Friday, August 21, 2009
Misguided good intentions are usually worse than inaction.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the lone man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, has been released from prison in Scotland. He has been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and the Scottish correctional people or whomever the Scottish put in charge of rubber-stamping things, decided to take pity on him and allow him to spend his final days back in Libya with his peeps.
Here is why that was a bone-headed thing for Scotland to do:
By allowing Megrahi out of jail on his feet instead of in a box, the Scots have taken the bad feelings stemming from a heinous act upon themselves instead of where these feelings rightfully belong. By allowing him his dignity, they have affirmed that the right to grant leniency is not a power given to the victims of a crime, but an arbitrary decision based on some governmental, probably fiduciary expediency.
The 270 victims had their lives stolen from them in a fiery midair blast, their final seconds spent falling to earth in flames or in the town of Lockerbie, looking up at the sky just in time to be engulfed in falling wreckage. Not much dignity in that; yet the Scottish authorities feel justified in denying the full measure of justice granted by law to the families of the survivors. It was very arrogant of them to presuppose mercy without consulting all of the victims’ surviving families for approval.
A diagnosis of prostate cancer, whether deemed terminal or not, is still a situation subject to change, and now that Megrahi is free and back among loved ones, who’s to say that a ‘miraculous recovery’ for him is not now imminent? Megrahi was not merely a dying man, pathetic and sorrowful, repository of mercy at the hands of his fellow man; above all else he was a symbol of the inevitability of justice under the law. A mass-murderer held fully accountable for his crimes, and as such, any measure of pity granted to him was at cost to the credibility of so-called punishment by legal justice. It is amazing to me that the Scottish felt they were somehow empowered to go against the laws of justice and grant clemency where they were not in any way entitled to do so.
Megrahi was treated to a hero’s welcome when he deplaned in Tripoli, thereby granting legitimacy in the eleventh hour to the actions he was convicted of committing back in 1988. Way to go, Scotland!
Here is why that was a bone-headed thing for Scotland to do:
By allowing Megrahi out of jail on his feet instead of in a box, the Scots have taken the bad feelings stemming from a heinous act upon themselves instead of where these feelings rightfully belong. By allowing him his dignity, they have affirmed that the right to grant leniency is not a power given to the victims of a crime, but an arbitrary decision based on some governmental, probably fiduciary expediency.
The 270 victims had their lives stolen from them in a fiery midair blast, their final seconds spent falling to earth in flames or in the town of Lockerbie, looking up at the sky just in time to be engulfed in falling wreckage. Not much dignity in that; yet the Scottish authorities feel justified in denying the full measure of justice granted by law to the families of the survivors. It was very arrogant of them to presuppose mercy without consulting all of the victims’ surviving families for approval.
A diagnosis of prostate cancer, whether deemed terminal or not, is still a situation subject to change, and now that Megrahi is free and back among loved ones, who’s to say that a ‘miraculous recovery’ for him is not now imminent? Megrahi was not merely a dying man, pathetic and sorrowful, repository of mercy at the hands of his fellow man; above all else he was a symbol of the inevitability of justice under the law. A mass-murderer held fully accountable for his crimes, and as such, any measure of pity granted to him was at cost to the credibility of so-called punishment by legal justice. It is amazing to me that the Scottish felt they were somehow empowered to go against the laws of justice and grant clemency where they were not in any way entitled to do so.
Megrahi was treated to a hero’s welcome when he deplaned in Tripoli, thereby granting legitimacy in the eleventh hour to the actions he was convicted of committing back in 1988. Way to go, Scotland!
