But of course, that's not exactly true. Their governments don't think about crime the way we do. But individual Britons do, and Clive Crook is outraged:
Nobody can accept or even understand the "compassionate release" rationale as laid out by Kenny MacAskill. A convicted mass murderer, found guilty of this most appalling atrocity, is set free as an act of mercy? Have these people gone quite mad? It seems to me a very fair question.MacAskill, interviewed on US television, radiated the most repellent sanctimony I have ever seen in a politician--and that is saying something. His manner suggested that the whole thing is more about his own implacable self-righteousness than the demands of justice. He was followed on air by victims of the relatives. They were restrained and dignified, but plainly dismayed and distraught, and feeling horribly betrayed. Does the exercise of compassion not also take into account compassion for the victims and their families, one wondered? No, he seemed to argue, for that would be to choose vengeance not justice. False. There is such a thing as just punishment. How could it be unjust for a man guilty of a crime like this to die in prison? I would advise MacAskill not to visit the US for the foreseeable future. Indeed, calculations of justice aside, I wonder if the Scottish government has the smallest inkling of the harm it has done to its standing in the US--not to mention the prospects of future co-operation on security--with this bizarre act.
My mother never did understand it. "If you'd been on that plane," she said, "I'd be over in Libya right now, looking for a hit man."
Despite all that, I'm pretty sure this isn't going to work.
Is your mom single?
I think I may be in love with her.
Seriously though, I think it's been tremendous public relations for the Scottish.
In one fell swoop, they've demonstrated the difference between Scots (who showed compassion to a fellow human being dying of cancer) and Libyans (who showed up to the airport by the thousands to cheer a mass murdering scumbag).
How better could the difference between the civilized world and the barbarians have been demonstrated?
A picture, as always, is worth a thousand words:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/8/21/1250839761546/Abdelbaset-al-Megrahi-lef-005.jpg
Today's news is reporting that Megrahi's name has been involved in every oil discussion the Libyan's have had with the UK for years. The story claims that the release is tied to keeping the oil flowing.
The source of this story, btw, is Muammar Qadaffi's son...
But scotland is an oil EXPORTER. Why do they want Libyian oil flowing?
I suspect that the current administration won't have a big problem with this...
Apparently "suspect" is not a code verb for "google":
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jXFIcGoxxY5P7D5NMV1Z0SvsHOyQD9A6OT180
"President Barack Obama says the Libyan convicted in the Pan Am 103 bombing and freed Thursday by Scottish authorities must not receive a hero's welcome upon his return to Libya."
I suspect Barack Obama is AOK with a terrorist being released; he just doesn't want to see him get a hero's welcome on the six o'clock news, which was predictable, and did happen.
And yet, Obama - who has a known friendship with an American terrorist who bombed federal buildings named William Ayers - did not oppose the Libyan terrorists release.
Obama himself also released 17 Chinese terrorists onto the island of Palau - officials of which he "convinced" with $200 million in federal aid.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8092502.stm
It's pretty clear which side Obama is on.
Seriously, you managed to read the first paragraph but couldn't be bothered to read three or four?
From the article linked above that you just read and quoted:
It's a pretty straightforward article...
I have to agree with you, that Google is pretty handy.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=vfE&q=obama+releases+terrorists&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Obama releases terrorists = 3,220,000 hits
I'm trying to understand what Mr. MacAskill is thinking... I just can't understand it. In the US you'd have to go deep into the bowels of Cambridge or Berkley to find anyone who would agree with him - I can't imagine how he's a national politician in Scotland.
Do when have any Scottish poll numbers on how this decision is polling in Scotland?
Sadly, we'll be doing kind of crap too in a couple more generations.
Maybe they just got sick of paying for his health care?
I can't imagine why everyone is so upset about letting this poor, sick man return to his homeland and family. Have you people no hearts at all?
First off, just as a general principle, locking people up after they have murdered, raped, destroyed or otherwise caused harm to others does nothing to restore the damage. So from that perspective any kind of attempt to even determine who did what in these cases is totally useless.
Second, locking people up or killing them as 'punishment' for their 'crimes' is also counterproductive. All it does is stir up resentment in the oppressed community the poor 'criminal' came from. This causes more crime. Honestly, the more you try to 'fight crime' and 'punish wrongdoers' the more you just create an unjust world in which no one will be safe.
Lastly, in this particular case one must realize that the 'evil terrorist' comes from a very different culture. In his culture killing foreigners may well be viewed as a good thing. Therefore taking the drastic steps of locking him away for all time is incredibly culturally insensitive and possibly racist to boot.
The proper way to handle 'crime' and 'terrorism' is to determine the group that the 'perpetrator' may have come from and give them more than they demand. Whatever they claim to want, double it and give it to them. Then they will have no reason to commit acts of violence and everyone will be better off and safer.
The same goes for any crime, really. Someone murders your family during a robbery? Don't lock him up or hunt him down, give him your life savings. If it's not enough, let him know you'll work harder and give him more over time. Spread it around his neighborhood.
I honestly don't understand why seemingly otherwise intelligent people can't see that the only way to end evil is to reward it at every step. Let the barbarians know that you are weak and giving and they will have no reason to attack you.
Man, I thought you were serious for a second.
All of this hinges, of course, on whether or not Megrahi actually dies of cancer in three months (or thereabouts). These kinds of "how long have I got, Doc?" estimates aren't exactly ironclad. What if he lives three years, and not three months? What will MacAskill say then?
I can't believe that the Scotch are such a bunch of idiots. Guaranteed Megrahi is not going to die anytime soon, most men with prostate cancer live with it for years or decades until they die of old age.
Unless the Scots are actually being bastards. He will survive 3 years with UK level care, or 3 months with Libyan care.
He was followed on air by victims of the relatives
Shouldn't that be "relatives of the victims"?
Maybe they were Arabs that the hired hit men mistook for Megrahi. :)
Completely unjustifiable, an abomination, and a complete perversion of the notions of compassion and justice.
But at the very least, the Scots or UK could have insisted, as a reasonable condition of the release, that Libya abstain from the revolting, despicable, "hero's welcome" they gleefully organized on the behalf of this vile and wicked mass murderer. That little bit of intelligent public relations might have softened the blow of despairing for the loss of your nation's sense and spine just a tad.
On the other hand - it's an irrefutable piece of evidence when confronted with someone who thinks support for terrorism in certain parts of the world is a minority viewpoint and/or not actively supported by their nation-states. "Oh, all those flags and cheering, that's, um... just a colorful Bedouin shaming tradition, you see, you clearly can't understand it through your Western, xenophobic perspective. Shame on you!"
Indy,
Check out this article on CNN, where you'll find this gem:
"British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had specifically asked Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi not to give al Megrahi a celebratory welcome, Brown's office at 10 Downing Street said.
"Brown wrote a letter to Gadhafi, delivered to the Libyan Foreign Ministry on Thursday, asking the Libyans to act with sensitivity with regard to al Megrahi's return."
Her Majesty's Government is now headed by Michael from The Office. "How could you give a mass murderer a hero's welcome when I specifically asked you not to?"
Wonderful. Makes me rethink my whole anti-death-penalty logic.
"Well, we wouldn't want to execute anyone because, among other reasons, it would be awful to make an (inevitable) mistake and find out later we've killed an innocent person! And anyway, we have life in prison without parole, don't we?"
But now I have to consider the rejoinder,
"Well, we might indeed want to execute people if we believed we were very certain of their guilt of truly horrendous atrocities, because, after all, there's now a decent chance that after a rather short period, our government will be totally emasculated and go completely insane and will claim it to be "compassion" to unconditionally release said guilty party to a celebratory reception in his native land where his euphoric countrymen will be honored to lavish luxury upon their recovered champion until his final day."
Suddenly seems like a much moral closer battle between potential competing regrets.
I remember reading a book once about Leopold and Loeb, two rich boys who killed a 14 year old just for the thrill of doing it. Clarence Darrow managed to get them out of the death penalty (even though they sat there joking in court and made it clear that they felt that they were entitled to murder, given their superior intelligences).
Darrow was able to get them life in prison plus 99 years, rather than the death penalty, in part by emphasizing that the two monsters would never, ever get out. Instead they lived in relative luxury in prison, getting all sorts of special privileges. One died too early but the other eventually was released because he was smart and well connected enough to be able to convince everyone that he had 'changed' and was a new person.
What I remember best from the book was the author's arguing that Darrow himself never imagined that his manipulative, unrepentant young client would eventually be released. There doesn't seem to be any way to guarantee life in prison without parole.
I guess growing up in Canada where there are essentially no consecutive sentences, and "lifers" get a parole hearing at 25 years (actually 15 in some cases under the "Faint Hope" clause) is what has informed my belief in the death penalty. I don't know I would apply it as freely as a state like Texas, but there is are certain pieces of human garbage who need to be take out for all time, period. Mass-murdering terrorists would seem to fit the bill.
I don't see how this is anything but political posturing by MacAskill and without knowing much about how Scottish politics work, I really can't say why.
Then again, Douglas Fraser of BBC Scotland outlines the trade potential between Libya and the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/douglasfraser/2009/08/oiling_libyas_diplomatic_wheel.html
After all, trade is more important than ensuring that a mass murderer serves more than two weeks for each person he killed at Lockerbie.
Most Scots these days are pussified. I predict the UK will dissolve in about 10 years into Britainistan anyways.
Great. It's weird that a guy who names himself after Hayek (a naturalised British citizen) has such a fantastic level of ignorance about the place, and about the world in general.
Of course, Bitainistan means "land of the Britons" which means a far more nationalistic and whites only type country.
In US terms, think of it as a "states' rights" state administration using its power to authorise relelase as a way of scoring a stupid point against the central government. It has damn all to do with the merits of the case.
It also has the mitts of a (the only?) very able Labour politician in government all over it -someone called Lord (Peter) Mandelson, a man who is too clever for his own good. I guess that he is probably trying to help Labour in Scotland by inveigling the Scottish Nationalist regional government into doing something repulsive; and also cutting some sort of back-stairs deal for the UK with Libya while avoiding the blame for the release.
First point - this man is an apparently successful bomber and he is dying, unless he is literally bedridden, which the reports make unlikely, the whackjobs in Britain have just freed a likely to be effective suicide bomber.
Second point - "Vengeance Is Mine, Sayeth the Lord" is used by the same sort of religious [people] who also believe they are here to do "the Lord's work"; so for people who actually believe in that nonsense you end up with "Vengeance is the Lord's and I am His Instrument".
Having heard a lot of the 'compassion' campaigners on radio here in Ireland, I'm pretty sure the motivation has something to do with people insisting the government address what REALLY happened - the implication being that Megrahi was a fall guy for a wider conspiracy. I have heard more than once people question why he was 'allowed' to put the bomb on the plane in the first place. It had to be pinned on a Libyan, you see, because going after the real killers would have upset Iran (!) and Syria, who the US needed to support the Gulf War. Something crazy and incoherent like that is behind it. Obviously, every act of terrorism AGAINST Americans is actually terrorism BY Americans. That's common knowledge in Europe.
Of course there are those who believe that life imprisonment is itself "cruel and unusual". Mexico, in fact, will not allow extraditions to the US in cases where that is what the accused faces. It boggles the mind.
On the other hand, they did allow Andrew Luster to return to California to face a 150 year sentence.
A few contrarian thoughts:
1) Megrahi was an Important Person in a Repressive Dictator's government (unlike those "tinhorn terrorists" that President Dubya was so fond of "smoking out"). His status in the Libyan hierarchy should at least entertain the possibility of realpolitik associated with his release.
2) America does not engage in realpolitik with terrorists. Course, 15 of the 19 guys that blew up the US on September 11th came from a country whose leadership America cannot bend over far enough backward to fellate. Where do you even begin with iffy connections between Saudi royals and the 9/11 hijackers? Maybe this book? This is not the forum. Could go on for days....
Just to clarify - I didn't write the above to support the release of Megrahi. I agree that it is awful.
I am simply saying that frothy American indignation at Scottish realpolitik is totally out of proportion to stuff that our own beloved country does, things most Americans turn a blind eye to, because the next episode of Jon and Kate is starting in a couple minutes...
Yeah, no kidding.
Seemed to me like a rather Christian act on the part of the Scots.
Of course our USofA wingnut brand of Christians get a different message from the Bible so I'm not surprised they are upset.
Yeah, you would have to be a wingnut to oppose this.
The last time the Christians started finaggling in government (circa AD 330), they took it over for their own ends, and Europe was ruled by a formalized Church for nigh 1000 years. If that's the way of the Scottish government, then Eek!
None of which had anything to do with true Christian behavior, which if memory serves, deals in ministry of individuals to individuals, and recognizes governments as the proper administrative agents of justice (Romans 13:3-4).
Last night, my husband said essentially the same thing as your Mom as he watched the homecoming festivities on the news. Except in his case, there were lots of expletives included.
A real president would have shot the plane down, or else bombed his homecoming ceremony. Reagan didn't do enough, but he did bomb Lybia. Should have kept it up instead of the derisory action he took, but he at least did something.
A real president would also have the CIA deal with the Scottish First Minister and Justice Secretary. This is an act of war against the US by an ally. It must be dealt with like an act of war. Obama's statement is worthless and weak.
Total nonsense. By the same token, the UK should attack the US for refusing to extradite IRA terrorism suspects.
How it could have been:
The President calls Gahdaffy and says, "Abdelbaset will be met at the airport by guards and then put into an ambulance and driven to home or hospital. There will be no hoopala--or else..."
At the time of the arrival, a stealth bomber orbits over the Tripoly airport. If the above conditions are met then nothing happens. If what actually happened took place, the order for the cluster bombs to be released is given.
One reason he might be released if he's dying is so that the government doesn't have to pay for expensive end of life care, but
1 - I'm not saying its a good reason, merely that it might be a reason.
and
2 - You would think it would apply more to ordinary criminals than to international terrorists. The PR cost of releasing the later is larger, and there are not enough of them in prison for paying their health care cost to become an intolerable burden.
I disagree that the British and Scottish governments "think" about crime differently than we do. After all, they deal with it in almost precisely the same way. Our justice system is founded on the same principles as theirs. We got the common law (and many of our codes) directly from them. Yes, there have been a couple of hundred intervening years since that happened, but both systems operate under the same fundamentals, and their method of meting out justice is still strikingly similar to ours.
MacAskill did this because it makes him feel morally superior for showing "mercy". But there is another important virtue that he has forgotten to exercise: Humility.
If Megrahi was acting as an agent of the government of Libya (and all evidence indicates he was) then the bombing was an act of war and he has no personal responsibility. Putting him on trial was just theater to gloss over the fact that the US and UK governments didn't want to take action against Libya. Of course he gets a hero's welcome. He performed his mission successfully.
Megrahi does have personal responsibility for his actions. Soldiers and other government agents can and should refuse to carry out orders when those orders constitute war crimes--as blowing-up a civilian airliner is.
Lots of Germans claimed they were just following orders--they still got executed at the end of the war.
They put up a Memorial at Lockerbie.
A man who got off the flight one stop
before the explosion added a bouquet
with the following message:
"For the little girl in the red dress;
You did not deserve this."
When Eisenhower was president, the Soviets
shot down a USAF B-47 over the Arctic
ocean; Ike sent assassins into the Soviet
Bloc, and they killed one Field-Grade Soviet
officer for each of the dead flight crew;
The Soviets got the message.
Al-Megrahi deserves compassion ?
"Deserves" ain't got nothing to do with it."
Re: "My mother never did understand it. 'If you'd been on that plane,' she said, 'I'd be over in Libya right now, looking for a hit man.'"
It's so cute when your mom lies like that.
Compare that to the position of this man, who lost a daughter to the attack, but then came to believe that Megrahi was innocent after seeing how flimsy the evidence against him was - and that the prime witness for the prosecution pretty much admitted that his own testimony was wrong.
I share the outrage and can't understand why the Scots Government (note this decision was the devolved scottish government's rather than the UK) didn't insist a) that there was no celebration and b) no miracle cure. Better of course no early release at all but the Scots Government has a well deserved reputation for wooly headed thinking about these sort of things.
There is of course a precedent which was not only welcomed but actually facilitated by the US: the early release of dozens of IRA terrorists who collectively murdered many more than Lockerbie.
The American public attitude, and the Libyan, are not far removed emotionally from the lynch mob mentality. Perhaps it is not generally known that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found six serious flaws in Megrahi's prosecution, and suspected a serious miscarriage of justice in his trial. A government review and appeal were called for but the Scottish government dragged its heels and the review and appeal were not carried through leaving at least considerable doubt about Megrahi's guilt and at worst a suspicion of a systemic deviancy in the Scottish justice system. And this is not the only such case.
That's incoherent.
If he's factually innocent he doesn't deserve a hero's welcome because he didn't perform that "heroic" act he's being cheered for.
-dk
If it were an American who was roundly believed to be factually innocent of charges for which they'd been imprisoned overseas, who was released for whatever reason, they too would receive a hero's welcome on their return.
Those of us who have been following the Lockerbie case for a while thought that the whole blame-the-Libyans thing stank to high heaven. There was a lot of evidence that it was actually an Iranian-sponsored plot at the time, but Libya was already unpopular in the US (and military weak enough); the attack in 1986 which killed 40 Libyan civilians, and Qaddafi's daughter, backfired and resulted in a public relations catastrophe for the US, so the administration was eager to find something to pin on Libya.
Since then, Libya has re-entered the good graces of the US largely by *seeming to* accept responsibility for the attack. But the actual language of the the "acceptance" was evasive: it stated that "if Libyans were responsible for this attack, the government would accept responsibility for the behavior of Libyan citizens and employees." In fact, Libya has continuously insisted on its innocence as such. The prosecution of Megrahi was fueled by anger at Lockerbie, blinding pretty much everyone involved to the possibility that he was, in fact, being railroaded. The exculpatory evidence is overwhelming.
I, and others (including former CIA analyst Robert Baer) suspect that he was given "compassionate release" in exchange for dropping his appeal, an appeal which looked like would result in his release and official innocence. The problem is that, if no Libyan is found guilty of Lockerbie, then the obligations to which Libya was held in order to release sanctions would no longer hold. The victims' families that had been reimbursed would no longer be able to claim compensation, and Libya could ask for its money back - at the risk of going back to sanctions. Meanwhile, the US and the UK would lose what has actually become a very helpful ally against Al-Qaeda and generally a secular and west-friendly axis of power in the region. So, they are all hoping the outrage blows over and things go back to "normal."
I see a lot of people foaming at the mouth over this. I don't back the release, I think it very odd that people like the Ronnie Biggs, who took part in the Great Train Robbery, served a longer sentence and was far more obvously ill, were denied compassionate leave until the last, but Megrahi, who is not obviously that sick, is being released.
That said, people who want to frame this as an 'attack' on the US, or an act of cowardice (or whatever), seem to have forgotten all the previous instances in which the US has played realpolitik with terrorists: Where were you guys when NorAid was funneling money and weapons from the US to the IRA? Where were you when the US refused to extradite IRA terrorism suspects because they 'wouldn't get a fair trial' in the UK?
Not to mention the case of Luis Posada Carriles and Cubana Flight 455.
Some of the reaction from the USA may have overlooked that 52 of the victims of the bombing were British. This is not a case of British indifference to foreign deaths.
The reason why reaction in Britain has been muted is that many people, including relatives of some of the victims, are unconvinced that al-Megrahi is guilty. One factor is that the war in Iraq has diminished trust in CIA intelligence.
Sufficient doubt has arisen for the SCCRC to grant leave to appeal. In the face of this doubt the Scottish Justice Secretary has preferred the risk of releasing a guilty man to the risk of condemning an innocent man to die in prison. I agree with him.
There was substantial doubt regarding whether there had been a miscarriage of justice. His guilt has been in question for years.
The suggestion that he was released in order to avoid a successful appeal that would overturn the conviction is highly plausible, certainly no less so than those pertaining to the sale of oil.
He has 3 months to live.
It is difficult to see how the widespread anger vented against the Scottish Government by Americans is the result of anything other than a worrying mass hysteria, resulting in blanket condemnation without bothering to become aquainted with the facts. In light of this it's understandable that politicians are forced to be seen to be against it.
Given US action and public opinion in the past, and the approach of various administrations to 'justice', I would be wholeheartedly ashamed if the Scots thought about matters in the same way as Americans.