Oklahoma City

Today, we pause to reflect on the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and what it means to us.

It's unfortunate that the tenth anniversary of this attack should come on the same day as the raising of a new pope. Looking around online, I have trouble finding anyone who has much to say about the bombing. This article, also from the Washington Post, is the most thoughtful treatment of the anniversary that I've read.

The fact is Americans have struggled for a decade with what to make of this event. It's unusual circumstances-that the bombing was committed by an American, an adherent to racist militia ideology, that the bombing ocurred in Oklahoma City of all places-make it difficult for people to process. The event does not fit neatly with our belief that terrorism is only committed by Muslims, or our once innocent belief that the worst acts of terrorism only take place overseas, to others. And our measured if fading consideration of the bombing was largely cut short 6 years later, with the 9/11 attacks.

In light of those attacks, it's probably hard to remember our initial reaction to the bombing. But as with most people the bombing made a profound impression on me at the time. I reacted initially with sadness at the destruction and loss of life, and puzzlement that someone should would want to blow up a building in Oklahoma City, where most people would agree that little of international import goes on. And I do remember the security measures taken shortly afterwards; looking around you could find concrete barricades quickly erected in front of both government buildings and private business in and around Dallas. I remember discussions concerning the additional security steps that would need to be taken, and to what extent it was appropriate to react to what many viewed as an anamoly. Some definitive changes were made that have lasted until this day, but the shock of the event had already faded from public consciousness even before the 9/11 attacks.

Weigh that response to the response to the 9/11 attacks, and the differences are profound. It's difficult to exaggerate the effect that the attacks have had on us. 9/11 has settled into the American psyche; it hangs over us like a cloud, influencing everday discussion. It's a constant tool of the right and the left in the political arena. Writers attempt to deal with it through literature. It's brought us war and occupation in two countries that continues to this day.

The response differs of course because the difference in the scale of the attacks is tremendous. 168 people died in Oklahoma that day. Nearly 3,000 died on 9/11. The target of the bombing was a federal building in Oklahoma, in a relatively sleepy city on the plains. The terrorists of 9/11 struck at some of the greatest symbols of the American economy, in the heart of our most international city, and would have struck more had they not been foiled.

But the response also differs because the 9/11 attacks comport more with an apocalyptic view of the world that floats in the American sub-conscious. Nearly all of us, to one extent or another, harbor the dire fear that dark foreigners, Muslisms, will strike in such ways as to kill thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of us at a time. They are foreigners, alien to us, of a religion with which we share a history of conflict, and many of them hate us. The terrorists of 9/11 were just what we feared.

In contrast, the terrorists behind Oklahoma City were...us. Hence, despite the horror of the event, there were no calls to racially profile young American men. No calls to round up the members of violent militia movements and deport them to other countries. No immediate outcry that we should make war on the perpetrators, or on anyone, to avenge the dead. No banning of Ryder trucks from the roads, no color-coded alerts, no duct tape, no intellectual discourse about the conflict of culture between us and the members of the militia movements. Instead, we've been left scratching our heads, sad, angry...and steadily forgetting.