American Militarism and the McVeigh Tapes

Timothy McVeigh had two primary defenses for committing the worst act of terrorism on American soil before 9.11, the Oklahoma City bombing 15 years ago this month. Both justifications are fully embedded the American tradition of militarism.

Raised in a self-described “military mindset,” and trained to kill in the first Iraq war, McVeigh’s first and last rationalization was that he was essentially carrying out a military mission. His second rationale was concisely stated not long before his execution: “ I realize my nature as a human being; and humans kill.”

The first Gulf War taught McVeigh, who "looked like the kid down the block," as many Americans said at the time, “the cruelty of the real world and the way things worked.”

The MSNBC special, “The McVeigh Tapes,” which subjected viewers to two-hours of the cold outpouring of evil that the mastermind of the Oklahoma City bombing gave to Buffalo News reporters before he was put to death by lethal injection in 2001, was meant to dissuade others with similar views.

After all, there has been an explosive growth in militia groups in the United States since Barack Obama was elected, and the climate of rage against the federal government is even worse in some parts of the country then it was in the mid-‘90’s.

Many people at Tea Party rallies wave signs quoting Thomas Jefferson, just as McVeigh had the words emblazoned on the back of the T-shirt he wore that fateful day: "The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

So the effect of “The McVeigh Tapes” may be just the opposite of what Rachel Maddow and MSNBC intended. Undoubtedly this brilliant mass murderer, this killer of children and maimer of adults, comes off as rational, even heroic to the life-hating, anti-government crazies that have proliferated in the USA since Obama became president.

McVeigh came back to the realities of American culture from the first Gulf war and found the deadness here intolerable after the excitement and ‘success’ of George Bush Senior's war in Iraq. In fact he had become famous in his unit for a ‘kill shot’ that snuffed out two Iraqi soldiers at once.

Bullied in high school, McVeigh believed his Oklahoma City bombing “mission was noble,” just as he had believed, as most people still do, that the first invasion of Iraq was noble.

Timothy McVeigh believed it until he saw that he “was wearing the bullies shoes in the Gulf,” according to his biographer. (If that was true of Gulf War I under ‘the good Bush,’ what does that make Gulf War II under the ‘bad Bush,’ and Afghanistan under Saint Barack?)

“They were human beings who just spoke a different language,” McVeigh said of the civilians he saw killed in the first Gulf War. But the twisted logic of ‘collateral damage’ infected his brain, and he went on to kill 168 'civilians' in his own personal war, a score of which were children.

“There is no way they can beat me by executing me,” McVeigh boasted, because “my objective was state-assisted suicide.” Driving away from the horror he unleashed without a license plate on his getaway car, McVeigh the military hero wanted to be caught--just not in Oklahoma City, where people would have torn him from limb t limb.

Expressing a nihilism that millions of people feel in this land, McVeigh cut to the chase shortly before the State gave him his wish: “This earth holds nothing for me. I’m ready to move on...death is not a penalty; it’s an escape.”

Taken altogether, that’s the best argument against capital punishment I’ve ever heard.

Americans love the ‘isolated incident’ apologia. When the Columbine high school killers went on their rampage, four years plus one day after McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building, it too was seen as another ‘isolated incident.’

Now, American high schools live under permanent lockdown. And a creeping militarism, embodied in the Eleventh Commandment (“Thou Shalt Not Say Anything Against Our Troops”), has taken hold in the land.

Like many others, especially on the Right these days but also on the Left, McVeigh became obsessed with conspiracy theories. The illusion that some group somewhere is in control of nearly everything bad that goes on in the world gives rise to the half-truth that “the US government is taking over the whole world,” and the delusion that “they’re trying to take people’s guns away.”

It’s not that big of a leap from there to “killing for the greater good,” as McVeigh put it. After all, isn’t that what governments do, in the name of national security and “wars of choice?”

McVeigh was not the exception to the nihilistic and militaristic mindset that has taken hold in America, but a logical expression of it.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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