By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
March 30, 2001
There has been quite a bit of angry comments about Timothy McVeigh's comment concerning the 19 children, who were among the 168 people when his bomb went off at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, being "collateral damage." One Fox News reporter called it a "hurtful and horrifying" thing to say. "I recognized beforehand that someone might be ... bringing their kid to work," McVeigh told Buffalo News reporters Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck., "However, if I had known there was an entire day care center, it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage."
Calling the 19 dead children in the Murrah Building bombing "collateral damage" has really upset a whole lot of people in the media. And, the whole idea of a book about McVeigh called "American Terrorist" in which McVeigh calls the death of the children "a large amount of collateral damage" has angered lots of people in Oklahoma.
However, I am totally puzzled by the number of people who seem to think McVeigh thought up the term "collateral damage' just to dismiss the tragedy of the children who died in his bombing of the Murrah building. It is not a term McVeigh thought up. It's a term, borrowed from the military, that I remember first hearing after the Waco firestorm, which exploded right after the pyrotechnic tear gas was shot into the Davidian compound by the order of Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno which killed 80 people, 25 of them children.
Those tear gas canisters were shot into the underground shelter area where the ATF certainly knew the children probably were. "Collateral" damage is damage that happens, but is not the target intended in a military operation.
The most extensive use of the term "collateral damage" was used on almost a daily basis by NATO spokesman Jamie Shea when explaining why so many civilians, many of them children, were being killed by bombs dropped by American aircraft. We were regularly told that the hospitals, churches, embassies and schools that were damaged or destroyed during the 79 day carpet bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 were merely "collat eral damage" that we shouldn't get upset about. I wrote about that "collateral damage" at the time of the bombing:
"In an incredible exchange yesterday at the NATO briefing, a French reporter asked Jamie Shea about NATO's destruction of civilian electric and water facilities in Yugoslavia which is causing great havoc in hospitals, among other things."The Yugoslavia Minister of Health, Leposava Milicevic announced in a press conference held for the foreign and domestic reporters that due to the day-long disappearance of electricity and water, lives of 9500 patients in intensive care, 300 prematurely born babies, 2000 patients suffering from kidney failure who are dialyses, 400 malignant patients in laser therapy, 1000 hospital patients on the surgery desks, 30,000 patients with the need for laboratory analyses, 12,000 requiring X-rays, 200 in magnetic resonance treatment and 200 treated with the nuclear medicine were endangered in Serbia.
"Also, of course without electricity water purification systems across the country were also wiped out in 250 district and regional waterworks was disabled, which additionally endangered the health of the population. In fact, that could cause an epidemic. The death-rate of premature babies has increased 8% (and the rate of birth of premature babies has increased because of the bombing) Dr. Milicevic said. She announced that 115 medical institutions had been damaged by air raids so far, with some of them having been totally demolished, such as Dragisa Misovic hospital."
And what was Jamie Shea's response to Dr. Milicevic's recitation of the deaths being caused by NATO bombs? He dismissed it by calling it "collateral damage," saying;
"President Milosevic has got plenty of back-up generators. His armed forces have hundreds of them. He can either use these back-up generators to supply his hospitals, his schools, or he can use them to supply his military. His choice. If he has a big headache over this, then that is exactly what we want him to have and I am not going to make any apology for that."
In other words, the world was told, it's Milosevic's fault that all those children are dead and women giving birth in one of those hospitals lost limbs by being in the hospital at the time. No reporter thought to ask what good a back-up generator was when the hospital had been demolished.
Yes, the commentators are right in calling McVeigh's statement about the 19 dead children in Oklahoma "hurtful" and "horrifying." But, why didn't they believe it was hurtful and horrifying to call the 25 dead children in Waco "collateral damage" and why wasn't it hurtful and horrifying when Clinton spokesmen called the 79 dead children in Yugoslavia "collateral damage?" Why did Americans calmly accept the "humanitarian bombing" on the 19th of May, 1999May NATO war planes have dropped bombs on Dragisa Misovic hospital complex killing three patients in the Neurology section, which took a direct hit, and injuring many, including a small baby. Hundreds of children were injured, many of them losing limbs, as we dropped our "humanitarian" bombs, using information given to us by the KLA terrorist group that today is trying to take over Macedonia using the same tactics it successfully used to take over Kosovo. Remember what the Clinton Administration's State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said following the NATO bombing of an Albanian refugee convoy, which killed 85 people, many of them children near Prizren? He said the attack on the refugee convoy was in "an area where there was Serb shelling" and urged us to wait "until NATO has been able to complete its assessment of what happened" because, after all, Serbs lie. And, he probably could have gotten away with blaming the Serbs had it not been for the fact that an Associated Press TV crew took pictures of the dozens of bodies, including those of two children burned beyond recognition lying near two craters beside a road as about 50 women and children huddled nearby crying. Rubin knew he was lying when he tried to make it look as if the Serbs were the ones who caused the killing.
The Oklahoma city bombing was a black day in American history, as was the "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia for 79 days. The revolting Roman Circus atmosphere in which we now find ourselves - with people wanting to watch McVeigh's execution on TV or the Internet, says something about the depths to which we have sunk. It might be a sobering experience for people looking for vengeance by making the execution of McVeigh a family holiday to think how Serb parents felt when their little ones were killed by the brightly colored cluster bombs dropped in school playgrounds from American planes. .
Perhaps we should quit jostling for position, popcorn in hand, for a seat to watch the execution of McVeigh and stop to ponder how many Americans have participated in, applauded or at least not objected to the deaths of children in other "collateral damage" situations, here and abroad.
While we debate whether or not McVeigh deliberately targeted those children (he says he didn't know there was a day-care center in the building), we may want to ask ourselves, with so-called "smart bombs" how is it we managed to hit hundreds of schools, hospitals, churches, and monasteries in Yugoslavia "accidentally?" McVeigh, who saw himself as a warrior in opposition to government atrocities at Waco, used the term "collateral damage" in exactly the same way Jamie Shea used it when the dead babies were in Yugoslavia. Where is the outrage about dead children in Yugoslavia or dead children in Waco, Texas being airily dismissed as "collateral damage?"
To Comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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