Reflections of a stormy petrel

Well, Lockerbie was a crime of a special order of magnitude. Even after September 11 and Beslan, it is hard to recall many terrorist crimes of such dimension and horror. The violence in North Ireland may have in the long term have caused more deaths, but the worst single crime it ever achieved was Omagh, whose victims were less than a tenth of Lockerbie. Dimension does make a difference. And I have a suspicion that most Americans are not even aware of the treacherous activities that took place over decades among the local "Irish" communities, or at least of their extent and criminality. At any rate, the reaction was to be expected; indeed, the fact that the Establishment dreaded exactly something like it is exactly what led them to take the very actions that made it inevitable.