Common Sense is a commodity which has been most lacking in the media and public discussion of the Murrah Building Bombing. Let's put a lid on the emotional spin, and look at the event in a logical light of Common Sense.
First of all, who invented this seemingly arbitrary distinction between war and terrorism? After all, bombing government buildings is an everyday occurrence during times of war. Civilian and industrial buildings are also blown into dust and rubble just as regularly. Just ask any Kosovar, Iraqi, Viet Namese, Korean, or any surviving citizen of any of the dozens of countries the US and other nations have been bombing in the past century.
Is it just that a military action directed against us is terrorism, while military action directed against anyone else is war? Does it really matter to the targets, the buildings and occupants, who delivered the bomb? Is military action against civilians OK when government employees commit it, but a horrific act of terrorism when a civilian does the same thing?
Keep in mind that here in the US, the Constitution is quite specific about who is allowed to exercise military action and under which circumstances, and what authority the Federal Government is allowed to exercise over civilians. It is really quite limited.
To summarize how the Constitution allows the US to go to war, troops may be called into action only by an act of Congress declaring war (Article 1, section 8, clause 10). Many will claim that the War Powers Act of 1933 gave the President the authority to declare war and utilize emergency war powers without the consent of Congress, but that act is grotesquely unconstitutional, for the Constitution has never given Congress the power to assign its enumerated power to another branch of government.
So let us conclude that military action is war when it is properly and legally declared by Congress, and that any other military action is terrorism. That's fair and reasonable, isn't it (unless you're Bill Clinton fabricating your own perverted mis-interpretation of a "living document" Constitution)? Yes, and it's also the highest law of the land, for the Constitution says exactly how war is declared. If Congress does not declare war, the action is not war; it is terrorism.
Therefore, nearly every military action by the US since World War II would qualify as terrorism, not war, and be criminal acts by those who ordered and executed it, since the Congress had not declared war against any of the nations which were invaded and/or attacked. This is rational, since the Founders intended that we stay out of the internal affairs of other nations, reserving the declaration of war for only the most dire of circumstances. Congress, subject to the checks and balances of biennial elections, was accountable to the public for their actions, including declarations of war.
Many thousands of innocent civilians have died at the hands of US and other nations' military bombings. These people were the identical "Collateral Damage" as were the victims of the Murrah Building bombing. "Collateral Damage" is the correct and generally accepted military term for civilians killed in the course of a military action. Remember the video tape footage of the Kosovar civilians blown away as their train crossed a railroad bridge that was targeted and destroyed by a US "smart" bomb. "Collateral Damage". (If that damned bomb was so smart, why didn't it know not to kill civilians?) (That's a rhetorical / smartass question).
According to a Swedish researcher, approximately 170 Million people died at the hands of their own (mostly communist) governments during the 1900s. The magnitude of mass murder and destruction by governments over the course of a the last century makes one measly building and 168 casualties pale trivial by comparison. So where's the Justice for those victims? So where's the outrage against all of these crimes of terrorism by the governments?
The silence is deafening.
Doc. June 13, 2001
| JUSTICE IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM |
by Sidney Smith <sidsmith4@usa.net>
"The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept. This
is called using the conquered foe to augment one's strength."
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"A live prisoner is worth a thousand dead hombres."
Col. David Hackworth (U.S.Army, Ret.), About Face
One can certainly understand the urge to kill Timothy McVeigh who considered himself at war with the United States Government. Some of the very best people in the world work at federal courthouses -- good, decent, and solid people going through life the best they can. These people are not pretentious or part of some smug intelligentsia. They are heroic people who want to raise families, serve their country, and do their best to make the system work -- without receiving any fanfare. So when you look at the carnage and suffering brought on by McVeigh's April 19, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, who would not feel the urge to slice his throat under the right circumstances?
But, to survive, a nation must do what is right. Placing aside the endless debate among theologians and jurists as to the value of the death penalty, military experts have told us that we have entered a new era of global revolutionary war -- one that ultimately will affect our approach to the criminal justice system. As Bernard Fall pointed out in Street Without Joy, revolutionary war is one where irregular methods of warfare are used to propagate an ideology. And, as McVeigh's act of terrorism foreshadowed, an individual in this day and age soon will have the power to unleash a weapon of mass destruction on American soil. All it takes is a vial of anthrax.
Once you understand that we live in a completely new era of global revolutionary
war, one then wonders if the United States Government best served the people,
including future generations, by executing the terrorist Timothy McVeigh.
As those who understand revolutionary war have taught us, a prisoner becomes
a valuable asset because he can offer information to the
sovereign nation. Had McVeigh lived, he ultimately could have
offered hard information about terrorists working within the United States.
More importantly, he could have revealed psychological insights into the
mindset of the antihero terrorist -- such information that could help protect
us in the daunting years to come. Now that he is dead, one
can only speculate, but perhaps as the years passed, he would have seen
the horror of his ways and overcome the antihero within by telling the
world never to do what he did and thus dissuade some antihero who was plotting.
But we have snuffed out the opportunity to have McVeigh augment our strength,
to use the words of Sun Tzu.
Just as disturbing, McVeigh's execution undermines the people's perception of the United States Government as a sovereign imbued with the moral law. According to Sun Tzu in the Art of War, a sovereign imbued with the moral law is one where the people are in accord with the leaders and, in fact, will sacrifice for the leaders. And Tzu emphasized that a sovereign imbued with the moral law will win a conflict. But now that McVeigh is dead, the US Government will be placed on trial, typically by those who want to tear down our institutions. And if documents surface that show that the US Government has acted improperly, then the entire world focus of the media will shift away from the carnage of the bomb blast and to the actions of the United States Government, in particular the FBI and US Justice Department. So those who want to destroy us can say, "McVeigh had a point. That's why the Feds killed him." Some antiheroes may even see him as some type of political martyr as his execution receives more and more attention and the carnage of his acts receives less and less. As a result, the immeasurable suffering from the bombing blast recedes in the consciousness of the national psyche when, instead, it should always remain in our heart and soul.
If the United States Government had recognized that we now live in the
age of revolutionary war, perhaps it would have shown a different type
of compassion for the relatives of the victims of the bombing. But for
McVeigh to have spent the rest of his life in the hell of prison, the relatives
of the victims would have had to sacrifice the very understandable urge
to avenge the loss of loved ones. And they would have had to sacrifice
this instinct for the good of the country. It is impossible to overcome
this
instinct without the compassion of the people as well as the recognition
of their heroism.
Under this approach, we should honor the relatives of the victims of the Oklahoma bombing as we honor warriors who sacrificed themselves in a war. They sacrificed their natural instinct to kill McVeigh to protect us in this age of terrorism. In other words, they become the ultimate heroes -- part of them died in order to help us. No greater sacrifice can be asked. The United States Government could have lead the way in showing them our thanks
The right circumstances to slice McVeigh's throat? When either
McVeigh or the people of the US are at stake to die. One or the other.
That time passed with the rental truck blast. Kill the antihero in
the name of the people if he cannot be taken alive. But after the
antihero is in custody of the sovereign, do not execute him. In revolutionary
war, never give an adversary a justifiable criticism of the sovereign.
As Col. Hackworth wrote, in war, a live prisoner is just as good as a thousand
dead soldiers. Sun Tzu would have never strapped McVeigh to a t-shaped
gurney and then killed him before the world. And Sun Tzu wrote the
book on the art of war. Our government must always remain focused
on the art of justice.