Oklahoma City, 20 Years Later
“…this is also a day to say to those who plan to terrorize us, ‘no, you cannot.'”
I was only 10 years old on the day that Timothy McVeigh parked his fertilizer bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At the time, I didn’t know what it meant to have witnessed the “deadliest terror attack to date” on U.S. soil; all I knew was that 168 people had died, and from my ten year-old perspective, that seemed like everyone in the world.
Twenty years later, my perspective has matured. I’ve seen skyscrapers explode and fall down, and high school students run screaming from armed gunmen. I’ve seen videos of beheadings and shootings and massacres, and yet there’s something still very raw associated with my memories of of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Today marks the 20 year anniversary of the attack, and hundreds of people gathered together at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum on the former site of the Murrah building to pay tribute to those lost.
President Bill Clinton, attending the annual ceremony for the sixth time, thanked the people of Oklahoma for their resilience and outpouring of compassion that followed the bombing — a reaction to the tragedy that became known as the “Oklahoma standard.”
“You turned away all of the petty squabbles in which we engage, leaving only our basic humanity,” Clinton said. “I mostly came here to thank you today.”
“There’s still people who somehow think they can matter more and they can make a statement by killing innocents and snuffing our possibility,” Clinton said. “They’re wrong. As long as people like you make the right decisions with their mind and their heart.”
United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson echoed the former president, saying: “Today is a day to mourn and remember those who died here 20 years ago, but this is also a day to say to those who plan to terrorize us, ‘no, you cannot.'” Oklahoma embodied that message, Johnson said.
Watch:
The bombing still holds the record as the deadliest domestic terror attack ever committed on U.S. soil, and its anniversary has predictably motivated fresh “discussions” on the dangers of domestic (although they say “right wing”) terrorism.
In other words, right-wing violence today is actually at or very close to levels during the days of the Oklahoma City bombing.
These statistics illustrate that “homegrown violent extremism” is not limited to extremism motivated by radical Islam. The anger and hate that generated the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 is still around in 2015—and still dangerous.
The 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing provides a new opportunity for us to ensure that its significance does not disappear from the public eye. What the tragedies of 1995 and 2001 together teach is that the United States faces threats from multiple sources of extremism, all of which must be taken seriously.
Consequently, Americans must have the wisdom to respond effectively and intelligently to ideological violence stemming from all sources. That would be the most positive way to pay homage to the victims of April 19, 1995.
The full article linked above twists together acts of domestic terrorism with “hate crimes” and presents them as one neat package—which presents a huge problem for actually combating both domestic terrorism and crime motivated by some sort of ideological hair-trigger.
Terrorism is a very specific grey area of violent crime. What motivates a terrorist—even a homegrown one—is very different than what motivates your average criminal. To suggest—and those peddling think pieces like the one clipped above are most certainly making suggestions—that they are one in the same does more than dishonor the memories of those who died at the hands of Timothy McVeigh. It endangers efforts both at home and abroad to stop terrorists from committing increasingly brutal acts of violence.
What happened in Oklahoma City is not identical or even analogous to the hate crimes we see plastered across the front page of the local newspaper. It’s an easy narrative to spin, but it’s a narrative that does nothing but shift attention away from what matters most: working every day to make life harder for those who seek to commit acts of terror.
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http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150414/GZ01/150419682
Collectivists regard themselves as good. They regard us as evil. They arrogate to themselves the right to use what means they may to destroy evil.
There was nothing…whatsoever…about Tim McVeigh that associates him with conservative ideology.
Ball-less Bill Clinton cynically tried to tie his critics to Oklahoma City, and THAT…if for nothing else…consigns him to the manure pile of American politics forever.
“There was nothing…whatsoever…about Tim McVeigh that associates him with conservative ideology.”
Needs to be repeated.
About 4 years after his conviction, he is executed. Must be a modern record. Anyone else wonder why murderers sit in prison awaiting execution for 10-15-20 years and McVeigh takes only 4?
My understanding was…is…that he wanted to get on with it. He refused to allow endless appeals on his behalf, AND he was pretty universally hated.
“He refused to allow endless appeals on his behalf…”
I had forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder. Still, it seems odd.
I was reading CNN.com over the weekend, for the entertainment value and to get an idea of what the progressive hive-mind will be buzzing about this week.
Part of their narrative vis-a-vis the 20 year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing is that “right wing violence” and the “threat of home-grown right-wing terrorism” is higher today than it has been in the last twenty years.
They made these assertions and then proceeded to change the subject without offering one iota of substantiation.
From Wiki:
“McVeigh wrote letters to local newspapers complaining about taxes:
Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate “promises,” they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. […] Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it might.[24]
McVeigh also wrote to Representative John J. LaFalce ((D) New York),[25] complaining about the arrest of a woman for carrying mace:
It is a lie if we tell ourselves that the police can protect us everywhere at all times. Firearms restrictions are bad enough, but now a woman can’t even carry Mace in her purse?[25]
He wrote an angry letter to the government inviting them to:
Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property.[28]”
Nope, never heard a conservative mention anything like THAT before!
Also from Wiki, it just keeps comin’!
“In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as “When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw.” He told a student reporter:
The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.[30]”
Wait. “Those who plan to terrorize us”? Bill Clinton?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno
Will Bill Clinton memorialize the children he had murdered there, at the hand of Janet Reno?
Sure.
You single-handedly disproved Rags statement above, congrats!
Let’s not forget that it’s also the 22nd anniversary of the FBI’s murder of 86 innocent people at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. Timothy McVeigh did not act for no reason. He waited two years for the law to do its job and hold the FBI to account, but when he saw that there was no chance at all of justice being done, he took matters into his own hand.
There should have been an armed revolution over the Waco massacre, and in the context of such a revolution the FBI building would have been a perfectly legitimate target, day care center or no day care center. George Washington didn’t desist from attacking British army bases just because there may have been children present. We quite properly call such casualities “collateral damage”.
What McVeigh ignored is that for a war to be just there must be a reasonable chance of success. He had no chance of bringing the FBI down, or of causing people to recognise that it had committed a horrible crime. Instead he strengthened the FBI’s standing in the public eye, and encouraged it to commit more crimes with impunity. And since this should have been obvious to him from the start, he was not justified in sacrificing innocent people as collateral damage in an unwinnable war.
You know what Milhouse, you’re full of shit. McVeigh was just a cold blooded killer. He picked a place full of children and bombed it. It’s not collateral damage. It is what it is, cold blooded murder.
Is anybody else wondering if Pres. Clinton was paid to appear at the ceremony?
Does anybody beside me think that Bill Clinton looked absolutely AWFUL giving the speech today? He looked gaunt, pale, had a couple of skin spots on his face and his hair is white and thinning. He actually looked … frail.
If Hillary wants ANY chance of winning, she needs to make sure that Bill looks at least reasonably healthy. Otherwise Bill just reminds everybody how OLD they both are.
Do you have any idea how exhausting it is for a man that age to spend the weekend cavorting with a half dozen teenage hookers on a Caribbean island?
I’m guessing Mr. Skinner may not, but I do if anyone has questions.
I will politely defer to your stated expertise on the subject.
@Barry :
Milhouse wrote an articulate comment that was not only polite, it made sense.
Then there was yours. There were many ways you could have gotten your point across. That wasn’t a good one.
McVeigh was not aware of the daycare, according to what he told the authorities and the court. What McVeigh did is inexcusable and horrific. There were better ways to get his point across without murder. However, his frustration and anger is echoed by many Americans. We are not expendable. The government is not above the law and does not have a license to murder it’s own citizens.
Waco and Ruby ridge will never be forgotten. A lot of people who remembered those incidents were thinking of exactly that when that face off between that rancher and the BLM and feds happened a while back.
Bill Clinton is hated by many former and current agents because of those two incidents.
It wasn’t McVeigh’s idea. He was not the originator of the plot. It was Terry Nichols who recruited Timothy McVeigh and not the other way around, but the Clinton administration preferred to cast Timothy McVeigh as the chief plotter.
People recruit younger people as followers, not older people.
Furthermore, when Terry Nichols went on a trip to Phillipines (supposedly to get his mail order bride, but more probably chiefly to get training in building bombs from “Ramzi Youssef” who trained the World Trade Center bombers – his earlier attempts in Michigan weer duds, and indeed most amateur bomb builders will either explode bombs prematurely, injuring or killing themselves, or build bombs that are duds – he left a message with a his ex-wife Lana Padilla, to be opened in the event he didn’t come back.
She opened it as soon as he was gone. It told Timothy McVeigh he was on his own and he should go ahead. I think clearly establishing him as the leader.
Furthermore, the bomb was probably put together by 4 people, not two. And this only happened after Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto paid a visit to Washington – a visit that Hillary Clinton, travelling with her daughter Chelsea as cover, arranged for. Benazir Bhutto was in Washington and the next day or so, Timothy McVeigh leaves Kingman, Arizona, where he’s been hanging around, and heads east and the bomb gets built, and he delivers it and detonates it. Probably more because he liked explosives than because of any ideology. It actualy makes no sense, although perhaps Tomothy McVeigh was stupid enough to believe this was a logical response to Waco, and also a lot of lies about how the federal government worked.
I don’t suspect the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto by the way, but somebody in her entourage, who needed personal assurances from President Clinton to give the go-ahead. (Osama bn Laden, remember, had help from part of the Pakistani government)
President Clinton wanted this to take place to head a Congressional Committee investigation of the Waco fire. It didn’t completely head it off, but it did tone it down.
The day it hapenned everybody suspected Islamic fundamentalists – Oklahoma City was one of the locations – another was the Detroit area – that Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, leader of the World Trade Center bombers, had traveled to after the bombing. Oklahoma City was a center of activisim for them. They had people there.
But somehow, President Clinton instantly knew it had to do with Waco.
How could he have known that??
It is no explanation that he was proven right. He had no business knowing that, or even guessing that. He had no business going out on a limb like that, either.
And as McVeigh’s lawyer Stephen Jones, said “Others Unknown” were involved in building the bombing.
Terry Nichols had a key to safe deposit box in Hot Springs Arkansas,that there is no good explanation as to how he got it.
It was supposedly taken during a supposed robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer – except that neither Terry Nichols (who didn’t resemble the description given by the complaianant at all) not Timothy McVeigh (who was at a gun show in Ohio on the day the alleged roibbery took place)could have committed the robbery.
This safe deposit box being in Hot Springs, Arkansas, maybe some person not on the list of people who could get into it, or maybe somebody on the list with a false name, could have access to it. And get instructions or money.
The key to higher ups in the conspiracy led through Terry Nichols – Timothy McVeigh probabky didn’t know aoof any other persons. The government, by its theory of the case, closed pursuit of that off. And they were careful not to give him the death penalty.
President Clinton “predicted” that, of course, to reinforce belief that the Oklahoma bombing was done because of the waco fire, and make everyone ashamed and wary to investigate the Waco fire.
@TB :
Milhouse
“… the FBI building would have been a perfectly legitimate target, day care center or no day care center.”
No one loathes Bill Clinton or Janet Reno more than I do. What happened at Waco was nothing short of a government sanctioned mass murder. Only a monster thinks the proper response is to murder more innocent individuals.
McVeigh was a sick twisted individual.
So is Milhouse, if as his statement suggests, a day care is a legitimate target for the sick and twisted of the world. Calling it “collateral damage” and pretending it is the same as what sometimes occurs in a war is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to legitimize McVeigh.
Articulate my ass. It was and remains a mass murder. I call them like I see them. Calling Milhouse “full of shit” was being kind.
And all this happened, ltimately, to protect Jay William Buford, one of the planners and leaders of the Waco raid on February 28, 1993, who had personally murdered three of his own men with the intention of blaming Davod Koresh – except that Koresh had access to this new fangled device called a cell phone and was able to get a ceasefire.
Clinton had to protect Buford because Buford had been involved in the investigation of the first, unsuccessful attempt (by bombing) to murder Alice McArthur in 1982. (she was later murdered another way)
At least the whole series of crimes seems to have come to an end with the Oklahoma bombing, not counting maybe September 11th (Clinton was compromised and couldn’t destroy al Qaeda earlier.)
I think actually maybe that 1981.
Bottom line, we haven’t had another Waco since Oklahoma City.