A Bad Deal on Libya
By David Schenker
Earlier this week, I published an op-ed in the Daily Standard about the August deal between Washington and Libya that paved the way for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Tripoli on September 5 and the normalization of bilateral ties.
The US-Libyan agreement establishes a mechanism to compensate the Lockerbie and La Belle disco victims of Libyan state-sponsored-terrorism. It also includes a provision to compensate the Libyan victims of the US counterstrike on Libya (codenamed El Dorado Canyon) in response to the La Belle disco attack.
It’s a remarkable agreement. As I noted in the Daily Standard piece:
On the face of it, the quid pro quo implicitly equates the intentional targeting of civilians (i.e., terrorism) with unintentional collateral damage incurred during a legal act of self defense. The administration's embrace of moral equivalency to seal the deal is stunning. In a surreal twist of events, Libyan leader Muamar Qaddhafi--who ordered the attack on the La Belle--could be eligible for compensation for the death of his adopted daughter, who was said to have been killed in the U.S. counterstrike.
The deal conflates the victims of terrorism and counterterrorism operations. Making matters worse, there’s been surprisingly little coverage of the egregious details of the agreement in the press. While the victims of Libyan terrorism are no doubt entitled to compensation, the Administration's deal comes at a high moral and political cost.
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