Not that, in my opinion, he was wrong to release Mr Al-Megrahi, the terminally ill Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity by an investigation, trial, verdict and subsequent appeal that, time has proven, did nothing for the integrity or reputation of the Scottish Justice system or its Judiciary. That was the issue he failed to resolve.
Perhaps justice was never intended to be part of the process. Not real, in your face, bang to rights, hard fact evidence that can be tested, argued, disputed, proved or disproved. That sort of justice - the benchmark of judicial integrity - being smothered by the fogs of political expediency and gunboat diplomacy. To the extent that while a centimeter sliver of evidence could be found eighteen miles downwind of the crash site, the truth has proved to be more elusive. Or was that the intention: to smother truth by a blanket woven from circumstance?
So, to the toll of victims and their relatives, can we add the consciences of eight Scottish judges? The last decade of a mans life lost to freedom? And, do we finally have to accept that truth to a politician of any and all creeds has the value and lifespan of an amoeba unless expediency says different? Because if we allow the latter. If we allow these jobsworths that amount of leeway and wriggle room we become both perpetrator and victim to the griefs and tribulations they foist upon us?
And I would like to say this to the relatives of the Americans killed in the atrocity. During the Civil Rights movement in the 60's one of the slogans was 'The Truth Would Set You Free'.
It's just as relevant today. Only by changing the perceived threat and their tactics, the people who are supposedly acting on you and your loved ones behalf have, by adopting the cause of might being right, either through blind ignorance or arrogance, failed completely to bring the possible costs and repercussions of their action into the equation. And, while by so doing they may have blindsided we lesser mortals to their real purpose, time and truth will expose the failure, foolishness and duplicity of their values.
Demand the truth from your government. Ask yourself if your loss is in any way different to that of the families of an Iranian flying home to Mecca, a Palestinian cowering in a concrete ghetto or a Libyan huddled under a night time bomb run? The rituals of grief may change but to try to measure that grief on some ritualistic scale based on creed, nationality or race is an application of apartheid taken to absurdity. If its only revenge that you believe will give you closure, then so be it: but make sure you have all the information necessary to give your vengeance some basis in fact and 'official' information can never be taken as fact on face value. Anything less and your 'revenge' is a euphemism for injustice.
It's that lack of trust and the insecurity it breeds that eventually destroys the creeds who implement the practices of dominance and aggression. The power game, by definition, can only have few 'winners' and is a complete anathema to the evolution and well being of the human race.
As a specie, we accept it as self evident that were are, for now, at the top. But it is self denial and utter arrogance to believe that we have reached the pinnacle of evolutionary progress. Taken on their own our failings in our compassion for our fellow beings are a clear indication of how little we have advanced in the last three thousand years. While technically, especially in the last two three hundred years we have advanced at a rate of breathless acceleration. But as a strategy the use of technical superiority as a bases for dominance by either ideology or aggression is short on gain and long in pain type thinking. Equally, while we as a biological specimen have gained from that technology the utilisation of our brains and mind has advanced little in the same period.
We recognise our world is a village in the vast scheme of the universe, perhaps a unique village but, if it is, that only makes it all the more precious and all the more reason for us to respect, conserve and maximise its potential and the time we're allowed to be the stewards of it.
Since time immemorial, history has shown one constancy which has blighted the development of humanity. It is the sublimation of conscience by apathy or dominance - the two idiocies. Governments and tyrants have used the dominance and nurtured the apathy to the extent our communal minds are riddled by the paranoia of what our neighbours intentions are towards us, instead of making sure the neighbours are getting the message we want them to get of our hopes and aspirations towards them.
It's time for the peace of our world and the lives of our children, that we remove the 'quasi' from our democracy and take responsibility for our governments by calling and holding them to account for their acts and omissions. The apathy of blind hate or material dominance is neither an answer or viable option.
