"Neither Lasting Friends Nor Lasting Enemies"

The quote ends, "only lasting interests." Truer words were never spoken or written as a short form definition of diplomacy in all its many aspects. It is the context of those words and the realities to which they allude that an event which occurred one year ago must be assessed.

The event was the release on "compassionate" grounds of the solitary figure formally held culpable for the downing of Pan American aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland. The return of Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al Megrahi to his native Libya excited outrage both in the UK and the US. The failure of al Megrahi to die of prostate cancer within the semi-promised three months did nothing to lower passions.

Now we are at the first anniversary of the triumphant return of the one time Libyan covert operative to the welcoming arms of Col Muammar al-Gaddafi. Not surprisingly, the controversy has spiked once again.

The major theme brought forward by those appalled by the compassionate release of al Megrahi is that of exacerbating the grief felt to this day by the survivors, the family and friends of the hundreds killed either on the plane or on the ground. The action of release (to say nothing of al Megrahi's having lived a lot longer than ninety days) are alleged to show utter insensitivity to the feelings of survivors. As a secondary theme, the release has been portrayed as a short circuiting of justice (whatever that term might mean in this context).

The former British government has been accused of having placed the profit needs of BP ahead of both common humanity and the needs of justice. Pundits, politicians, and advocates have all made dire comments concerning British perfidy, British incompetence, British indifference to the needs or desires of the US government and the American public.

Taken in aggregate, the majority of expressed opinion has been rather like the final line of that really nifty movie, Fargo: "All of this for a little bit of money."

It is time to get a grip. Time to drop a flag on the play.

The case against al Megrahi was weak, to put it charitably. In all probability Noted Humanitarian Muammar al-Gaddafi handed over al Megrahi to the wheels of justice because the case was so obviously lacking in many critical areas, so an acquittal was foreseen. Unfortunately for the Elder Brother, the jury came back with thumbs down, and al Megrahi was duly trundled off to the Scottish slammer.

After some years, al Megrahi finally started the wheels of appeal. Perhaps he was tired of enjoying the hospitality of the Scots government. Perhaps haggis did not agree with him. Or, he had lost faith in the efficacy of Libyan diplomacy in gaining his release. Whatever the reason(s), the process of appeal was started.

Had the appeal moved forward, there was a good to excellent chance the guilty verdict would have been overturned. A reversal could have meant a retrial, but such was unlikely given the passage of yet more time, the loss of evidence and testimony. Even had a retrial ensued it would have been increasingly unlikely that a guilty verdict would have followed.

The prospect of an appeal may well have rattled the British government given the weaknesses of the original case. The rattling may have been enhanced by the prospect that an appeal would have brought aspects of the British intelligence system into public view or that there had been misconduct on the part of relevant British personnel.

The option of "compassionate" release provided a sovereign remedy. Al Megrahi had to drop the appeal before becoming eligible for "compassionate" release. He did so.

At the same time, the prospect of "compassionate" release provided additional benefits to Her Majesty's Government. The existence of al Megrahi in a Scots prison constituted a bone in the Libyan throat. Removing it would not only recognize the dramatic shift in the relations between Libya and the UK which had taken place over the preceding decade, it would also smooth the burgeoning commercial relations between the two countries.

This meant that a new formula described the Lockerbie bombing and the ailing man in the Scots jail. The new formula runs like this: That-was-then--this-is-now. The formula may seem a tad heartless, a bit insensitive, rather filled with get-over-it-and-get-on-with-life. So it is. There is another word for the same dynamic--realism.

Anyone who is and was oriented in time and place knew from the get-go that the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 was an act of state. It was a retaliatory act. Retaliation for HMG having allowed American bombers to take off from British bases on route to attack Libya.

The hit on Pan Am 103 was the third round of tit for tat actions starting with the Libyan bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin which killed American service personnel. The disco bombing was also a matter of state policy. So was the American response of an airstrike in which one of those killed was Gaddafi's adopted daughter. Whether it was personal loss or simply the calculations of state interest, the Elder Brother authorized the reply--the Christmas season mass murder in the cold dark over Scotland. (Recall that the bomb had been timed to go off when the aircraft was over the deep water of the North Atlantic, but an unforeseen delay in takeoff allowed the wreckage and bodies to fall on land.)

There would have been several layers of culpability between the Guy in the Green Tent on top and the worker bees of al Megrahi's level. Every time a senior British official shook hands with a Libyan counterpart, he touched blood. The British knew this. The Americans did as well.

When the All Wise and Benevolent Leader of Libya woke up and smelled the coffee in the immediate aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, one of his decisions was to place the specter of Lockerbie behind him with a combination of cash payments and handing over al Megrahi. While one can speculate on the process by which al Megrahi was selected as the designated sacrificial lamb, all that really matters is that both the governments of the UK and the US agreed to accept this one man as representative of the state which stood behind him.

In the interests of state the W. Bush administration and the ministry of Tony Blair pretended to treat al Megrahi as if he had been an autonomous killer rather than a low level operative carrying out the policies of Gaddafi. The interests of three states--the US, the UK and Libya--demanded the charade. It was carried out to the advantage of all three.

From the "arrest" of al Meghari to his "compassionate" release, every move in the carefully scripted show has been calculated to further the national interest of one or more of the involved states. The feelings and sensitivities of the survivors, the friends and families of the dead, did not matter in the slightest. Neither did the abstract notion of "justice."

That's the way it is with nation-states. It is the way matters should be conducted. States are not individual human beings. States, quite unlike the myriad of individuals which constitute their population, cannot afford to have either lasting friends or lasting enemies. It is not that states are necessarily soulless entities but rather that states can only act effectively when they pursue objectively definable interests.

Libya, the US, and, most recently, the UK did what each determined to be in its national interest. HMG was undoubtedly most pleased to avoid an al Megrahi appeal and its consequences. That there were collateral benefits only made the move all the more attractive. The US entered only the most mild, most pro forma objections to the release. The Libyans actually acted in a restrained matter in welcoming al Megrahi and have continued to keep the man deep in background during the past year.

In short, each player pursued its interests. That's the way the Game of Nations should be played. It would be nice if the Obama administration could play equally well in venues where the stakes were higher.