The Pan Am Flight 103 Disaster.

I just wanted to take a moment this evening to speak about a serious event from our collective past. Today marks the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Pan Am Flight 103 disaster, which occurred on December 21, 1988.

An aerial photo of the Lockerbie, Scotland crash site.

The terrorist attack, which lead to the death of two-hundred and seventy innocent people, was dastardly. Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland at approximately thirty-one thousand feet. The explosion killed all two-hundred and forty-three passengers and sixteen crew members on board. As the plane crashed, another eleven local residents were killed. Of the passengers on board, one-hundred and eighty-nine were American.

In the time since the explosion, it was determined that the plot was hatched by Libyans. They acted most likely in retaliation for a 1986 Libyan bomb strike enacted by the United States, which happened to kill Muammar al-Qaddafi's youngest daughter. Qaddafi was the ruler of Libya for over forty years.

Muammar al-Qaddafi

It's a tough thing to lose someone you love in such a tragic manner. To lose them during the holidays, though? That's absolutely brutal. I can understand the hatred that many residents of the Middle East feel for America. Our government has done many terrible things to far too many innocent people. It does not give one the right to murder more innocent people in response, though.

I can only hope that mankind will eventually rise above this "eye for an eye" mentality and seek a more peaceful future.