The WaPo gets it half right: release of the Lockerbie bomber
The WaPo has a hard-hitting editorial condemning Scotland’s release of Al Megrahi as well as Libya’s hero’s welcome for him.
The editors use words like “sickening” and “travesty of justice” and “breathtaking abuse of power.” They state that the only way Al Megrahi should have come home was “in a box.” In addition, they argue (as I did) that it was compassion enough to have allowed him to live all these years in prison and get visits from his family.
All very well and good. But the end of the editorial features this curious bit [emphasis mine]:
Mr. Megrahi’s joyful airport homecoming, which featured flag-waving crowds bused to the airport by the authorities, is proof that the government of Moammar Gaddafi feels not the slightest trace of remorse for the slaughter at Lockerbie, despite having admitted its complicity in the bombing and paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims’ families. It makes a mockery of Washington’s decision to elevate Libya’s status from international pariah to the community of civilized nations. If the Libyan regime does not heed the U.S. demand that Mr. Megrahi remain under house arrest until his death, the Obama administration should consider reinstituting sanctions.
As I pointed out yesterday, unless there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes tough talk going on, we have seen no “demand” from the US or Obama, nor are we likely to see any.
The WaPo also manages to omit any mention of just why it might be that Gaddafi feels so emboldened as to thumb his nose at the US by not only allowing Al Megrahi a hero’s welcome from the crowds, but also personally embracing and receiving him in a manner befitting a visiting dignitary. Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that he thinks Obama carries no stick at all?
The WaPo points out that the welcome is evidence that Gaddafi “feels not the slightest trace of remorse for the slaughter at Lockerbie.” But the WaPo is profoundly naive; Gaddafi’s admission of guilt and payment of reparations was never about emotions such as remorse. It was about power and leverage and fear—as Machiavelli (or even Osama Bin Laden, with his strong and weak horses) could have told them.
And here—if you can stomach the sight—are some heartwarming photos from the homecoming. The first features the embrace with Gaddafi, the second a handhold with Gaddafi’s son, and the third Gaddafi receiving Al Megrahi and his grateful extended family:
[ADDENDUM: On the hand, FBI Director Rober Mueller gets it completely right, for all the good it does him, and us. In a letter to the Scottish Justice Secretary (an Orwellian title if ever I’ve heard one), Mueller writes:
I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors. Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law. … And I do so because I am outraged at your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of ‘compassion…[The release is] as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law…[and] gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation … the terrorist will be freed by one man’s exercise of “compassion”…Where, I ask, is the justice?
Where, indeed.]
It’s becoming harder and harder to miss who Obama considers to be the real enemies, the ones he will get tough with: Americans from the center-right on and Israel.
Even though he is dying,he should not be trusted and he should still be monitored.
huxley, you are of course right. “De-colonialism” is the master narrative for people like him. Does anyone else remember Franz Fanon? Obama does.
[sic]
s/b Frantz Fanon.
Say – where do you suppose the friends and relatives of the Lockerbie people might purchase one o’ them new-fangled Predator or Reaper thangs?
It seems there were some under the table deals going on with the release.
Technology, you might be right, but you shouldn’t rule out the potential of an invincible craven stupidity.
The sad thing is that one day, like North Korea, Libya will burn in an unimaginable fire – it’s what their fascism offers them; a clash of opposites, an unfulfillable promise, and ultimately utter ruin of city and steel and waste of the innocent.
Unless a legal preemptive option is taken — but that requires extraordinary real-compassion, mercy, moral courage, and 82 Airborne style professionalism.
The only thing missing is an international legality, again which we had in Iraq many times over.
Libya bypassed this quite cleverly in 2003 when they came clean, only by the threat of real force, with their WMD program and handed over their arms.
North Korean is flaunting it’s international crimes regarding WMD’s — so this is a plus in regards to acting on moving from the military stalemate to the humanitarian issue at hand.
As both spiral more and more into decay, more legality will emerge — so sad, so sad!
It doesn’t matter, but “compassion” has every little to do with the affair. It’s about oil and gas. Libya has; the West hasn’t. Personally, I’d make nice to Putin before I’d grovel to the like of Col Quad. I’m only surprised he didn’t demand the Queen for one of his brides. The politicians would have stuffed her on the Tripoli flight too.
I’m actually happy that he thumbed his nose at the lot of us. Maybe, finally, we’ll conclude to explore and drill and use our own. But there is the little matter of that numbskull in the Oval Office…
Correction:
It doesn’t matter, but “compassion” has very little to do with the affair.
Need stronger tea this morning.
I’m see that now — how utterly contemptible and shameful!
I smell George Galloway…