SAN ANTONIO, Texas, June 11 -- Timothy McVeigh's fervor was probably no different from those of Islamic fundamentalists who blow themselves up along with their victims, as one did outside a Tel Aviv nightclub a little more than a week ago.
In many ways McVeigh, the convicted bomber of the Oklahoma City federal building who killed 168 people, including 19 children, on April 19, 1995, did the same. Only in McVeigh's case it took him six years, and a lot of media attention, to die.
During the years I spent in Lebanon as a correspondent in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I covered more car bombings than I can remember, or at times really want to remember.
Some of these horrible bombings were huge. There were explosions that could be felt clear across town and that took out entire buildings, killing hundreds of people, much like McVeigh's bomb in Oklahoma City. The American embassy comes to mind, as does the U.S. Marines barracks attack that left 241 servicemen dead. And the bombing of a building that housed French troops that killed dozens, and left others buried under the rubble for days.
Then there was a building that housed offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization, where a moon-like crater was left in the middle of the road by the explosion. There was another bomb that killed a number of innocent people when it was placed outside another PLO office. There was a bomb at the French embassy and another at the Iraqi embassy. And there were dozens more.
Others bombs were smaller ones that killed, some would say, "only" a handful. And at other times the would-be killer was apprehended before their awful acts could be carried out.
Rushing to the scenes of these bombings with other journalists was like walking into a sudden hell. One street was peaceful and calm but around the corner, the act of a single madman would tear apart the lives of hundreds of people, forever.
Arriving on these bombings, I would mingle with rescuers as they went about their grim tasks of searching for survivors and removing the dead, the dying and the wounded.
Amidst the wailing sirens of ambulances and fire trucks, gunmen shooting in the air to keep onlookers away I would report and photograph these insane scenes from another world.
The carnage is hard to describe. There would be bits of human arms, legs, and heads, the charred and tortured remains of human torsos being lifted from the rubble. There would be the weeping of terrified and anxious relatives looking for loved ones, and then finding them, or what was left of them. It is still hard, almost 20 years later, to describe these events.
Confronted with such realities, different people react in different ways. I remember one particular bombing where one of the rescuers seemed to have lost all reason. He picked up a hand -- just a hand -- that was severed at the wrist, and ran as fast as he could to a hospital holding the hand in his own. I have no idea what he was thinking at the time.
I remember walking away from many of these events feeling anger and hate for these anonymous monsters who carried out such atrocious attacks. I also remember thinking that if someone would place a gun in my hand and point me in the direction of the perpetrators of these attacks, I would gladly pull the trigger.
Yet, looking at the media coverage of Timothy McVeigh's death sentence Monday, I wonder if this was the right thing to do. Is this not, in fact, what McVeigh would have wanted after all?
Remember, McVeigh looked at himself as a martyr of sorts, much like the fundamentalists in the Middle East do. McVeigh was, after all, on a jihad of sorts, and giving him all this media attention only serves his purpose all the more.
While I understand the feeling of those who wanted his death, the jury is still out on the pros and cons of the death penalty.
I am certain it would have hurt McVeigh far more to spend the rest of his life in a jail cell, having to rethink his act over and over.
McVeigh was 33 years old, and unrepentant, when he died Monday morning. Twenty years from now, as a 53-year-old man, slowly wasting away in a federal penitentiary, he would have had plenty of time to reflect on his actions of that fateful April 19.NEWLN:
