Government uses execution to rally support for penalty

Wobbekind is a second-year psychobiology student and a member of
the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the International
Socialist Organization.

By Amber Wobbekind

Who is Timothy McVeigh? Most people would answer that he is that
sadistic, messed-up, psychotic sociopath who took the lives of 168
innocent workers and children in Oklahoma City. However, these
people do not generally know much about McVeigh’s history,
how he became the monster that the news media paints him to be or
why the government is so anxious to put him to death.

We need to understand that McVeigh acted out with the violence
he learned in the U.S. Army against a government he felt was acting
unjustly.

  Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin Though I do not
support McVeigh’s actions in any way, I do not think he
deserves to be put to death, because he merely masks the barbarism
that is the institution of the death penalty.

McVeigh was not born to kill; when he was two, he did not have a
preference for AK-47s over normal children’s toys. As a teen,
he was not sitting around making pipe bombs in his garage or paying
homage to Satan in his basement.

McVeigh’s view of the world and of the role of government
in his life changed drastically while serving in the Gulf War.
McVeigh had a gruesome job manning the Bradley trucks that drove
over trenches of Iraqi soldiers and literally buried surrendering
soldiers alive.

McVeigh was, at first, opposed to the killing of Iraqi soldiers.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” after his sentencing
trial, he commented, “I thought … what right did I have to
come over to this person’s country and kill him? How did he
ever transgress against me?”

But he soon learned to be a killer. In a letter to his mother
during the war, McVeigh wrote, “After the first one, it got
easier.” He would later describe the deaths of 19 children in
the Oklahoma City bombing as “collateral damage,” a
term used by the United States in Desert Storm for civilian
casualties. For the killings of Iraqis, McVeigh was commended; he
came home a decorated soldier with high aspirations of joining the
Green Berets.

McVeigh, however, did not make the cut into the specialized
forces. He was disappointed and simultaneously coming to grips with
his role in Desert Storm. McVeigh became angry and
disillusioned.

Over the course of two years, two events, to McVeigh, clearly
displayed the injustice committed by the U.S. government and led
him to take action. The first event was the 1992 killing by a
federal agent of the wife and son of Randy Weaver during a standoff
in Idaho. The federal agent responsible for the deaths was
dismissed of manslaughter charges by a judge and never reprimanded.
McVeigh saw the ordeal as a gross injustice.

The second event that set him off was the 1993 siege at Waco
which caused the death of 70 Branch Davidians. McVeigh described
his attitude to “60 Minutes” as “shaken,
disillusioned, angered that that could happen in this country,
where our core beliefs are freedom and liberty. And what did you do
to these people? You deprived them of life, liberty and
property.”

Thus, the angered McVeigh acted out against the government in
the way he was taught in Desert Storm: he mass-murdered innocent
people.

In his defense at his sentencing hearing, McVeigh quoted from
Justice Louis Brandeis in the 1928 Supreme Court wiretapping case
Olmstead vs. the United States. “Our government is the
potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches
the whole people by its example. If the government becomes a
lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to
become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

In his “60 Minutes” interview, when asked about
violent acts against the government, he said, “If government
is the teacher, violence would be an acceptable option.”

Now, six years after the blast, millions of Americans anxiously
await the execution of the beast who killed 168 people. Perhaps the
most important ones are those in Oklahoma City, the family members
of those killed, and the 500 others injured in the blast.

Attorney General John Ashcroft worked very hard to get a
closed-circuit television so that the victims could watch the
execution live and “begin the healing process,” but
those who want to watch are actually a very small minority getting
the majority of press attention.

In fact, of all the family members sent letters asking if they
would want to view the execution, a large majority didn’t
even respond. Those with the greatest interest in McVeigh’s
killing are not the victims or families, but members of the U.S.
government, looking for public support for the death penalty.

In an interview, Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed in the
blast, called McVeigh’s execution a “staged political
event.” Our government wants the citizens to rally in support
of the death penalty because it kills reprehensible people like
McVeigh. This single execution has become a major justification for
the existence of the death penalty in our society.

Few can find reason to disagree. They say, “Oh, yes, the
death penalty is doing good things. We must need it.” The
truth though, is that McVeigh is nowhere near representative of the
majority of people on death row.

Most people on death row ended up there for a reason: they
didn’t have enough money to pay for their lives. Minorities
and poor people disproportionately occupy death row. They
couldn’t afford the top lawyers like O.J. Simpson could and
got the shoddy, overworked and underpaid court-appointed public
defenders.

As Welch puts it, “With the exception of McVeigh and maybe
one or two others, we only kill the easy ones in this country. And
by easy ones, I mean the poor ones.” Thus, support for the
death penalty also means support for unjust punishment of the poor
and minorities in this country. Timothy McVeigh is most certainly
death row’s atypical inmate.

McVeigh will be the first person to undergo a federal execution
since 1963. Most inmates on death row are executed after an average
of 11 years. McVeigh is being executed in just over six years from
the original date of the crime. McVeigh did not kill one or two
people; he killed 168. When it comes to the death penalty, we need
to realize that McVeigh is far from the rule; he is the
exception.

McVeigh was taught violence by his own government in the Gulf
War. When he saw governmental injustices, he felt it was his job to
act. Now, he must pay the ultimate price. However, that price is
not being paid back to the families, or even to society. That price
is being paid in the interest of a political campaign to support a
barbarian, classist, racist institution known as the death
penalty.

McVeigh is being used as a poster boy for a population he far
from represents; his death is being used as justification for
racism in our institutions and in our society. For these reasons,
we should all oppose McVeigh’s execution.