Left Column...
Left Column...
When Timothy McVeigh, sentenced to death for murdering 276 people in the Oklahoma bombing, dies, it is reported in Salon, he intends to quote the poem "Invictus" by William Henley:
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul
Now now-- that's not traditional. You're supposed to turn to the families of the victims and say, "I am truly sorry." But McVeigh isn't sorry. He believes in what he did. He believes he was right to do it. It was good and necessary.
The Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, believes that it is an act of compassion to grant, to the families of his victims, the privilege of seeing Mr. McVeigh get murdered himself, on that peculiar cross-shaped table upon which they will strap him before this charming little game of "which tube contains the liquid cyanide" that they play when they put him to death.
When they executed people by firing squad, they used to put one blank in one of the rifles, so each of the shooters could go home that night thinking that he was not the one responsible for the man's death. How honorable, for an institution that claims to pride itself on honor, courage, and integrity--- how honorable, to cop out at the crucial moment: I might not have done it. I can sleep at night.
What a great idea. What a great way to help people-- men (do you know of any female executioners?)-- feel better about themselves. It's cheaper than Prozac or Zoloft.
What amazes me is that they don't do this in war. Every soldier gets a gun but some only fire blanks. Every air plane gets bombs but some are duds. One in five torpedoes carries only the admiral's laundry. That way, after committing hundreds or thousands of atrocities, we can all go home and say, I didn't do it. When our children ask us what we did in the war, we can all say, "fired duds, mostly".
Why didn't they think of this when they dropped the nuclear bomb? They could have sent ten planes with ten similar fat bombs and they could all have dropped them at the same time and then they could all have gone home and said to their wives, "mine was a dud".
Of course, the real captain of the Enola Gay, Paul W. Tibbets, is actually proud of the fact that the dropped the real bomb, and I guess his wife didn't mind, so, in that instance, the idea is wasted.
Anyway... Ashcroft wants to give the relatives of the victims the "sense of closure"-- or is it vicarious thrill? -- or "satisfaction"-- of seeing McVeigh die. The language is nebulous-- no one wants to admit they are simply out for revenge, since our society knows well enough that "revenge" is not a noble virtue. Nobody really believes that McVeigh's execution will stop anybody else from doing the same thing-- not, especially, when we have suicide bombers in the world.
Revenge is an attribute of pugnacious, small-minded thugs and felons. But we are not thugs and felons. We are honorable and pure and we want to watch McVeigh die so we can get a sense of .... "closure".
After the grandmother of one of Floyd Allen Medlock's victims witnessed his execution, she expressed disappointment. It was too quiet, too peaceful. She wanted to see him die but our society, at cross-purposes with itself, now resorts to the antiseptic ritual of lethal injection. Not enough horror for her, I guess. More to the point: his death didn't bring back her grand-daughter, and didn't remove one ounce of the pain she suffered and didn't prevent a single crime from being committed. It just added to the total sum of misery in the world.
I know this seems strange, but she reminds me of those fanatic Palestinian mothers who raise their sons to become martyrs to the faith. These devout boys strap explosives to their bodies and then get onto buses or wade around busy market places and set themselves off. Their mothers approve, so it appears. They wish death upon their own sons.
The deaths of their sons help them bring "closure" to their anguished feelings about the atrocities the Israelis have committed upon the Palestinians.
Do you buy that? Or do we prefer: they will feel closure about the deaths of their sons when every single last Israeli citizen is driven into the sea?
And the biggest joke of all: McVeigh announcing, as he is helplessly strapped to a table and poisoned to death, that he is the master of his soul, the captain of his fate. He is now the master of nothing. He is utterly helpless and useless and impotent. He is less important than a beggar on the streets who, at least, could beg or not beg, or cross the road, or not cross the road. He could imagine he is the King of Spain and prance down the alleyway singing at the top of his lungs.
