De-Demonizing Timothy McVeigh:
Something To Think About
Here's another poem I wrote shortly after I heard that Timothy McVeigh would die by lethal injection. He got the verdict in 1997 but didn't even flinch. That was Tim---hiding all of his emotions to the extent that he was most likely unable to summon them up at all:
How can we put a price on mortal punishment?
How can we tunnel our way out of the great abyss?
Will executing killers assure a lesser number one day?
Or will they simply act as a sideshow for a crass media frenzy?
It is Tim McVeigh you despise, or is it the darkness of our souls?
Is killing another justified in specified circumstances?
Can we one day stand before St. Peter and argue justification?
Or will we forced to find other sanctities for our wandering spirits?
I'll give you my opinion on the matter, as naive as it may appear.
It is written that all who slew another must do hard time in purgatory,
For all that take lives will be herded away from the Pearly Gates?
I do not pretend to know of which heaven is comprised.
None of us possess such precious knowledge, even though
I'm aware that the hurting will one day find solace
In a world denied them on their sad years on earth.
Timothy McVeigh killed many with a weapon of mass destruction.
He chose to view them as simply the casualties of war.
But what do the executioners use to justify putting a young, healthy man to death?
"Justifyable homicide" rings as ominously as the last Great War's word, "attrition."
Revenge is not only far from sweet---it's never been a healing balm.
Once rubbed into the skin of what's humane and what's justified,
It leaves a greasy smear, too hard to remove and too adhesive to cure.
My heart goes out to the many who have had that last earthly meeting with the executioner.
Do my words prompt you to spit angrily spit forth: "Fucking bleeding heart"?
Don't fret---I've heard it all and will most likely keep reading such vile sentiments.
But I'll tell you one thing, something taught by my beloved late grandfather:
"Walk in another's shoes before you either judge or condemn them."
I believe that there is a place in heaven for Timothy McVeigh and that he did not, as so many thought and hoped, descend into the bowels of hell. Our God is a forgiving and compassionate God. He doesn't smite his children, even if they do unspeakable things. And Tim McVeigh did do unspeakable things. But he paid for his sins with his life. He paid the ultimate price and went to his death silently and stoically. True, he was unapologetic, but his conscious mind refused to give way to the chaos that would have ensued had the full impact of his crime sunken in before his execution. In my opinion, the primary catalyst for Tim's waiving all his appeals in December of 2000 and asking for a speedy execution date, was because he was deathy afraid of that happening to him. I wrote something in my own guestbook the other day about a recurring nightmare I've been experiencing since the day Tim tossed all the rest of his appeals away. I dreamt that one day, one harrowing and unspeakable day, the full impact of Tim's actions hit him like a jagged lightening bolt. Gone was his ability to view his bombing as a "legic tactic," gone was his ability to push reality far back into the recess of his consciousness and gone were all of his methods for keeping his horror at bay by referring to the dead children as "collateral damage," a military term that he utilized to justify in his mind the "wages of war" so to speak.
For unlike a sociopath or a psychopath, Tim McVeigh had a conscience. As a boy he loved animals and cried when he witnessed a sack full of kittens being drowned. He was a kind and compassionate child and grew into a sensitive adult, one who was horrified with the killing he had done during the Gulf War and who suffered a breakdown soon after returning home. No, Tim was not a cold-blooded killer who enjoyed taking lives and who came face-to-face with his victim. In fact, I doubt very much if he had ever been capable of murdering people on a one-on-one basis. He took no joy in killing. Just as he wasn't the kind of twisted child who would torture and murder cats and have the whole macabre act videotaped, neither was he a leering and salivating killing machine who took great pleasure in robbing people of their lives.
The enemy of the people was not Timothy James McVeigh. The enemy is the spectre of war and how soldiers are taught to squelch their emotions and become, essentially, killing machines. Hate him if that makes you feel better, but it's much more appropriate to despise war and the way it dehumanizes its military and how it desensitizes it to taking the lives of the "enemy." Tim saw the US government as the supreme enemy, the ultimate bully.
God will have him in heaven with his beloved grandfather. I take some comfort in that.
