By Carson Tucker
Contributing Writer

Little did I (or anyone else for that matter) realize that the hysterical telephone call on December 21, 1988, getting me out of a business meeting at the Virginia Museum, was just the beginning of 20 years of terrorist violence against the West. We couldn’t see the World Trade Center or the hundreds of other acts of violence that would change our world forever.

On the other end of the phone was Powhatan resident Shirley Swiecicki, head nurse at Powhatan Correctional Center, my ever helpful neighbor and one of the most compassionate human beings I have ever known. She asked me to come home to be with her. The State Department had just notified her and her family that her brother had been killed in the explosion of a bomb on his plane over Lockerbie, Scotland. Two hundred seventy innocent — innocent — men, women and children, several nationalities and races, were snuffed out. To make a point, said the terrorists. To instill uncertainty and fear.

It was the beginning of two decades (and counting) of escalating violence, death, torture, war. We haven’t seen the last of it yet.

One of the perpetrators — Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi — an ex member of Libya’s intelligence service, was sentenced to life. Scotland, where was serving his time, has just released him on compassionate grounds because he has terminal cancer.

He arrived home in Libya to a hero’s welcome, rose petals spread on his path off the airplane. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son went to Scotland to escort the “hero” home.

Al-Megrahi served exactly 15 days for each of the people he murdered.

He never showed remorse or any compassion for the hundreds of family members he left bereft of their loved ones.

Many people believe, although there is no hard-core proof that I am aware of, that Gadhafi and the Libyan government played a part in the destruction of Pan Am 103.

Gadhafi is scheduled to speak at the United Nations on September 23. I will be outside with the family members of Pan Am 103 — including my friend Shirley — protesting his appearance at the UN and his soiling the American streets by his presence.