Where's the Outrage?
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi has been the tepid reaction of President Obama and his administration. My new National Post column speculates on two reasons that might explain the president's mildness: (1) some kind of secret deal with the Libyans; (2) that Obama has accepted the theory advanced by some intelligence experts that the attack was the work of Iran, not Libya.
Of course, there's a more likely explanation for the lack of outcry: this administration's lack of moral center on terrorism. Whether it is his gentle reproofs of Ahmadinejad or his readiness to shake hands with Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama just does not get all that excited about international bad actors. Not that the president never gets angry. He can get plenty angry over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates or Israeli settlements. Lockerbie: not so much.
Back in the days when French waiters wrote out the bill by hand, my father would scrutinize his restaurant checks and grumble: "If they were just bad at math, half the mistakes would be in my favor." Likewise, Obama's and his administration's misstatements always seem to err in the same direction: to excuse and minimize. It's happened again, and by now it's beginning to look like a trend.