SURRENDERING BY INSTALLMENT

NY Post ^ | September 2, 2009 | THOMAS SOWELL

[Scanian]

BRITAIN'S release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi -- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people -- is galling enough. But it's even more troubling as a sign of a larger, growing mood: The West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.

The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on it when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."

This administration epitomizes the "concessions and smiles" approach to our implacable enemies. Western Europe has trod that path before us but we now seem to be trying to catch up.

The ostensible reason for releasing al-Megrahi was compassion for a man terminally ill. Ironically, 250 years ago, a Scotsman, Adam Smith, said, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."

That lesson seems to have been forgotten in America, too, where so many people seem far more concerned about whether we've been nice enough to the mass-murdering terrorists in our custody than those critics have ever been about the innocent people beheaded or blown up by the terrorists.

Tragically, those with this strange inversion of values include Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Years from now, long after Obama is gone, CIA agents dealing with hardened terrorists will have to worry about whether what they do to get information out of them to save American lives will make these agents themselves liable to prosecution that can destroy their careers and ruin their lives.

This is not simply an injustice to those who've tried to keep this country safe, it is a danger recklessly imposed on future Americans whose safety cannot always be guaranteed by sweet and gentle measures against hardened

[iowamark]

Those pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about "upholding the law" but they're doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law.

Needs to be repeated more often.

[greatplains]

Once again, Thomas Sowell nails it.