Moammar Gadhafi, longest-reigning Arab dictator in the middle east, is barking defiantly against the surge of populist uprisings which have swept the Presidents of Tunisia and Egypt from power. He has ordered mercenaries and armed guards to fire on his own people, assuring his supporters that state police will not intervene. However, the horrendous attacks he has perpetrated on humanity go back much further than the current attempt to suppress the uprising of his own people.
This sudden turn of international history is most fitting. A virulent tyrant who oppressed his own people over these long 42 years, Gadhafi instigated one of the worst terrorist attacks in history: the explosion of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, which ended the lives of 270 people, including many Americans.
Recently, in the long wake of this horrible tragedy, there was the "compassionate release" of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the chief terrorist implicated in the bombing. His early parole demonstrated no compassion for the victims or the nations who suffered from that devastating attack, including the United States. Despite the allegations that al-Megrahi was a terminally-ill cancer patient, he lives to this day, having received a hero's welcome from his countrymen, including the menacing Gadhafi. Utterly shameful.
Notwithstanding this unjust arrangement, there is great satisfaction in witnessing the blazing demise of the leader and his supports who sponsored such a horrible act of terrorism, perpetrated ubiquitous oppression on its citizens, and frustrated the freedom of millions of people throughout the Middle East.