-Caveat Lector- http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20010510/558 351.html May 10, 2001 McVeigh and other angry, invisible men What he did is evil. How the Feds responded is typical Mark Steyn National Post PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wrote to Timothy McVeigh last month urging him to make his last meal vegan. "Innocent people died in the Oklahoma City bombing, and innocent animals suffer miserably and then are horribly slaughtered," wrote Bruce Friedrich, suggesting McVeigh could set an example to prison governors across the nation. "Wiping meat off of all inmates' plates could help killers lose their taste for blood. Feeding inmates bean burritos rather than baby back ribs might just help break the cycle of violence." Feeding inmates bean burritos might just turn every man's cell into his own personal gas chamber. But, that aside, Friedrich's arguments were enough to provoke McVeigh to respond. "I cannot sustain a prolonged intellectual debate on the subject as my time is short," he observed dryly, before explaining that, as a hunter and libertarian, he asserts his right to kill for food, but he also believes in the Indian concept of the circle of life. "Respect the life you take to sustain yourself, but come to terms with your place in the 'food chain'," he concluded. A fiercely unrepentant killer, he has no respect for the life he took, but he has come to terms with his place in the food chain. And when the state devours McVeigh next week, a very particular circle of life will be closed. I was there six years ago in Oklahoma City -- not for the bomb but, by sheer coincidence, for the pre-Broadway try-out of a new show, JFK -- The Musical, a bomb of quite a different kind. But that's as good a reason as any to be there -- after all, the only thing most of us know about Oklahoma is that it's a musical: "Oooooooooooklahoma "Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain ..." The wind was unusually still on the Oklahoma plain that week. No bright golden haze on the medder, just drizzle on nondescript urban decay. A couple of days after the bomb, the temperatures started to climb -- up into the 60s, pushing 70, still no wind -- and downtown, two or three blocks from the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, you could smell the decomposing bodies. Off to one side were the media bigfoots, sealed off from the community whose pain they were supposedly feeling by the good folks of "National Rent-A-Fence." The media encampment appeared to have been situated on an earlier bomb site, though, on closer inspection, this was just one of several derelict lots in the neighbourhood. There were cheque-cashing outlets and pawn shops and All-For-A-Dollar stores and a few other hole- in-the-wall businesses whose fronts were permanently barricaded behind wire mesh. If the network hotshots were reluctant to venture out from behind their rented fence, you couldn't really blame them. And anyway, in those first 72 hours or so, they might as well have been broadcasting from Planet Zongo. "One thing is certain," said Connie Chung, anchoring CBS News the day of the blast. "This is the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil ever. A U.S. government source has told CBS News that it has Middle East terrorism written all over it." According to CNN, three men of Middle Eastern origin were being pursued. On NBC, terrorism expert Neil Livingston said all the signs pointed to Islamic fundamentalists. Over on ABC, Peter Jennings was handing over to his man at the Pentagon: "Sources say the FBI has been watching dozens of suspicious Islamic groups in cities throughout the American southwest and several right in Oklahoma City," said correspondent John McWethy. "As a further indication of where the investigation is headed, ABC News has learned that the FBI has asked the U.S. military to provide up to 10 Arabic speakers to help in the investigation." On the ground, or at least the portions of it outside the rented fence, none of this made much sense. For example, "Islamic fundamentalists" and "men of Middle Eastern appearance" aren't necessarily the same thing. In Oklahoma, most of the Muslims are black and most of the Arabs are Christian. A lardbutt in a Second Amendment T-shirt I met in a sports bar told me that, and his "sources" proved rather better than those of Mr. McWethy. Lori, our waitress, marvelled at his expertise, having previously bought into the networks' killer-towelheads-in-the- heartland routine. "I swore if an Islam person come in here, I weren't gonna serve him," she said. A few rangy, stump-toothed good ol' boys took the Lori line. But the shrewder -- or reflexively paranoid -- guys in John Deere caps and one- ton pick-ups never fell for it. "It's nothing to do with Muslims," one fellow said to me, "though, if the Feds can get away with whacking some Arab for it, they will." April 19th, 1995, he noted, was not just the second anniversary of Waco but the 220th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the first great engagements of the American Revolution. It was obvious, he said, why that target had been bombed that day. It wasn't obvious to the networks. On that first day, mention of Waco was buried deep in the bulletins, and, even when it did come up, it was in the context of whether or not the Branch Davidian cultists themselves had bombed Oklahoma City. What never occurred to all those network anchors linking to experts in Washington, New York, London, Tel Aviv and Damascus was that back in America, outside the fence, there were hundreds of thousands of people outraged about what happened at Waco. And all you needed was for one of 'em to be mad enough to do something about it. It's easy to laugh at those paranoid losers holed up in their cabins deep in the woods, fretting about Federal agents in black helicopters. But, in the Nineties, a surprising number of them discovered the black choppers really did exist. They showed up at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, when Randy Weaver missed a court date after being entrapped by undercover Feds into selling them a sawn-off shotgun. He looked out his window to see a government robot with a gun in its claw moving across his porch. The flesh-and-blood agents shot and killed his son and his wife, the latter in the back while she was cradling her baby. There wasn't much about Weaver on the news: East Coast media types aren't terribly interested in survivalist cranks. But Timothy McVeigh, Gulf War veteran and Bronze Star holder, was incensed. Then came Waco: If the Feds had taken out a gay nightclub in the East Village, you'd never have heard the end of it; but instead they immolated a loonytoon religious cult way out in the "heartland" and no one cared. McVeigh did: He briefly considered assassinating Janet Reno, but then decided on something more ambitious. "Tim McVeigh was trying to make a point," says Randy Weaver. "He was going to be judge, jury and executioner. No different from the federal government. One has a badge and one don't." He removed the licence plate of his getaway car because he wanted to be arrested and he knew somewhere down the highway some patrolman would pull him over. If he hadn't wanted to be caught, those gullible network types would still be passing on assurances from the Feds that it was something to do with the Middle East. Osama bin Laden maybe. It worked out just dandy for Bill Clinton. In 1994, Newt Gingrich's victorious Republicans had channelled the frustration of America's "angry white men." Clinton used Oklahoma to point out what happens when white men get too angry, linking the bombing to the overheated rhetoric of right-wing talk-radio and, by implication, the GOP itself. He used it to reclaim his presidency. Two years later, on the death of the Princess of Wales, Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos paid a fulsome compliment: "Isn't Tony Blair handling this great? This is his Oklahoma City." Oklahoma City was supposed to be the first shot in the second American Revolution. Instead, the militia movement sputtered out, the boys got tired of stockpiling arms and raising emus for an uprising that never arose, and they came down from the hills. The talk-jockeys toned down the anti-Fed rants. And, perhaps in discreet acknowledgment that the Waco wackoes had a point, Janet Reno's Justice Department decided to ease up on the civilian massacres. Let it be said that what Timothy McVeigh did is evil. But something is wrong when the state's paramilitary police can kill its own citizens with impunity, those responsible get promoted, and the big news organizations can't even recognize public anger over it. Two wrongs don't make a right. But killing McVeigh for the second wrong shouldn't blind us to the first. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Best Wishes Should I keep back my opinions through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country and an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. -Patrick Henry <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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