Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Learning From This Tragedy

Last May, driving through Scotland, I stopped at Lockerbie and went to the Garden of Remembrance which was established in memory of the 259 people killed in the explosion on board Pan Am Flight 103 and the 11 that perished on the ground in Lockerbie village on December 21st, 1988. The 270 victims came from 21 nations and their ages ranged from two months to eighty-two years. Thirteen years on, I am not sure whether any thing has been learnt from this tragedy.

There is a peaceful, almost serene aura about the Garden, which contains family plinths etched with simple tributes to loved ones. On a bronze plaque there is a poem, eerie in its premonition, written by twenty-year-old Karen Lee Hunt, a student from Syracuse:

"Something has happened to keep us apart,
But always and forever you're in my heart,
Some day soon, from now till forever,
I'll meet you again and we'll be together,
I'm not sure how, and I'm not sure when,
Together, forever, somewhere my friend."

Immediately after the bombing the first suspects had been a pro-Syrian Palestinian group financed by Iran and known to have been active in Germany. Pan Am Flight 103 had taken off from Frankfurt. Six months earlier, an American warship, the USS Vincennes, fired a missile and killed 290 Iranian Muslims, pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Human beings with names, histories and families, just like those killed at Lockerbie. Iranian officials were quick to vow to avenge their deaths. So Iran had the motive and Syria, where the Palestinian group was based, had the means. The Americans, active in The Gulf in support of their ally, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was then at war with Iran, apologised for the missile attack and said it was 'an accident'.

For many months after Lockerbie, Iran and Syria were the focuses of the investigators' attention. The following might be mere coincidence, but three years later, when Iraq was now 'the enemy' for invading Kuwait, and the USA needed Iran and Syria to join the anti-Iraq crusade in the Anglo-American war against Saddam Hussein, the spotlight shifted to Libya, and eventually two Libyans went on trial in Holland. Last January, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, said to be a Libyan intelligence officer, was sentenced to life for the bombing. He is appealing the verdict.

In April 1990, when George Bush conferred the Legion of Merit award upon those responsible for the deaths of the 290 Iranians, the USS Vincenne's commander and the officer in charge of the ship's missiles, the media said little. However, the media widely criticised Colonel Gadaffi for welcoming home Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the Libyan acquitted of the Lockerbie bombing. The West sends out a message of double-standards.

In the Garden of Remembrance, an old, presumably married couple was arriving as I was leaving and I said, "It's terrible sad, isn't it." The elderly man, a North American, replied, "Yeh, but what about the bastard who ordered it? We should've gone in and wiped out Gadaffi."

I felt uneasy, given the IRA's past relationship with Libya. Even if Gadaffi had been responsible, was it that simple to punish the guilty? In Berlin in 1986 a bomb exploded in a disco, killing two US servicemen. Though suspicion fell on Syria subsequently, Libya was immediately blamed and Tripoli and Benghazi were bombed by US warplanes based in England. Many innocent civilians were killed, including Colonel Gadaffi's two-year-old adopted daughter.

It has to be obvious, even before Machiavelli wrote 'The Prince', that ruling a country and politics are inevitably dirty trades which sit uncomfortably, if not impossibly, beside the concept of morality. The West calls itself the 'Free World' and the acknowledged leader of the Free World is the United States of America. It owes its pre-eminence and authority to many advantages and qualities, not least to its military prowess and its preparedness to use force which - if we are to be honest - is comparable, in the eyes of those who fall victim to it, to the very terrorism the US says it abhors.

Leaving Lockerbie, I was affected and disturbed and determined to write something to help me articulate not just my emotions but my convictions, and strive for an opinion that was legitimate, defensible and independent.

On Wednesday, I heard the veteran BBC correspondent Charles Wheeler make some sense of the bombings in New York and Washington. He said that if there was an Islamic/Arab/Palestinian dimension to these attacks then it was not unrelated to the USA's foreign policy, the USA's perceived, blanket support for Israel, the resentment felt by oppressed Palestinians of Israel's continued illegal confiscation of their land, and their anger that the USA has conspired to frustrate them of the statehood they were promised through the peace process.

Supporters of the USA's dominant role in the world claim that without it the world would be defenceless against rising tyrannies and that it keeps rogue nations in check. I admit that there may be much validity to that claim, yet I don't see why it should compromise my right to criticise that nation's many excesses.

Right now one's thoughts have to be with the victims of Tuesday's bombings and the anguished relatives. The stories emerging are heart-breaking. However, on Thursday I heard an Israeli government spokesperson on the radio say that there are now just two worlds: the Free World and the rest. The consensus sought by the USA around the world is part of this drive. In other words, disagree with 'us' and you are an enemy, are heartless and complicit in the bombings - which is ridiculous, as if one would support for a second such slaughter on behalf of any cause.

The longer that revenge or retaliation is delayed the better. That way, at least, the wrong people may not be targeted. In the longer term still it is to be hoped that American public opinion will shift towards a reappraisal of its government's foreign policy and will lobby for a more even-handed, just approach, which we can all support and be proud of, and which will minimise the possibilities of another Lockerbie or other mass killings of innocent civilians by suicide bombers.

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