Political Science: Patriotism and Terrorism: What makes Timothy McVeigh a terrorist?

Political Science: Patriotism and Terrorism: What makes Timothy McVeigh a terrorist?

Introduction

This country's most notorious home grown terrorist took up residence in Kingman, Arizona, where he plotted to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. And, blow it up, he did.  On Wednesday, April 19, 1995 McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck packed with 7,000 pounds of explosive in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  McVeigh walked way from the truck, and at 9:02 AM the truck exploded destroying the front of the building and killing 168 people including 19 children. (Jones, 2001)

Timothy James McVeigh, whose parents met in a Catholic bowling league was baptized in April, 1968, and confirmed at Good Shepherd Catholic church in Lockport, N.Y on May 20, 1985. On April 11, 2001, he was anointed with the last rites and then executed by the government of the United States.

In between, he murdered 168 fellow humans in the most heinous terrorist attack on American soil.

What produced such a fellow mortal?

Buffalo news reporters Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck set out to find out. Their efforts resulted in a fascinating book American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Michel and Herbeck, with unparalleled access to McVeigh's Lockport, N.Y. neighbourhood have produced an excellent reportorial job on the subject. They crawl all over him. We learn of his family trips to Toronto, (35), his computer skills and his deep anger at his mother ("a whore and a bitch") for the family break up.

McVeigh at graduation is a classic, unmotivated floater, laid-back and directionless. His ambition: "Take it as it comes, buy a Lamborghini. California girls." He drifts, drops out of college ("I know more than the teachers") and, like a lot of dropouts with some ability, is intellectually slovenly and unbalanced in his reading.

An affable young man, he finds himself hooked on the gun culture and survivalist literature. He falls in love with his new bible, The Turner Diaries, a racist novel which he had discovered in the pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

This bizarre underground classic culminates in a spectacular orgy of violence. The besieged protagonist, driven to fury against a state intent on the usurpation of individual rights, wreaks havoc on FBI headquarters in Washington. His method of revenge? A truck bomb.

The book is full of incremental evidence that McVeigh is the shadow side of the All-American boy. The authors however never seem to connect the dots, never allow themselves to draw Rap Brown's familiar conclusion that "Violence is as American as apple pie."

McVeigh spent thousands of dollars on guns, became a prolific marksman and with a series of dead-end jobs, discovered the perfect match for his obsession with guns and survivalism: the army: "McVeigh's impressions of military life had been formed by the action movies of the Reagan era, First Blood, the first of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo adventures and Missing in Action, with Chuck Norris as the hero rescuing prisoners of ...