Patriot's Day
On the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Boston Globe has a somewhat mystifying piece on the decline of militias in this country.
What I find mystifying is that Timothy McVeigh, as far as anyone has ever learned, was not a member of a militia, nor was he trained by a militia group. The man responsible for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to September 11, 2001 was the proverbial "lone wolf" who was trained by the U.S. military.
While I am sure it was no pleasure to live near any of the militia compounds that sprang up in the 1980s and early 90s, the whack jobs who were militia members have never posed the kind of threat a Timothy McVeigh or an Eric Rudolph posed. The militia groups are easily monitored and, because they often rely on criminal pursuits to fund themselves.
The bigger threat, it seems to me, are single individuals with an agenda. They may take their overall direction from a larger group, but operate on their own. They keep their nose clean until the time comes to act. Again, Eric Rudolph does not appear to have been part of a larger anti-abortion group (though, we'll never really know, since the plea deal he cut did not require him to name any associates). His "guilty plea" may very well have been, as David Neiwert and others suggest, a coded transmission, but it was unlikely that Rudolph had any specific individual in mind to receive it.
Moreover, as the Globe piece continues, militias have now been replaced by "hate groups" that are really online communities, rather than physical associations. These web sites have become alternate media sources for racists who are then urged on by the sites to become "activists," though without any membership requirement.
Now that's frightening. A lot scarier than a bunch of guys playing war in a field in Montana.
Ten years after Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb that killed 168 people at the Oklahoma City federal building, the antigovernment militias that attracted intense police scrutiny after the bombing have all but disappeared, according to analysts who track the groups.
''There really are no groups out there now doing paramilitary training," said Mark Potok, who monitors the militias for the Southern Poverty Law Center. From a high of 858 militias and other antigovernment groups in 1996, the number withered to 152 in 2004, Potok said.
The deaths of innocent civilians -- including 19 children -- in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building a decade ago today began the steep decline in the membership of grass-roots militias that had multiplied after deadly sieges by federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Texas, in 1993.
What I find mystifying is that Timothy McVeigh, as far as anyone has ever learned, was not a member of a militia, nor was he trained by a militia group. The man responsible for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to September 11, 2001 was the proverbial "lone wolf" who was trained by the U.S. military.
While I am sure it was no pleasure to live near any of the militia compounds that sprang up in the 1980s and early 90s, the whack jobs who were militia members have never posed the kind of threat a Timothy McVeigh or an Eric Rudolph posed. The militia groups are easily monitored and, because they often rely on criminal pursuits to fund themselves.
The bigger threat, it seems to me, are single individuals with an agenda. They may take their overall direction from a larger group, but operate on their own. They keep their nose clean until the time comes to act. Again, Eric Rudolph does not appear to have been part of a larger anti-abortion group (though, we'll never really know, since the plea deal he cut did not require him to name any associates). His "guilty plea" may very well have been, as David Neiwert and others suggest, a coded transmission, but it was unlikely that Rudolph had any specific individual in mind to receive it.
Moreover, as the Globe piece continues, militias have now been replaced by "hate groups" that are really online communities, rather than physical associations. These web sites have become alternate media sources for racists who are then urged on by the sites to become "activists," though without any membership requirement.
Now that's frightening. A lot scarier than a bunch of guys playing war in a field in Montana.
posted by John at 11:58 AM
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