Heard a lot of outrage the past couple days over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. As I mentioned the other day, I can certainly understand where the family members are coming from, and no doubt would feel the same way were I in the same position. A lot of the outrage comes from self-identified Christians (our President, for one – but I forget, he’s an undercover Muslim), and I can’t help but wonder what Jesus would think about it. I have to wonder because, since I don’t pretend to be a Christian, I can’t speak with Jesus and/or his dad directly, the way, say, dubya can.

On the one hand, there’s the Jesus I remember hearing about before I became a Catholic dropout, and I seem to recall he was all about mercy and compassion and whatnot. So I think he might be down with showing the dude a bit of end-of-life compassion, and letting him die at home. Then there’s the Fred Phelps Jesus (or his god, at any rate), who is apparently full of hate and into killing and death and whatnot. Although, al-Magrahi isn’t (as far as I know) gay, so Phelps’ god might not be all that pissed at him (then again, al-Magrahi’s not white or Christian, so I’m sure that Jesus does want him dead after all).

To me, it just seems that all this death, hatred, and destruction has to stop somewhere, and maybe an act of compassion is a good place to start. We all know that blowing up an airplane full of people isn’t a good thing, but it also isn’t something that just happened out of nowhere, either. In fact, one could make a case that the sainted Ronald Reagan was the man who set into motion the chain of events that led to the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103.

Back in 1980s Libya claimed the entire Gulf of Sidra as its territorial waters (which, if you look at a map, doesn’t seem all that outrageous), which didn’t sit too well with the US of A. The US Navy began “exercises” in the area to keep tabs on (and, in general, annoy) Libya – a presence that was intensified by St. Ronald when he became President. On August 19, 1981, two US F-14s shot down two Libyan attack aircraft (our story is that the Libyans fired a missile – which missed – at our aircraft first).

Tensions remained high over the next few years as the Libyans played cat and mouse games with the US Navy, which wasn’t really a good idea on their part, as we sunk a couple of their radio ships, and in March of 1986, we sunk a Libyan Navy patrol boat and another Libyan vessel. In retaliation for this (and realizing he couldn’t compete with the US Navy), Muammar al-Gaddafi purportedly ordered the April 5, 1986 bombing of a West Berlin (that was before St. Ronnie torn down the Berlin Wall with his bare hands) nightclub, known to be frequented by U.S. soldiers, killing three people and injuring more than 200.

The CIA claimed to have intercepted a message from Libya to its East Berlin embassy, proving Libya’s involvement in the bombing and providing Reagan with the justification to launch an airstrike (the first US military action launched from British bases since WWII, which is why Gaddafi doesn’t exactly love the British, either) on Tripoli and Benghazi. Among the Libyan casualties was Hanna Gaddafi – Muammar’s adopted baby daughter. It was to avenge his daughter’s death that Gaddafi allegedly sponsored both the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in 1986, and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

Now, I know, it’s different when we kill somebody’s kids in Libya or Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever we feel justified in doing it, because we didn’t mean to kill them; it’s just a regrettable mistake. Deliberately killing civilians in Berlin or the Twin Towers or a marketplace in Baghdad or wherever the “terrorists” feel it’s justified, well, that’s a different story. But, either way, those kids are dead, and all this killing and hatred and justification for killing and hatred really needs to stop – on all sides.

I’m not naive enough to think that a Scottish Court releasing a terminally ill convicted mass murderer on compassionate grounds will put an end to it. But maybe it’s at least a start.

And wouldn’t that be a more suitable legacy for the victims?