Category: News and politics

Warren, this is a serious and well considered evaluation,
and I regret that American politicians have not faced up to these issues in the
way you suggest. I wish somebody would make a public address raising these
points. But you have done your part.

 

Mark [Falcoff, AEI, Washington DC]

 

*********************

As long as Americans do not associate the costs of war with
a war, we will be mired in these stupid wars.  I liked it when Johnson
added a Vietnam war surcharge to tax bills  It brought home the costs of
the war to every American.  If every taxpayer saw what it was costing them
to perpetuate these military forays into strange lands, I suspect we would be
doing far less of them.  At least during Vietnam, the draft kept the
personal costs in focus.  Now, even that is limited to a few.
 [Although I must say the shift to relying on National Guard units to
supplement military strength rather than a larger standing army was a good
move.  The Guard had become a country club for men who like to play
soldier.  Now they earn their extra salaries and pensions from the Guard.
 Of course, it would be better if we could do with less of both, a Guard
and standing army.]

 

Always enjoy your insights, my friend.

 

Peter Ilchuk [Key West]

(currently in Rio for three months….)

 

**********************

Warren–

 

Regarding your piece on Afghanistan, why are you writing if
you do not have any idea what to do?  That is a cop out.  You write
as if you were writing for the New York Times.  You are even politically
correct writing concerning our "men and women soldiers" etc. 
How many women soldiers have died in combat?  What I don’t get about the
"elite" in which I include you, is how they can discuss Afghanistan
without discussing the Pashtun, their historic role in Afghanistan,
Pashtunwali, etc.  If you know about these things, why do you persist in
talking about the "Afghan government."  Karzai is a Pashtun
figurehead on a Northern Alliance (TAjik Army).  If you do not know about
these things, then how are you qualified to discuss the matter?  You have
to discuss the tribes and warlords of Afghanistan, to know the players and how
they fit together.

 

I suggest you revisit your piece and acknowledge that
1) there can be no martial victory in Afghanistan, and 2) we need to fashion an
exit strategy.  3) Europe will NOT continue to support our folly and
misadventures.  Each day costs us another 187 million dollars we don’t
have but have to borrow from the Chinese.

 

Your friend,

 

Bill [Hulsy, Southern California]

 

*******************

Bill,

 

Thanks for your comments. My main political message was that
Afghanistan is an unpromising place for foreigners to fight wars even if they
think they have good reason to. I stated my views on what we should have
done in late 2001 in my #3. Fulfill our military objective (kill Ben Laden).
Though as we ran out the  Taliban government, we did have an obligation
under international law to provide security until a new government was in place
to do so. Of course I know the ethnic divisions in Afghanistan (check out some
of my earlier notes). We pressed an inappropriate, overly centralized
government structure and constitution on Afghanistan back in 1382 (2003), but
that is a different subject to what we should do now. I accept General
McChrystal’s plan if its conditions can be met as our best hope at this point.
Those conditions include a credible partner (Afghan government). We don’t have
that now, but it is not impossible to establish one in the coming months. Maybe
I am copping out, but I can’t pretend to have clear, magic answers when I
don’t. I don’t think that means that I have no light to shed on the subject
however. I basically agree with your four concluding points.

 

And by the way, there are a lot of women in the American military
in Iraq and Afghanistan, though not many casualties as not many are assigned to
combat. The Washington Post publishes the name and (when they can get
it) picture of every American solder killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. From a
visual scan there are few women. The Post allows you to search on these
listings by name, age, home state, military branch, theater of death, and date
of death, but not sex. This reminds me of a conversation I had last month in
Kabul with an Australian personnel policy advisor to the Afghan civil service
about the tribal ethnic problems in employment. Personal records do not
indicate ethnicity on the grounds that that kept hiring "color
blind." He argued (correctly surely) that every one knew the tribe (chain)
everyone else belonged to and that omitting that information from personnel
records only made it easier to hid gross discrimination in employment (each
ministry tends to be one or another). He was pressing hard to have the
information added.

 

Your old Bakersfield/Berkeley friend,

Warren

 

*****************

Warren–

 

Now that’s the punchy insider info laden stuff that I like
to hear from you.  I think that the Pashtunwali honor code precluded
turning over "old friend and ally" Ben Laden to the Americans by
Mullah Omar and the Taliban, and we knew it.  We didn’t want Ben Laden, we
wanted to project power there  Their offer to turn him over to a third
country (where of course he could have done no harm) for trial whould have been
an honorable compromise.  I think our demand was pretextual, so that
we could involve ourselves in saving the Northern Alliance which was down to 1%
of the Afganistan land space.  But we did intervene.  Now, what to
do?  Al Quaeda is gone (essentially).  Did you ever think that in the
days of the Blatt that you would end up a player in the international
scene?  Wow.  I do enjoy you reportage.  I like the real stuff
like the pictures of the sandbags up and down the walls of your office,
etc.  Also, the real stories of the Green Zone.  Could you become a
reporter (perhaps under an assumed name) consistent with your duties to
your clients?  You have your blog.  Why not a column?  Instead
of being "embedded" with the military, you would be embedded with the
foreign governments.  Just an idea.  Lots of money in getting the
real story on Iraq out now that the dying (by our troops) has ended.

 

Your jealous friend,

 

Bill [Hulsy]

*****************

 

Bill,

 

Thanks so much for your nice comments. It happens that I
just sent my only copy of the Special Issue of The Weekly Blatt on the Berlin
Wall (building it not tearing it down) to the Bakersfield College Archives.
They promise to keep it safe forever. I appreciate your suggestion that I do a
 real column. The fact is, I derive enough pleasure from my notes hearing
that they are occasionally enjoyed and informative. If I turned them into a
regular column, it would become work with deadlines, etc. Writing something
when I feel like it and think that I might have something interesting to share
is perfect for me. 

 

Your friend and frat brother,

Warren

 

***************** 

I think we should stop trying to take credit for getting
things done and intensify the use of our technological and training advantage
to increase narrowly targeted attacks on problem people/facilities, etc that
present legitimate threats to national security.

 

There’s an old saying that you can achieve anything in this
world if you don’t need to claim the credit for it.

 

[David Garland, Roanoke, VA]

Between January 2002 and September of this year I have
visited Afghanistan nine times to provide technical assistances to its central
bank. I do so because I have training and experience that can help monetary
authorities reorient their operations to function within and to help promote
the development of market economies. I believe that working to help make the
world a better place is also a gift to myself and to my children and
grandchildren. I believe that healthier, happier, freer people and nations
contribute to a safer and more prosperous America as well. So what do I think
about U.S. policies in Afghanistan?

1.            Democracy,
human dignity, and well-being are almost never promoted by war, though it has
often been necessary to defend them by fighting aggressors.[1]
The massive efforts by the developed democracies and international
organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank to help the former Soviet
Republics and former captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe transform
into democratic, market economies, has largely succeeded spectacularly because
military force was not involved. These countries owned their reform process and
built the domestic support needed to make it work. The countries in these areas
I have worked in as an employee of the IMF (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic,
Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Slovakia and Serbia) have enjoyed
varying degrees of success. But they are in a different class than the post
conflict countries I have worked in (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo,
Afghanistan, and Iraq). Of these, Bosnia was the only one in which foreign
“conquerors” never ruled. Nation building in Bosnia may still fail but at least
has a reasonable prospect of success.

2.            America’s
large military size with 700 bases in over 120 countries weakens our security.
It does so by sapping our economic strength, which is the foundation of our
security and influence in the world, by encouraging our allies and friends
abroad to a free ride under the American security umbrella, and by tempting us
into foolish and costly adventures. Even our NATO allies refuse to carry their
share of the burden in Afghanistan. Sock it to rich Uncle Sam; he can afford
it. It reminds me of the short sighted attitude of those who think we can pay
for more government by socking it to the wealthy (who already pay for far more
than their share of it).

3.            Elective
wars are almost always unwise and reduce our security. It is broadly agreed
that Iraq exemplifies this point. But what about Afghanistan, which President
Obama called "a war of necessity"? The world supported our attack on
Afghanistan after its Taliban government refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden.
In my opinion and the opinion of many others, attacking Afghanistan with the
goal of capturing or killing Bin Laden after the attacks on the United State on
September 11, 2001 was an appropriate response at the time. We foolishly turned
to Iraq and failed to achieve our objective in Afghanistan. The Taliban have
returned and strengthened. What should we do now?

4.            I
am humbled by the difficulty of the policy choices in Afghanistan. Subjugation
by foreign troops is very unpromising now as it has always been (ask the Brits
and the Russians). Watching pictures of 19-year-old American boys and girls
smash down doors of village huts in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan turns
my stomach. We should have tried to help Afghanistan rebuild via the
well-established methods of international assistance and left our solders at
home. But that is not what we did and here we are again in a mess that is
sapping our nation’s energy and credibility. General McChrystal’s “integrated
counterinsurgency strategy focused on protecting the Afghan population,
building up the Afghan national security forces and improving Afghan
governance…,”[2] seems the
most promising approach to me if there is a credible government in Afghanistan
to work with. Unfortunately there isn’t. President Obama is right, in my view,
to carefully review our options with a view to matching the necessary resources
to attainable goals that the American public and our international partners are
willing to support. I am concerned that the President has already promised too
much (no troop reductions in the near term).

5.            I
am glad that I don’t have to decide our policy going forward. My heart is with
the wonderful Afghan people I have met. I hope that they will have better lives
in the future. It is impossible not to be moved by the plea for continued
American support by a very courageous Afghan woman in today’s Washington Post.[3]
My heart goes out to all abused people in the world (in Sudan, Somalia,
Uzbekistan, Palestine, Iran, Zimbabwe, etc.), but I am not willing to sacrifice
American boys and girls to fight their battles and their governments. I must
think of my own country’s well-being and security first. Plus, the track record
of actually improving the well being of others via war is not very good.
President Obama’s policy review maximizes our leverage with the ineffective and
corrupt Karzai government.[4]
In my opinion we should use this leverage to demand that Karzai appoint an
interim government of honest and competent technocrats until a run off election
can be properly organized and held in the spring. If Afghanistan does not have
a government that deserves international support, McChrystal’s strategy, as he
himself proclaims, will not succeed no matter how many American lives we
sacrifice trying. In that case, we had better accept that fact and adjust our
strategy accordingly (perhaps along the lines proposed by the Vice President)
sooner rather than later.

Those of you interested in this subject might find the following letter to the editor of the Economist of interest. The conclusion is that because the convicted bomber Mr. Megrahi withdrew his legal appeal of his conviction just before being released from prison, our chances of ever knowing the truth of who bombed Pan Am103 over Scotland years ago are small. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14400737

 

Background

Guards and driver Wahid and I outside IMF guesthouse in Kabul

Foreign Wars

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” says my friend Bob Gregorio with reference to the NATO bombing near Kunduz of two hijacked fuel tankers that may have killed 120
people including maybe two dozen civilians (the numbers keep changing). This
observation contains a profound lesson for those contemplating foreign wars and
no place more so than here in Afghanistan.

An Afghan friend here in Kabul gave me two videos to watch
and then spent over an hour downloading all the viewers and right CODEXes to
make sure I could watch it on my laptop. So I felt obligated to watch all two
hours of “The Road to Guantanamo” about three British Pakistani boys who flew
from London to Karachi to get married, traveled into Afghanistan to see if they
could help their Taliban “brothers” in November 2001, were captured by the
Northern Alliance forces (largely Tajik Afghans fighting Pashtun Taliban) in
December 2001 (a few weeks before I arrived in Kabul), were turned over to
American forces and spent the next four years in Guantanamo before being
released with no charges every having been made against them. If that didn’t
leave me sickened, the other, thankfully shorter, video certainly did. In it a
female journalist travels with a U.S. Army unit (I forgot its name) north of
Kandahar through remote villages looking for Taliban. Working with local
village chiefs they do their best. The journalist then returns on her own to
the same villages for further interviews. While I do not find the claims of the
villagers that American solders abused them credible (demanding that men strip,
face the wall, and then groped them), just seeing the American invasions of
their homes from the eyes of humiliated, poor Afghanis, even if used for
propaganda purposes, tells us a lot about the futility and foolishness of
bringing democracy to foreign lands by force. How can our 19, 20 year old
solders, with their human strengths and weaknesses, possibly succeed (at what?)
in such environments. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, indeed.

I really cringe when I hear well-meaning Americans praising
our brave boys overseas. How dare we send them into such bewildering and
foolish danger? These fellow American’s have no idea what they are asking. If
they did, they wouldn’t do it. President Bush, for all of his faults, at least
had a clear purpose in attacking Afghanistan—to kill Ben Laden. Too bad he
failed so miserably as a result of the disastrous Iraqi diversion. My respected
friend Robert Schadler (a senior official in the Reagan administration’s now
defunct United States Information Agency) makes some important observations
about such situations in response to my earlier note on this bombing:

Dear Warren,

My sense, without ever having traveled there, is that our notion of  “who they are” is
very different than their own.

We say: “Saddam viciously committed genocide on his own people.” He says, “They
were Kurds and Shi’a. None were from Tikrit. They were not “my people”; they were my enemies.”

Similarly, the Afghans who are pleased with the bombings [in Kunduz] probably don’t view those who were killed as “fellow Afghans” but some barbarous tribe who happen to also live in a place called Afghanistan.

That’s only one layer. Western analysts are trained, by Aristotle, Anselm and others, to avoid obvious contradictions in thinking and feeling. As a counter, I recall a story that
baffled and amused my mother for most of her life. She had lived in Turkey during the last days of Ataturk. A rather sophisticated neighbor of hers, a Turk, was very proud of the fact that Turkey had such a strong leader — not like the weak-kneed European leaders at the time. Yet, minutes later, she said she expected Allah to strike down Ataturk for his vicious efforts to rid Turkey of various traditional Islamic practices — Arabic script, Friday holidays, forbidding the fez, etc.

Another layer yet is telling the powerful — and Westerners are often deemed powerful and the conquerors — what they want to hear or, more accurately, what they think the Westerners want to hear.

As for the policy shift in Afghanistan: the US had about half a million “boots on the
ground” to push Saddam out of Kuwait — a very small country. Figuring out who was who and where Kuwait ended and Iraq began did not require a lot of sophisticated intelligence and cultural awareness.

Protecting Afghans — from all mean, vicious and armed thugs or just the Taliban-inspired ones — means at lot more than another 20K  or 30K troops. Training the
Afghans to police themselves ….  Training them is the minor problem. Getting them to view members of other tribes and themselves as Afghans first and foremost is the tough challenge. And it’s one I’m dubious our Marines, however fine they may be, is something they signed up to do and have been properly trained to accomplish.

The political problem at home is only somewhat related. The original mission in Afghanistan was to kill or capture bin Laden. This mission was an utter failure. It needed to be done quickly, in any case, to send the message that attacks such as 9/11 have dire
consequences. The message now received is that these attacks can be carried out and, with a little cleverness and close loyalties, can escape punishment. There was virtually no dissent over the goal of killing or capturing bin Laden. Had the Taliban government “given him up” the US would not have gone into Afghanistan.

Today, the mission cannot be clearly stated. I heard Gen. Zinni  last week (at the New
America Foundation). While he was against going into Iraq, he is against pulling out of Afghanistan — for reasons of credibility. He agreed al Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. “Protecting the Afghan people” is hardly a policy — given the dozens of the 192 countries have populations that need “protection.” “Keeping Karzai in power” or “Keeping the Taliban out of power” would be palatable only if it could be connected to some larger, important, America-centric purpose. And if the costs were plausible vs other uses of those resources.

Bush was famously inarticulate, but “bin Laden dead or alive” was vivid, clear and
arguably worthwhile. Obama, famously articulate, has said, “Afghanistan is a war of necessity” and the “important war”. But it is doubtful he’ll make his reasoning plausible. For that reason, it is deemed he was saying these things simply because he wanted to avoid being a “weak on security, McGovernite Democrat”.  And that mission was
accomplished — at least during the pre- election period.

Best,

Bob

I believe in the value and virtues of “nation building.”  That is why I am here and why I worked in such places as Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, to name a few. By “nation building” I mean sharing the accumulated wisdom of successful, productive, and human societies with those not yet as successful for their people. It only works as a long slow process of education and persuasion within the context of the existing social
and political structures, even when the goal is to change them. Our solders don’t help. We should keep them home and spend the money and lives saved on keeping our economy and society strong (the source and basis of our military strength). How best to withdraw from the messes we have created and are now in is another and more complicated matter. It will involve a lot of Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And damned those who seem to like sending our youth on fools’ errands with little understanding or regard for the lives disrupted or destroyed around the world, all with good intention, of course.

It has not escaped my attention that I am leaving
Afghanistan on 9/11.

 

The President’s speech to students is wonderful, and appropriate and one hundred percent American at its finest. Make sure you see it and that your kids see it.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

Saturday, September 5, 2009

U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has wisely refocused on
protecting Afghans rather than killing Taliban and increasing the resources for
training and equipping Afghan solders and policemen (vastly cheaper than
financing additional NATO forces, though they will be needed for a while as
well). This means exposing NATO solders to increased risks as they hunt down
the Taliban in order to reduce the prospects of killing innocent civilians.
General support of the population is obviously essential if the NATO backed
government is to gain and maintain control of the country.

Thus the apparent death of about 70 Afghanis, which may have
included a significant number of civilians, in the northern city of Kunduz on
Friday seems a set back for the new strategy. The story reported here in Kabul
was that one of the two NATO fuel tanker truck hijacked by Taliban became stuck
crossing a river. The local villagers rushed to fill cans and bottles with the
fuel so that when German NATO troops in the area call for a U.S. air strike,
local villagers where killed along with many Taliban. According to an AP report
today it is still “unclear how many were militants and how many were villagers
who had rushed to the scene to siphon fuel from the trucks.”

I was discussing this with my Afghan driver on the way in to
the central bank this morning when he surprised me with the following comments
(as well as I can remember them): “Bombing that tanker and the Taliban was a
good thing. If villagers were killed along with Taliban they deserved it. Good
Muslims don’t steal – especially during Ramadan.” Ramadan is a month long
period for spiritual purification achieved through (day time) fasting,
self-sacrifice and prayers

The AP report goes on to say: “At least one local official
supported the allied bombing, saying it would help drive the insurgents from
the area. ‘If we did three more operations like we did yesterday morning, the
Kunduz situation would be peaceful and stable,’ said Ahmadullah Wardak, a
provincial council chief.”

I have no idea.

Here is the latest development in the May 2007 kidnapping in Baghdad of one of my BearingPoint colleagues and his four security guards:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8235088.stm 

I received very interesting comments about the Lockerbie
bomber from some of you. Thanks. I should add that my Edinburgh host lost a
student on that fight and one of my IMF colleagues missed it and thus is still
with us. He is a Lebanese Palestinian and no he didn’t miss it on purpose.

 

Warren,

In 1988 I was serving as a flight attendant for Pan Am,
regularly crossing the Atlantic on flights from Washington.  I had
joined the company in January of that year, and during training had met and
befriended an extraordinary young woman whose (short term) goals were the same
as mine – take advantage of a rare opportunity to go places and see things that
we might not have otherwise have been able to do. 

She opted to transfer to the London base in the fall of
that year, and, as fate would have it, decided to work Pan Am 103 on December
21st – a flight she was not originally scheduled to work.

I do not know whether Mr. Al-Megrahi is guilty or
not.  Nor can I know whether he was truly released for humanitarian
reasons.

What I can say is that when I think back to that December
day I remember the wonderful woman I met, thought so fondly of, and
whose bright life was stopped tragically short….along with so many people
just like her.  

 

Bill (Moore, Falls Church, Va)

 

****************

Hi Warren,

 

Interesting.  I had
forgotten about the Iranian airliner.  But you piqued my interest in
suggesting Libya had no motive for bombing the Pan Am.  The link below may
be of interest.  It includes the other hostile actions between US-Libya,
notably, the US bombing of Tripoli, which killed one of Gadafi’s children and
injured two others.  Two years later the Pan Am was bombed.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Libya

 

Regards,

Bob (Gregorio, Arlington Va)

 

***************************

Pretty disgusting is what I make of it. Really no shame.
If the Scots wanted to be humanitarian they could have flown in his friends and
relatives for the final weeks of his life. How humanitarian were the Libyans by
holding on totally trumped up charges these French and Bulgarian nurses for I
don’t know how long?

 

Jan Willem van der Vossen (IMF colleague)

 

****************************

A very nice man
therefore. Oddly enough I heard about Megrahi many years before Lockerbie from
my Milano friend. Ing. Franco Giugovaz was a contractor in Libya who fell out
with his local partner, who called in his secret police friends, in the usual
way. Megrahi threatened to have him killed if he did not leave the country
& all his equipment behind. Megrahi also personally took Franco’s
hand-made 4×4  desert SUV with all sorts of gadgets. It is still parked in
front of his house. Do pay a call on Megrahi when next there and ask him where
he got it from.

 

Edward (Luttwak, Washington,
DC)

 

*****************************

No doubt there is plenty more to the investigation than
a history of clothing, but it makes me wonder if a man should be nervous should
clothing go missing from his wardrobe, and whether a man should ever give used
clothing to charity for fear that a stray hair will make him the object of
enthusiastic detectives.

 

David (Garland, Roanoke, Va)

 

*******************************

Bravo, Warren, for a bit of level-headed commentary.
When one considers that the circumstantial evidence which led to al-Megrahi’s
conviction was supplied by a Maltese shopkeeper who was paid for his evidence
by the Americans and taken fishing by the Scottish police afterwards, the
security of the conviction does indeed become questionable. And the witness
statement that the baggage room at Heathrow was entered, and, possibly, another
case added, was never admitted to the court for examination. Much has been made
by the “guiltyists”, to coin a term, of the fact that he has never expressed
any remorse. Well, he has always maintained his innocence, so why should he? No
one is arguing that he is a nice guy, but it seems plain, as you suggest, that
our dear governments have been busy with something else in the background.

Cheers

 

Martin (Anderson, A Scotsman living in London)

 

*******************************

 

Warren–

 

That is a very thoughtful and balanced letter.  It
should be run in the LA TIMES and San Francisco Comical.  You might have
mentioned how unreliable eye witness testimony is, as well.  Forensic
evidence is no better than eye witness testimony when it is coupled (as here)
with it.  I hope that the covered up evidence of the "railroad"
is forthcoming.

 

Bill (Hulsy, Santa Anna, CA)

 

The sight of the convicted Lockerbie bomber arriving home in
Tripoli to a hero’s welcome is repugnant to anyone who believes Mr. al-Megrahi
is guilty. My friend Tom Lauria asks: “What are we to make of al-Megrahi’s
official hero’s welcome? It is so offensive to me for Libyans to be cheering
the murderer of 270 innocent people. I will never comprehend the Arabist
mentality.” Be careful. Why assume that Libyan’s were cheering someone they
thought was a murderer? Most of the families of the victims here in Britain think
Megrahi is innocent and are angry that the killer(s) have never been brought to
justice. Here is a BBC interview of the father of one of those who died over Lockerbie:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8212475.stm.
In this context did Libyans behave any differently than American’s would if,
say, the Iranian’s released an American we believed to be innocent?  

I arrived in Edinburgh yesterday to the news that the
Scottish government was about to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted
of killing 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie in 1988, on
compassionate grounds. Mr. Megrahi is expected to die of cancer within three
months. I am staying here in Edinburgh with the former dean of the Law school
of the University of Edinburgh and his medical doctor wife. To my surprise my
law Professor friend had been involved in the Megrahi case. He provided me with
the most fascinating background and speculations on the case and these most
recent developments. They provide a very different picture than gained from the
headlines.

 

The explosion of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie precipitated the
largest criminal investigation in British history. Impressive forensic investigations
traced clothing in the suitcase carrying the bomb to a shop in Malta. The
identification of Megrahi from pictures by the Maltese shop keeper many months
later as the person who bought the clothing—the primary evidence against him—has
been the subject to much debate. When the U.S. and Brittan issued indictments
against Mr. Megrahi he was home in Tripoli. Libya refused requests to extradite
Mr. Megrahi for trial in the U.S. or U.K. on the grounds that, as is the case
of all civil law countries, its constitution and practice did not permit it to
extradite its citizens for trail abroad. President Gaddafi offered to try
Megrahi in Libya. This offer was refused and the West imposed economic sanctions
on Libya for its “lack of cooperation.” My host became involved as a result of
the growing dissatisfaction of western commercial interests and of Middle
Eastern government’s with the economic sanctions and isolation of Libya. Every
one wanted to find a face saving way to allow Megrahi to be tried in a way all
sides could agree to. My host developed a plan that Gaddafi indicated he would
accept for a trail conducted in the Hague by the International War Crimes
Tribunal. As the crime had occurred over Scotland, Scottish courts had jurisdiction.
My hosts too easy and too cheap plan was rejected in favor of a $200 million
plan to build a court on an unused Scottish air base in the Netherlands and try
Megrahi there (technically on Scottish soil from the Scottish perspective)—I am
not making any of this up. Mr. Megrahi was convicted by a court of judges rather
than a jury of peers but his alleged accomplice was acquitted on the grounds of
insufficient evidence.

 

One of many problems with the conviction of one and the acquittal
of the other was that Libya had no motive for such a crime. The most plausible alternative
scenario involves Iran outsourcing the crime to Syrians in Damascus as revenge
for the American Air Force shooting down an Iranian commercial passenger plane
and killing all (several hundred) passengers under the mistaken belief that the
plane was military and heading toward an American ship—surely one of our bigger
embarrassments. The British families of those killed in the crash largely
believe that Mr. Megrahi is innocent and the American families largely believe
the opposite.  

 

My host pointed out that Mr. Megrahi’s second appeal was
underway. He is of the view that the appeal was likely to reveal very embarrassing
improprieties in the investigation and efforts of the authorities to obtain a
conviction. If Mr. Megrahi died in prison the appeal would have to go forward.
However, as part of Mr. Megrahi’s release the appeal was dropped. If the facts
would have been embarrassing, the American and British authorities will now be
spared that embarrassment forever. His release may have had nothing to do with
compassion. Today’s The Times (of
London) states on its front page: “Last week, al-Megrahi abandoned his appeal
against conviction amid allegations that a top-level cover-up had been agreed
to prevent the exposure of a grave miscarriage of justice.” 

 

I think it is time to go enjoy the Festival. The Lady Boys
of Thailand are performing in the park near by next to the tent of the Moscow
Circus.