Twenty two plus years ago, on December 21, 1988, a Pan Am 747 carrying 259 passengers and crew, was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie Scotland by a bomb. A bomb that was later proved to be from Libya and eventually a Lbyian national , Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was tried for the crime and convicted. Lbyan Dictator, Muammar al Gaddafi, was long suspected of having ordered the bombing but there was never any proof offered, until today.
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who recently resigned as justice minister in protest over the innocent killings of peaceful protesters in Libya, told a Swedish Tabloid, Expression, that Gaddafi personally ordered the bombing of that plane. If true, then it follows that since gaddafi is the recognized leader of Libya, the bombing was a clear act of war carried out by a soveriegn nation. Although over a dozen countries were represented by those on board, the clear majority, 189 of the 256 people on board were from the United States. Over 50 of those, including Nicole Boulanger of Shrewsbury MA, were students returning home for the holidays from studying abroad. That act of war was clearly against the United States.
Now there is a high official from the Gaddafi Regime claiming that the dictator personally ordered the bombing. What will our President do with this new information? I fear not much. Today he said the Libyan treatment of protesters was "appalling" and he announced Hillary Clinton was being dispatched to Geneva to talk about the evolving situation. Wow, that should really make Gaddafi think twice, don't you think? Plus there was no mention from him of the new revelations. (There were no questions about it either from the mainstream media.)
Shortly after 9/11 Gaddafi contacted the then Bush Administration and handed over all of his WMD programs. Why did he do that? Was he feeling generous and remorseful? Its obvious today that was not the case. The reason he did that was because it was Bush in charge! A real Texas cowboy type who would shoot first and ask questions later. Gaddafi knew Bush meant it when he said you were either with us or against us. He knew he had to offer some sort of olive branch to stay in power.
President Obama does not project that same sense of authority in this part of the world. It has become very clear throughout the region in the past month that the Obama Administration is basically absent from the table and not able to influence events.
If the President takes the new information about the act of war perpetrated by Gaddafi on the United States in 1988 and acts on it appropiately by publicly siding with the opposition forces and moving military forces into place he would go a long way towards changing that equation. The cultures in these countries are very different from the culture we live in. They see force as strength and diplomacy as weakness. Until the administration learns that, like all of the others before it, it will remain innefective.
