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Terrorists cannot defeat resilient

By Daily Bruin Staff

April 16, 1996 9:00 p.m.

Tuesday, April 16, 1996

We must hang on to idea that tragedy is often filled with acts
of courage and compassion solidarity

On the morning of April 19, 1995, Terry Nichols and Timothy
McVeigh, two former U.S. Army soldiers who served their country in
the Gulf War, allegedly packed a large rented moving truck with
4,800 pounds of explosives, parked it in front of the Murrah
Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City and blasted a hole through
the heart and soul of America. One year later, the story is still
too painful to remember: 168 lives lost, including 16 children and
one nurse working in a rescue mission.

Within hours, President Clinton initiated the glacial process of
national bereavement and recovery by denouncing the bombing as "an
attack against innocent children and defenseless citizens … an
act of cowardice and … evil." Clinton was right: It was an act of
great cowardice and even greater evil.

But it was more than that, and almost immediately, individuals
from all walks of life began using words and ideas to help
ameliorate their feelings of outrage and betrayal; to impose order
upon the chaos and to find meaning amid the tangled debris of such
senseless human carnage and loss.

Sociologists posited that it symbolized, in sharp relief, the
death of the American heartland; criminologists insisted that it
represented the rising tide of violence in American society and the
concomitant decline in public trust placed in our prosecutorial and
governmental agencies; historians contended that it was about the
continuing drama of U.S. democracy and the historic struggle to
balance individual civil liberties against interests of national
security; and legalists argued that it was about nothing less than
the quest for truth and justice.

So where do we stand one year later? Yes, the dead have been
buried and the rubble cleared, but have our wounds truly healed?
Our nightmares ­ have they subsided? Have we found an
effective means of combating terrorism ­ both domestic and
abroad ­ or is it still rearing its despicable head
unrestrained? And what about the families and friends of the dead?
How are they? Have they picked up the pieces of their lives or are
they still laying in ruin like so many spindles of shattered
glass?

No, their lives, I’m afraid, will never be the same. None of
ours will be. The scars will never heal. The outrage will always
remain. But, still, hope persists. We cannot erase the events of
that horrible day, but we can go on with our lives. And indeed, it
seems that we have. Just like the lichen that grows on the decaying
remains of fallen trees, life has found its way.

The human spirit, you see, is too resilient to be defeated by
the diabolical schemes of desperate men. Whether it be Oklahoma
City, Lockerbie, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, the terrorist’s cowardly
attempt to blow apart the basic fabric of society at the seams will
never prevail. Why is this? Perhaps it is because the terrorist has
no sense of what it means to be human.

Driven by his own raging demons of abandonment and despair, the
terrorist maliciously attacks all that he yearns for but will
forever lack: human compassion, attachment and love. Surely, he
does not know the meaning of these things, otherwise how could he
commit his heinous act? No, the terrorist relinquished all claims
to humanity the day he embraced violence as his creed. All he can
hope to know now is the foul and putrid stench of his own twisted,
shit-encrusted soul.

Yet, I wonder sometimes whether he ever questions his
predicament. To deaden his pain, has he deceived himself into
believing that he is the victor? Or does he know, like all of us,
that it is he who will inevitably lose in the end? Surely he must
see himself for what he is: the fool who tried to amass power
through hatred, only to find in himself all that he despises and
tried to escape ­ misery, rejection, cowardice and scorn.

But enough about the loser when there are so many heroes to
speak of. After all, who can forget the (Pulitzer prize-winning)
image of that courageous young firefighter walking away from the
scene, protectively cradling the blood-stained body of that
innocent dying child? And how can we forget the pictures of all
those selfless ordinary Americans who waited patiently for days to
donate all that they could ­ their time, their possessions,
even their blood?

What is it about disastrous national events that elicit such
acts of human unity and valor? It’s difficult to say. But on April
19, as our nation comes together to mourn the one-year anniversary
of the Oklahoma City bombing, perhaps some of us can find in those
images a small shard of hope on which to cling: that the spirit of
human compassion and solidarity will inevitably triumph over even
the most base and vile acts of human evil and destruction.

It may not sound like much in moments as grave as these, but it
may just be all that we have.

Evans is an 1989 alumna and graduate student in history at UC
Berkeley, and works in the UCLA history department this quarter.
Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.

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