Oklahoma: the violence behind the violence

The bomb which destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City on 19 April, killing at least 80, has widely been cited as marking Middle America's "loss of innocence". DAVID MCREYNOLDS considers other aspects of the worst terrorist act on US soil in modern history.

We wiped out North Korea in the `50s. We wiped out vast sections of Vietnam and Cambodia without regret and often without even our knowledge (the Cambodian carpet bombing was for some time "secret" from everyone but the Cambodians on whom the bombs were falling, and Congress, which secretary of state Henry Kissinger didn't feel needed to be informed). We brought Iraq to the level of a third world country. We sent bombers over Tripoli in a vain effort to kill Muammar Gadaffi--killing his daughter instead. Do I need even to start the list of US crimes in supporting the Contras, in Guatemala, in El Salvador?

It isn't "God's judgement" that innocent people got bombed in Oklahoma--it is a direct result of a society which for a half century has legitimised violence, used it unremittingly in foreign policy, created a vast pool of young men who fought in those wars and returned home with drug problems, bad memories, terrifying nightmares, and no jobs. You cannot at one level prepare for the nuclear destruction of the world and at another level express surprise at killing in the ghettos or, in this case, in Oklahoma.

The destruction of Waco, two years to the day before this carnage, was even less excusable because it was carried out by educated, responsible Federal officials. Janet Reno should have been fired for ordering the attack on Waco. There have been other federal shootouts in which it is clear the federal government was in the wrong, and those of us who support gun control, should not be silent in such cases simply because those getting shot at are our political enemies.

The usual answers of the left are simply not good enough unless they include a frank discussion of the problem of militarism and its impact on our society. We have gloried in our military power. And it has, in Oklahoma, mocked us, killing our children. Now we are reminded of the children in other lands killed by our government. For Clinton to talk of new laws, of being sure we will find and punish the guilty and kill them, is to learn nothing. Of course we need to arrest and try those who may be guilty. And we need to be damn sure we follow the rules of evidence--no one should be railroaded. But the deeper question is whether our own political community can absorb what happens when a nation is committed, at the highest level, to militarism, and has used that without hesitation in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Central America-- not in self-defence, but to defend the corporate interests of a small handful of people at the top.

These, I think, are some of the points that need to be made as we should join fully in expressions of grief for those who died in this most pointless blast.