Mad As Hell

Pity the Scots. Ever since the decision to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the terminally ill Libyan intelligence officer convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, there's been little letup in the condemnation from across the Atlantic. Even before the formal announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was publicly pushing for Megrahi to stay behind bars. More recently the list of critics has swollen to include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen; the FBI boss, Robert Mueller, who claimed the decision "gave comfort to terrorists around the world"; former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton; and plenty of other Washington heavies.

But the Scottish aren't taking these browbeatings meekly. If opinion in Scotland is divided on the decision's merits, there are plenty who resent America's play for the moral high ground. "We didn't do this to court popularity," says Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. "We have to do what is right in terms of our legal system; that is what we are duty-bound to do." Put more plainly, even if the decision played out poorly—the pictures of Libyan crowds waving Scottish flags at Megrahi's homecoming were tough viewing in Edinburgh—it was taken in good faith and in accordance with some all-Scottish values. Scotland has no need of lectures.

The irritation crosses party lines. The leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Henry McLeish, said Mueller's comments were "ill informed" and "none of his business." Meanwhile, Lord Peter Fraser, the senior Scottish lawyer responsible for launching the case against Megrahi, replied to the FBI chief: "You represent the most powerful law-enforcement agency in the world, and you know ... that we are not just a bunch of ignorant hicks."

Arrogance would be bad enough if it weren't tinged with hypocrisy. Even if Edinburgh was, as some have hinted, crassly trading Megrahi so that the U.K. could have a shot at Libyan oil contracts—an exchange the Scottish government vehemently denies—some Scots smell a double standard. Didn't successive American administrations welcome (even, at points, encourage) the release of unrepentant Irish terrorists for reasons of political pragmatism? As president, Bill Clinton actively promoted the policy. Some unlovely compromises were the price of peace in Northern Ireland, and the United States was a leading actor in the process. Nor was Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill ignoring the sensitivities of the Lockerbie victims when he sent Megrahi home: it's worth remembering that relatives of the British victims—never convinced of Megrahi's guilt anyhow—came out in favor of his return to Libya on the same compassionate grounds cited by the authorities.

But at any rate, the Scots say, they weren't acting out of cynical self-interest. To Mullen this was "obviously a political decision." If so, it was a strange miscalculation. In allowing Megrahi's release, MacAskill must have known that he risked alienating good friends at a bad moment. After all, this has been billed as Scotland's "Year of Homecoming," when the country is hoping to welcome tens of thousands of visitors with Scottish ancestry—hardly the time the Scottish government would choose to antagonize American visitors. (The United States accounts for more than 20 percent of Scotland's revenues from tourism.) For that matter, the U.S. represents the largest market for Scotch whisky, worth $573 million per year. If the Scots were looking to curry favor with other countries, Megrahi would still be in prison.

Besides, any deal with Tripoli would have brought no particular benefit to Scotland: it's the United Kingdom as a whole that stood to gain, and if Prime Minister Gordon Brown (himself a Scot) wanted to pressure Edinburgh, he had little leverage. There's no love lost between the Labour government in London and the Scottish National Party, which two years ago supplanted Labour as the dominant party in the Edinburgh Parliament. If the Scottish government really wanted to score political points, it would probably have kept Megrahi in prison until he died—if only to wound Brown, who wants the oil contracts and has never been a friend of the nationalist cause.

At the same, if Edinburgh truly wanted to play power politics, keeping Megrahi rather than releasing him might have bought useful good will in Washington. At present, the devolved Scottish government has no authority over foreign affairs, but the long-term goal of the SNP is to win total independence. If that's ever achieved, future U.S. administrations might be nervous of the party's hostility to NATO and nuclear weapons. When MacAskill told an emergency session of the Scottish Parliament on Monday that his decision "was not based on political, economic, or diplomatic considerations," it was probably the truth—but one that many will never accept.