Squeers

"..the gesture showed a depth of conviction and decency that is far more effective in the face of naked aggression than kind for kind."

I agree totally.

Some of the statements made by relatives of the victims are worth noting.

"British relative Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill in the 1988 airliner bombing, said Americans convinced of Megrahi's guilt and sceptical of his illness should 'get real'.

'(They should) remember that the likely cause of the bombing of Pan Am 103 was the shooting down by an American ship of an Iranian Airbus in 1988,' he said.

He described the original trial as a 'farce' and said: 'I think he is innocent and even if he were not innocent I still think it's certainly the right thing to do on compassionate grounds.'

And Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora when the Pan Am 747 was brought down over Lockerbie, said: 'I am someone who does not believe he is guilty.' "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/relatives-vent-anger-over-almegrahi-speculation-1771347.html

These are people who have no doubt followed the case closely. They have more reason than most to believe in Al Megrahi's guilt and yet they don't.

The Scottish Government's decision is most likely based on pragmatism as much as it is compassion. There appears to have been a reasonably strong chance that Al Megrahi's second appeal would have resulted in a 'not guilty' verdict. If so, this would quite rightly have caused an outpouring of indignation from around the Muslim world. As it stands now, his 'guilt' will not be questioned and that can of worms will remain forever closed.

Belly

"We should look deeper into the crime that was Locabe."

I agree. And if we did, we would no doubt find that right and wrong is spread fairly equally on both sides. These incidents are rarely the black and white issue you paint them to be.

Bronwyn,
I have to agree your comment about looking deeper is in the vein of my comments.

Without fear or favor I stand by my post, every word of it.
I have just watched this man hugged by the man behind sending him to kill.
And the fact is trade not humanity set this murderer free.
The hate, fueled by primitive belief, will not go away.
And it feeds on our freedoms, freedoms we would no longer have, if we lived under some forms of that faith, to undermine us.
A day will come when history and the direction of the world may no longer be in our hands.
Trading Americas sins for others is backward movement each crime against humanity should stand alone to be judged look a the names of the Innocent dead, including the woman conned into carrying the bomb on board.

Squeers, you say you beleive <they would have garnered far more sympathy and support around the world and the villians less>

I don't think so. In my opinion they would have been seen as weak and vunerable and open to further attack had they not hit back.

How do you use diplomacy with the Taliban? America asked them to hand Osama Bin Laden over and they refused, hence the American intervention there today.

Diplomacy is only effective if you've got something to bargain or threaten with. I haven't been following the Scottish Lokerbie incident on the news but I'll bet there's some kind of money or some kind of gain to be had by Scotland in the deal. It's never acheived with smiles and appeasement talk, there's always a what's in it for me when diplomacy does work. Otherwise diplomacy is not worth diddly squat in acheiving peace and never has been.

The yanks response to 9/11 WAS reasoned and they received resounding support from everywhere with Afghanistan, but then someone raised Iraq in some agenda driven conversation. The political and social aftermath surrounding that decision is well known.

...and it's easier to be reflective 20 years later when the single perpetrator of a single act of terrorism is dying. Seems to me a whole issue of an organised global terror network hell bent on bringing down civilisations is something else.

Examinator,
I’m a mazed at your post as I might have written it myself—even on the subject of cars. I agree that people are capable of being noble of thought, but are generally coopted into one ideology or another (left/right, east/west) and become incapable of thinking outside these constructs, or of thinking critically as denominations of one. People subscribe devoutly to spurious notions of their individuality, which are vested in nothing more than cultural norms, and merely partake of popular/authoritarian opinion. Real individualism is generally dormant lifelong. Human viciousness, and its reciprocation, manifests as a group-sanctioned and pragmatic response to stimuli. As long as people and policy are driven by popularism, rather than reason being applied specifically to issues at hand, there will continue to be a gap between inspirational ideology, such as humanism, and the material reality.
As Bronwyn implies, the crime that was Locabe has its own genealogy of cause and effect. It’s convenient to treat it, and 911, as a spontaneous barbarity that nothing can justify, but the fact is that human’s have a stupendous ability to rationalise any part they play so that it redounds to their credit—this obtains on both sides of a conflict.