What Manner of Evil Can This Be? : The hate and ignorance of callous cowards

Can one find any meaning in the blast that ripped away nearly half of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City? What political cause, what religious zeal, what personal grievance could possibly have benefited from killing so many civilians, including children playing in a day-care center? The heart aches at the stupefying hate and ignorance of the callous and--as President Clinton aptly put it--”evil cowards” who planted this terrible bomb and ran.

From the smoking rubble presumably will come clues to the motive. There was speculation, given the similarities to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, that the crime was a terrorist attack by Islamic extremists. Others noted that the explosion came on the second anniversary of federal agents’ deadly assault on the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Tex., 275 miles away. The Oklahoma City building housed the offices of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that coordinated the Texas raid.

Whatever the motive, this apparent spread of terrorism to the heartland, far from such centers of financial and political power as New York and Washington, is chilling. Who would have expected Oklahoma City, a quiet state capital of 450,000 where selling a mixed drink was illegal in most circumstances until the 1980s, would be the site of the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil? The bomb, thought to have weighed more than 1,000 pounds and to have been hidden in a vehicle parked in front of the federal building, was more powerful even than the one that killed six and injured hundreds at the World Trade Center.

Coming so soon after the deadly sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway and Wednesday’s apparent release of phosgene gas in the Yokohama subway, the Oklahoma explosion serves to underscore the vulnerability of modern cities. Though Los Angeles lacks the urban density of a Tokyo or a New York, it is no less vulnerable to terrorist massacres.

All manner of lessons will be drawn from the Oklahoma City outrage. Perhaps the most absurd comes from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, who saw a connection to the complaints of Congress members “who feed the ugly notion that federal employees are responsible for all this nation’s ills.”

Such embarrassments aside, until the perpetrators are convicted no far-reaching conclusions can be drawn. What is clear is that Americans, urban and rural alike, will have to get used to tougher security measures. (Some European countries have by now become accustomed to Draconian security at airports and to having no sidewalk trash cans in which bombs might be hidden.) Clearly, federal buildings at least will have to tighten security, especially those measures aimed at preventing car bombings. Authorities around the nation, including in Orange County, were properly cautious after Wednesday’s bombing, temporarily evacuating some federal buildings after bomb threats were received.

For now, the bombers have gained what they almost certainly wanted--a measure of fear and confusion. But these feelings are temporary. Americans cherish their rights of movement and of access to government agencies--rights that ironically make it easier for terrorists who would destroy their freedoms. We will not be cowed.