I keep reading about Timothy McVeigh and how evil he is. I keep reading that these media people can t understand how he got the way he is, and how could he kill all those women and children.
Well surprise surprise, we, our government, made him that way. Wake up, people. What do you think we do when we train our young people for war? Timothy McVeigh came home from the Persian Gulf war a hero with a Bronze Star for killing people. His side, our side, bombed the city of Bagdad and killed lots of women and children. Remember the thousands we killed on that highway? Ever talk to a vet who watched as we buried thousands of Republican Guards alive, in those bunkers in the desert?
Timothy McVeigh came home to a America that was proud of what he and his army, our army, did. Timothy McVeigh bought into the story every vet gets that we were in the right and those women and children that we had to kill were "collateral damage." Sorry, they just had to die for the greater good.
Timothy McVeigh came back to an America that was killing women and children at Waco. An America that was using snipers to kill women and children at Ruby Ridge. An America that was and is trying to disarm its people. An America that wouldn t believe thousands of the troops from McVeigh s army when they said that they were sick. I believe that he wanted to fight for the America that he believed in. He fought for that America in the way he was taught by our government.
You and I can correctly say that what Timothy McVeigh did in bombing that federal building was a sick act, but for us to say we don t know why he did it is delusional. I am a Vietnam Vet and I saw lots and lots of dead women, children, and old people who were collateral damage inflicted by us to "win the war." I asked at our VFW and, yes, those in Korea and WW2 saw lots and lots of our killing of women and children in order to "win the war."
Americans have no idea what happens in a war. We are lucky in that respect. But we should never kid ourselves and think that our wars are clean, by-the-book wars. Also, we should never think that war doesn t have a very strong impact on those we send to fight them. When we as a country send thousands of men and now women to another country to kill, those same young people have to come back and live with us, under different rules than we have taught them.
Timothy McVeigh is, I believe, a cost we pay for going to war. "What comes around, goes around."
June 1, 2001
