Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons would be a “red line”, the international fighters trying to overthrow Assad had everything to benefit by attacking locals with such weapons, since it could easily be pinned on the Syrian government, and Assad had nothing. Ignoring this obvious fact, the political class used the incident to (unsuccessfully, thankfully) try to convince the western public to support airstrikes on Syria. And the most likely interest-analysis assessment of the situation turned out to be the correct one, as subsequent conclusive evidence showed that Syrian government forces could not have been behind the sarin attack, and it very likely may have been Syrian rebels provided with chemical weapons by Turkey.

And yet, Russia and the separatists had even less to gain from an atrocity than the Syrian government, since Assad could have at least conceivably gained extremely short-sighted strategic benefits from gassing his enemies, whereas the former could gain absolutely nothing from killing tourists.

Speaking of cui bono, not even the biggest sell-outs in the establishment media stand to gain from the nuclear holocaust they are risking by whipping up anti-Russian hysteria in the west and tension between two nuclear powers. So they should seriously consider going off-script for once, ask the most basic questions, and be honest about the most obvious truths for a change.