The Evil That Men Praise

    I was reading about the impending execution of the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, and it reminded me of something and someone I had not thought about for a long, long time; the execution of an even deadlier terrorist twenty-five years earlier.

    Ask people under 40 if they know the name Timothy McVeigh, and chances are you will get more than a few shoulder shrugs. This isn’t by accident or any lack of interest on the part of Gen Z. This was intended.

    McVeigh was, as those over 40 will remember, the mastermind behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 167 people and injured more than 600 others. To this day, McVeigh’s act remains the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in the United States. Because there was a daycare center on the second floor of the building, 19 children were among the dead.

    McVeigh was arrested shortly after the bombing through the efforts of federal and local authorities, with the aid of civilians who helped in whatever way they could. Showing little remorse, he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1997. Four years later, on June 11, 2001, McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in a federal prison in Indiana. Though one of his appeals made it to the Supreme Court, his willingness to forgo others led to the relative swiftness of his execution. In contrast, Hasan, who murdered twelve soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, has been on death row pending appeals for thirteen years.

    The U.S. government has made a lot of mistakes over the years, but it handled McVeigh’s execution with wisdom. His name has been largely forgotten and that is not by accident. Although he served in the U.S. Army, he was correctly denied burial in a military cemetery. His body was cremated and given to his attorney, who stated that “the final destination of McVeigh’s remains would remain privileged forever.” In other words, his ashes lie in an anonymous location, so as never to become a shrine for like-minded people.

    Now, try to imagine some Star Trek-like parallel universe in which the opposite took place. Imagine a world where high schools and parks throughout the United States were named after McVeigh. Imagine a world in which elementary-school children staged plays honoring him and read schoolbooks that extol the virtues of bombing a government building. Imagine his portrait painted on buildings and his family receiving a substantial government pension for the rest of their lives because of what he did. The very idea of such a sick world sounds completely warped, right? One devoid of all decency.

    Do you think it’s possible that if such a demented program had been instituted here in the United States, there likely would have been more violent bombings like the one McVeigh engineered 31 years ago? Instead, except for the families and friends who lost loved ones on that horrible day, McVeigh’s name has been erased as much as possible.

    But here’s the very unsettling truth: Such an alternative world does exist, and it has existed for decades. The Martyrs Fund, a program that has incentivized terror attacks that have killed thousands, is the brainchild of the Palestinian Authority and continues to be a major part of its annual budget. Think of it like a budgetary line-item like food stamps for the poor and destitute; only really, REALLY evil. This is the same Palestinian Authority that receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States, the European Union, and Arab countries every year. Roughly $300,000,000, close to 10% of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget, pays terrorists and their families for violent acts against Israelis — and sometimes even non-Israelis.

    Taylor Force was a West Point graduate who served with distinction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. While visiting Israel with his business-school class from Vanderbilt University in 2016, Force was attacked and murdered by a knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist. His attacker, who was killed by Israeli police, was declared a “heroic martyr” by the Palestinian Authority — and the murderer’s family receives a payout in perpetuity.

    Depending on the seriousness of the crime, a Palestinian terrorist can receive up to $39,000 a year when the per capita GDP for Palestinians is $2,800. Add to that the glorification with painted portraits and the hero worship taught to children, and this program has become a magnet for terror. Given this ongoing incentive promoted by the Palestinian Authority, it’s a wonder there aren’t more acts of terror committed against Israelis.

    Here in America, it can be argued that the names of terrorists should be remembered in infamy, or simply voided for all time. One thing that is certain: high schools with Timothy McVeigh’s name and portrait emblazoned on the buildings would certainly have inspired more death.

    Perhaps names like McVeigh, Mohamed Atta (the leader of the 9/11 attack), Omar Mateen (who killed 49 people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando in 2016), Sirhan Sirhan (Robert F. Kennedy’s Palestinian assassin who has been in jail for fifty-eight years), and, come December, Nidal Hasan, should take their place in the ranks of the worst villains. 

    Or, these names should just be expunged forever. Either way, in a sane world, they should never…ever… be glorified.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com