The Oklahoma City Bombing

It was recently the thirtieth anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing. I will never forget the shock, a few days later, that a local, Timothy McVeigh from nearby Lockport, had been responsible for it. McVeigh had been a veteran of the 1991 First Gulf War who had turned against the federal government. He, with accomplices, had put together a truck bomb that had devastated the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

I saw the radicalization of Timothy McVeigh, and his decision to strike at the federal government. But what always mystified me was his choice of a target. Why would he strike at Oklahoma City? 

I cannot see that McVeigh ever spent much time in Oklahoma. In the latter part of his life, after becoming an anti-government radical, most of his time was spent in the West, but in Arizona and Kansas. His accomplices, the Nichols brothers, lived in Kansas. 

The truck was rented, and the bomb assembled, not too far from Kansas City, where there is a concentration of federal buildings. Why didn't he strike there? Driving the bomb truck to Oklahoma City was risky, he might have gotten pulled over or gotten into an accident. There were plenty of possible targets close by.

Times were less suspicious in 1995. A truck bombing wasn't anticipated and there wasn't the barriers that we often see today. The following image is from Google Street View. McVeigh could have made a greater impact by striking at Washington or New York. So I was mystified by why he chose Oklahoma City. I can't see any ideological reason for him to strike Oklahoma City.

But now I think I see the answer and cannot see any reference to it.

One clue is that the Oklahoma City Bombing had quite a bit of symbolism. It was done on the second anniversary of the culmination of the Branch Davidians siege, in Waco Texas. McVeigh had visited while the siege had taken place. It was also reportedly related to the early American battles of Lexington and Concord. 

What I find interesting, given the symbolism involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing, is that Oklahoma's postal abbreviation is "OK" and by far the most famous anti-government shootout in American history is the one that took place at the O.K. Corral. This shootout took place in Arizona, where McVeigh had lived, and it is just coincidental that the initials are the same. Images from Google Street View and the Wikipedia article "Vehicle Registration Plates Of Oklahoma.

The most popular slogan for t-shirts and bumber stickers in Oklahoma is, of course:

"OKLAHOMA IS OK"

Timothy McVeigh was reportedly very upset about the 1992 Ruby Ridge Standoff, in Idaho, which was over guns and was quite similar in nature to the fabled shootout at the O.K. Corral. 

I referred to Timothy McVeigh in the posting "The Would-Have-Been Nation Of Westland", July 2017. This is what I wrote about the shootout at the O.K. Corral there: 

"In the history of the United States, there have been hundreds upon endless hundreds of shootouts between police and criminals. But there is one such shootout that has been fabled and hollywoodized above all others. Just what was so special about the shootout at the O.K. Corral, in the appropriately-named town of Tombstone, Arizona in 1881? 

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral involved ten people, five on each side, and lasted less than a minute. About thirty shots were fired. Yet it has surely become the most famous battle of it's scale in the world. A Google search for "O.K. Corral" brings up over two million hits. How can this possibly be? It was not in the United States of the time, and the area would not become part of America for another thirty years. The names of the ten men would be unknown otherwise. Just why was it so important? 

It is because the shootout at the O.K. Corral is actually not about crime. The Clanton and McLaury brothers were not being pursued by the law for robbery, or anything like that. What happened is that a local ordinance had been enacted barring the carrying of guns in town. But the Clanton and McLaury brothers had refused to give up their weapons, claiming that no one had any right to impose such a rule. 

This means that this brief shootout was not actually about crime, but about sovereignty. Did anyone have the right to impose such a rule, or not? The question came down to this shootout, when the side representing the law decided that they had to be disarmed. 

There was never actually a separate nation in America's West, independent of the east, during the settling of the West after the Civil War. There was never a war of independence for such a western nation, at least not officially. 

But I see this shootout at the O.K. Corral, as brief and limited as it was, as the nascent "war of independence" of what might have been such a separate western nation. When the side of the law won the shootout, none of the lawmen were killed while three of the other side were, it sealed the fate of America's West. It would never be an independent nation, and would eventually become part of the United States. 

The reason that the shootout at the O.K. Corral is so well-known, and so fascinating, is that we instinctively know that it was far more than one of countless gun battles between police and criminals. It was actually a brief war of independence of what might have been a separate nation in the West.

This is true even though no one there mentioned anything about a new country. These were wealth-seekers who knew how to live off the land, and how to use a gun, and didn't want the laws of any country imposed on them. The rule of Mexico has been removed and they didn't want it replaced with the rule of the United States, or any new country. But this is what it would likely have become, as I see it, if the shootout at the O.K. Corral had turned out differently.

The difference between a criminal and an outlaw is that the criminal breaks the law while the outlaw doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the law. The only reason that the outlaws of the West went down in history as outlaws is that this new nation never came to be. If it had, the "outlaws" would now be the heroes and the lawmen who tried to tame them would be the villains. That is the trouble with history. Human history is basically the history of conflict and the rule is that the winners of the conflict get to write the history books, and they decide who are the heroes and who are the villains." 

Timothy McVeigh was an ardent gun rights activist and a regular on the gun show circuit. He also despised the federal government. Had he lived back in the days of Tombstone, we can be virtually certain that he would have been one of those who refused to give up their weapons. 

The word "OK" is interesting, even though it isn't really a word. The Wikipedia article on it describes it as actually the most used word in the world. The English language lacks a general term of agreement or concordance. "Yes" isn't quite the right word. So we have made up a word by combining these two letters. There is lack of agreement about how it originated, and I am not claiming that it originated with the O.K. Corral, but it's widespread use only subconsciously boosts the significance of the shootout at the O.K. Corral.

This explains the choice of Oklahoma City as a target, although I cannot see it referred to anywhere. This bombing included a lot of symbolism and the choice of Oklahoma City as the target represented a striking back for the defeat of anti-government gun rights activists at the O.K. Corral more than a century before.