Article: Common Wonders: Collateral damage

Koehler, Robert
Caribbean Today
07-31-2001
Common Wonders: Collateral damage

I can't stop thinking about "collateral damage," the term Timothy McVeigh
repopularized before he died.

He secured his immortality in the annals of cold-blood-edness by referring
thus to the 19 children his fertilizer-and-racing-fuel bomb blew up six
years ago -- and at the same time affixed the asterisk of hypocrisy to our
hatred of him. His language mimicked the language of patriotism. McVeigh
was our caricature.

How easy and painlessly abstract to revile him, to curse that wooden face,
to call him a monster. "It's understood going in what the human toll will
be," he wrote of the deed that left 168 innocent people dead ...

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