“In a word, gone”. Such was the New York Daily News’s furious four-word farewell to the special relationship this week in an editorial headlined “Brown The Betrayer” on the al-Megrahi affair.
“Can he remain in power having been revealed as at least complicit in an atrocious miscarriage of justice and breach of faith?” the paper asked. “That will be up to the Brits, but on this side of the Atlantic Ocean it is inconceivable that an elected official would have a snowball’s chance after sanctioning an oil-for-terrorist deal.”
Most East Coast broadsheets have paid the affair little attention. Not so the heartland.
“The West is surrendering on the instalment plan to Islamic extremists,” thundered Thomas Sowell, of the Hoover Institution, in a column syndicated from Tennessee to Utah.
Britain’s release of al-Megrahi “is galling enough... But it is even more troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies.”
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Next week’s Newsweek opts for sarcasm — “Scotland Stands Up to Goliath” — but is more detached in its analysis of devolution and its effects on world affairs. It quotes a Scottish pundit: “So far the government has managed to look like the plucky little Braveheart of the piece.”
The White House has called al-Megrahi’s release a “mistake” and his triumphant return to Libya “disgusting”.