Libya's Moammar Gadhaffi well understands European spinelessness. Threatening England and Scotland with a cutoff of Libya's oil unless they released one of the plotters of the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing, Libyan Abdel al Megrahi, the Brits and Scots agreed.

And thus, under the thin gauze of a "mercy release" the allegedly cancer stricken, dying man who was responsible for the deaths of 270 innocents, returned to Libya where he now lives in luxury as recounted here Monday.

Successful after freeing a mass slaughterer, Gadhaffi presses on realizing he and his henchmen can now commit any crime in Europe with impunity; if punished Libya will prohibit Europeans from entering their country and, most importantly, from visiting the Libyan oilfields in which Europeans have so heavily invested.

Bradley Klapper of the AP explains t he latest example of this brazen Libyan strategy. Several years ago Gadhafi's son and daughter in law were charged for beating their servants in a Swiss hotel. While an acceptable practice in Libya apparently it is not in Switzerland. Initially not practicing cultural diversity, the Swiss jailed the son, Hannibal Gadhafi. Whoops! Papa Moammar Gadhafi complained. The Swiss soon dropped the charges and freed the young Gadhafi, the beaten servants received some mysterious compensation and dropped their complaint and...the Swiss apologized. Libya then withdrew its money from Swiss banks and imprisoned two Swiss citizens on phony charges and has barred other Swiss from entering Libya.

In retaliation Switzerland visa blacklisted several Libyans including members of the Gadhafi family from visiting Switzerland. Whoops again. Other European countries are part of a visa/passport agreement with Switzerland so they too have to forbid the Libyans from entering. So for the next round, back in Libya, Gadhafi banned the Europeans from his country. And his oilfields.

And so it goes, back and forth. Who will blink first? My money is on the weak, cowardly Europeans; too weak to resist the Libyans who will continue to push their fingers in European eyes, the Europeans will crumble first, acceding to all of Gadhafi's demands.

And al Meghari will live out a long healthy life in luxury.