'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Raised in small-town Oklahoma, I continue to live its values. I am fiercely patriotic, making national security of paramount importance to me. I served in the military for more than a decade, and my friends still deploy in harm’s way. I am also the mother of young children. What mother doesn’t want a safe world for her kids?
Perhaps because of my love of history, I have been more than a little surprised at the vociferous opposition of my fellow conservatives to treating these foreign terrorists as we have treated their counterparts for decades. No one suggested trying the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, the Lockerbie conspirators or the original World Trade Center bombers in military tribunals. In fact, we usually clamor for other countries to extradite terror suspects to the United States for trial.

-- Our colleague Michelle McCluer (below left), Executive Director of the National Institute of Military Justice, in an op-ed entitled "Civilian court best spot for terror trials," published in The Oklahoman newspaper on Monday, the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. (credit for above-right photo of Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse, Manhattan) Michelle, who's observed GTMO military commissions proceedings along with other NIMJ'ers (including IntLawGrrl Beth Hillman and yours truly), ended her excellent commentary on this succinct note:

Trying detainees in a system that has yielded proven results doesn’t show a lack of understanding of our national security interests; rather, it is a recognition that terrorists are not above the Constitution for which our military members fight. Conservative values demand that terrorists be tried in civilian court, saving taxpayer dollars and providing justice to the victims.

Compassion in Scotland

Late last week the Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill (below left), decided to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 on compassionate grounds. That man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. He was released home to spend his remaining time with his family.

MacAskill's decision has provoked varied reactions:

► For many, the decision is one that smacks of disrespect for those who died on Pan Am Flight 103, who, of course, were not given the opportunity to spend their last moments with their loved ones.

► For others, it constitutes the provision of succour to terrorists.

► For yet more, there are hints of some kind of political dealing with the Libyan government centred, of course, on oil.

All of these perspectives have their own validity, especially perhaps the first. However, I have been struck by the conviction with which MacAskill defended his decision in the Scottish Parliament as one that was fundamentally concerned with abidance by essential principles of the Scottish legal system, including the principle of compassion.

To show compassion to someone who himself has shown so little of it is of course a difficult thing to do. To have that compassion met with the kind of triumphalism that was seen in Tripoli upon al-Megrahi's return perhaps makes it even harder (BBC report). While MacAskill's disappointment that Libya did not honour the assurances that were allegedly provided, of a "low-key" return, may smack of some naivete, it seems important to rememer that how we treat those who have committed such wrongs says much about what a State and a people stand for. To show compassion to this man, in my view, showed evenhandedness and political bravery that are rarely in evidence, especially in the extremely emotive area of terrorism. It is difficult for me to disagree with our colleague William Schabas, who also blogged about this issue saying:

Compassion is part of human rights. Someone who violates human rights does not forfeit their entitlement to our compassion. That’s why we campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, and the prohibition of torture, even for those who ‘deserve it’. Of course, it is too bad that the Libyan authorities tried to put their own spin on this, but their bad behaviour, which is no doubt very painful for the victims, is not a reason to deny Megrahi a touch of compassio[n] as he is about to die.

On December 21, ...

... 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie, in southern Scotland. The death toll was 270, including persons aboard the flight and 11 on the ground. Decades later 2 Libyan nationals were put on trial before Scottish judges sitting specially in a courtroom at a former military base in the Netherlands; one was acquitted, the other convicted.
... 1937 (70 years ago today), movie icons like Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, John Barrymore, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard converged at Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles for world premiere of Walt Disney Co.'s 1st-ever feature-length animated film, "Snow White." Disney recounts:

[C]hildren were paying a dime to get into the theaters in 1937, and the film, of course, had great appeal to that age group. The original worldwide gross was $8.5 million, a figure that would translate into several hundreds of millions of dollars today. In England, the film was deemed too scary for children, and those under 16 had to be accompanied by a parent.

... 1947 (60 years ago today), U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.) was born in San Mateo, California.

On April 5, ....

... 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi ended a 3-1/2-week, 240-mile march to the seaside at Dandi, where the next morning he scraped salt from the shore in defiance of salt-tax laws. This nonviolent Salt Satyagraha, which began with 78 followers and ended with thousands, was a watershed moment of resistance to British rule in India.
... 1947, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines, was born.
... 1999, Libya surrendered 2 suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 aboard were killed. As detailed by our colleague Michael P. Scharf in 2001, the suspects later were tried before Scottish judges applying Scottish law at an abandoned U.S. military base in the Netherlands.