‘Collateral Damage’ to Our Soul

In the bloodless jargon of the military, they call the wartime loss of civilian life “collateral damage.”

The term does not apply to the carnage in Oklahoma City, since civilians, after all, were the intended targets of the bombers. But another sort of collateral damage must be acknowledged: the damage done to America’s view of itself as a nation inhabited by people who believe in our system of government and know that respect for our laws means respect for each other.

When those terrorists ended the lives of dozens and shattered the lives of so many more, they also blew apart a much-cherished image of the American political psyche.

On Friday night, ABC news broadcast a clip of a speech by Bo Gritz, the former Green Beret who has become the poster boy for the extremist survivalist movement, composed of those who have excused themselves from civilization and who describe themselves as living “off the grid.” The Oklahoma City blast, Gritz said, was a “Rembrandt, a masterpiece of science and art put together.”

To those of us who place our faith in the system and believe that most everyone else does too, this kind of thinking inspires revulsion. Most of us believe--with varying degrees of idealism--that if we don’t like the way this country’s headed, we can kick the bums out of office and fix things. But now we have come up hard against a rude truth: Our faith in the rule of law is considered hopelessly naive by whole bunches of people who feel under attack by government “intrusion” in their lives.

Like a deep, icy lake, the American political consciousness has periodic squalls across a mostly placid surface. But down, way down in the darkness, hideous creatures lurk.

*

The bomb in Oklahoma City brought that fearsome revelation home with a bang.

And we have been reminded of some things we would rather not have to think about: For starters, whoever built that bomb is apparently not a lone psycho. There are networks of anarchists out there, spinning their hatreds in the webs of the Internet, stockpiling their weapons and spewing all over talk radio their paranoid conspiracy theories about the “new world order,” which involves variations on the theme that the feds are in cahoots with the United Nations to deprive Americans of their liberties.

This lawlessness is a frightening expression of a quality we all possess, and which emerges in times of crisis--the impulse for revenge. And so a second unsettling part of the bomb’s aftermath is that so many of the rest of us--we “normal,” law-abiding citizens--can instantly, in our rage, metamorphose into hateful, spiteful vigilantes.

You could understand the fierce emotions of the people who gathered to scream obscenities and shake their fists at bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh after his arrest on Friday. But how to explain the way people scurried to the Federal Building in Westwood on Sunday to vent their anger at poor David Iniguez, who may be a deserter, but who (the FBI says) is not tied to the Oklahoma city disaster?

And what of the Jordanian-born U.S. citizen, Ibrahim Ahmad, who had the terrible luck to be a man between 20 and 40 with an Arab-sounding surname bound from Oklahoma City for Jordan on the day of the blast?

Even as the citizens of Oklahoma were doing what Americans do so well in times of crisis--pulling together to help in rescue efforts, to give blood, to comfort the afflicted--Ahmad told reporters that people--neighbors, one presumes--were dumping trash on his lawn and spitting on his wife.

And common decency falls victim to the terror, another bit of the collateral damage.

*

I got the tiniest inkling of how it must feel to be a victim of this kind of collateral damage on Friday morning, when I phoned an auto repair shop to announce that my car was en route by tow truck.

“Spell your name?” said the mechanic.

“A-B-C-A-R,” I began.

“Hmmm. Change a couple letters and it sounds like A-R-A-B,” he said.

“ Excuse me? “

My God, I thought, is this the price all people with Arab-sounding surnames have to pay?

If there is indeed something that can be called the American character, something that is tested in times of crisis, I’d prefer to believe its highest tenet is respect for democracy.

We condemn the terrorists who kill and maim with such hatred. But we need to examine the darker parts of our own souls, to see what we are capable of, to see how close a calamity like this can push us over the edge into the lawlessness we loathe.

We fight our darker impulses the only way we can: with renewed faith in our system of government, in our laws and, ultimately, in each other.

* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.