Should we fear America’s punishment?

America’s tantrum over the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmad al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber (in case you’ve been in a coma for the last 20 years), seems to have finally petered out.  Following ill-informed letters and phone-calls from the head of the FBI, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and the US President Barack Obama remonstrating over the decision and attempting to force Kenny McAskill to make a different course of action they appear to have calmed down somewhat.

Indeed a state department spokesman has said that there would be no knee jerk reaction to the decision insisting that:

… we are very close allies, and I don’t think we’re looking to punish anybody, per se.

So what are they saying here, they’ve decided not to “punish” Scotland?  Or that they are going to “punish” Scotland just that it’s not going to be so overt? 

The key issue here as far as I’m concerned are that the Scottish Justice Secretary made a decision that was in his give, not in the give of the US Secretary of State, or anybody elses for that matter.  Regardless of what you think about the decision itself you must accept that it was not and is not the place of the US government to interfere in the internal affairs of any country, if they want to “punish” countries like Scotland or anywhere else for that matter it would merely serve to confirm what many people already believe about the country.

I’m not sure that a country that maintains a death penalty, shoots down civilian air liners (and fails to apologise), has been seriously implicated in the use of torture of captives, and has broken international law is really in a position to be shouting the odds about moral or compassionate decisions.  I certainly won’t be looking to learn any lessons from them.

Kenny McAskill at Holyrood, and more indirectly Westminster, have done absolutely the right thing in resisting any and all pressure from the US authorities to usurp the decision making process in this case.  Westminster would do well to learn lessons from McAskill on this one and grow some balls when it comes to dealing with the US Government, we are not answerable to the US and we should not be expected to back their every decision or point-of-view.

Independent nations would do well to remember that they are just that, independent, they don’t have to answer to the US, they don’t have to do as they are told by the US, and they don’t need to fear the US punishing non-compliance with their will.  The world community is based on diplomacy, not capitulation, countries must be able to abide by their own systems and customs without unnecessary and irrational caterwauling.

So the US aren’t going to punish us!  Laughable really, their government acts like a surly teenagers throwing their weight around and trying to act like they think grown-ups should act, and like real grown-ups the other nations of the world should treat such contemptible behaviour with the contempt it deserves, simultaneously chastising and nurturing the juvenile into adulthood.

Fortunately Obama has shown some potential to be a figure of maturity in foreign policy, let’s hope we see a coming of age before somebody decides the surly world teenager needs slapped down.

Sewing the Libyan suppliers

Libya rarely seems to be out of the news these days so it’s nice that we’re not talking about Lockerbie or Megrahi, least not directly, for a change.

Brown is being accused of a u-turn on support for victims of IRA terrorism – i.e. foreign office support is now being given - in their pursuit of damages from the Libyan Government who allegedly supplied the explosives to Irish dissidents.

I do find myself wondering though if we can now expect to see those who ultimately paid for the explosives to be pursued for damages by the victims and for the foreign office to offer support in the same manner as they are in pursuing the Libyans.  Somehow I don’t see it.

It would be interesting to see the reactions of those Americans who have so vociferously opposed McAskill, called for (and failed) a boycott on Scotland and variously slandered Scotland, when it could be shown so starkly just who it was that, at the same time as the Pan-Am flight was being blown up, was paying for British citizens to be murdered in their homes and streets and financing the organisations that would buy the explosives from the Libyans.  Why chase the Libyans for supplying the explosives and not the Americans who largely paid for them?

The whole thing is, of course, a nonsense.  Neither should be pursued, regardless of their guilt – the guilty parties are those who chose the targets and carried out the attacks, those self same ‘combatants’ who were released under the auspices of the Good-Friday agreement when their guilt was certain and they had no shame of their actions.  An agreement negotiated with the aide of and entirely supported by an American administration.

Rank hypocrisy?

There is an international trade in arms and ammo, a trade that disgusts me and which - in the UK – is largely subsidised by the tax payer – an extension of foreign policy one presumes.  Unless countries, like our own, are about to cease trading arms and are intending on compensating every Iraqi, Iranian, Palestinian, Israelite, and the victom of every rogue African leader or ‘revolutionary’ who have been injured, maimed or killed by weapons with links to the UK then I suggest our government should keep well clear of such claims.

People in glass houses and all that.