(no subject)

[camwyn]

I don't know when it began, because my knowledge of memorials in times past has never been very great beyond the obvious- statues and the like. But it seems to me that in the years since the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, a great deal of emphasis has been placed upon remembering those who have died in war, terror, or other similar horrors by the enshrinement of their names.

I know that when I first saw the Wall I felt very strange, because I had no name to look for. Those of my family who served in Vietnam were few, and the only one I could think of for sure saw no combat, having been a mechanic in the Air Force. I had neither name to find and mourn, nor offering to leave for all the hungry dead, and so all that I could do was look at the names I did not recognize and wonder who they'd been.

Come my time at college and the Hillel House students memorialized the endless dead of the Shoah by reading their names- or as many of them as they could manage during the hours of daylight over the course of a few days at the right time of year. To hear so many names spoken aloud, one after the next after the next, was a hell of a thing. I cannot call it great and I cannot call it terrible, because neither one alone quite covers it and taken together it feels wrong. The best I can do is call it a hell of a thing. It leaves a mark.

Come September the eleventh of the year 2001, and the rolls of names for this horror or that were increased by several thousand. When the pits were visited by the officials of the city and the state and the country, they read name names of the fallen. I did not listen to much beyond the first few readers when they broadcast it on the television. I knew one name on that list personally: Anthony Infante. Nice man. Port Authority policeman. Lived around the corner from me, had two kids. I babysat them once. Had a wife. The Towers fell and they found enough of him to bury, but after that all that remained was a name. He's on the list that sits over the fences around the Great Big Hole, I've seen him there. He's also on a wall in Washington. If you go to Judiciary Square on the Metro and get off to nose around the surface stuff for a while, you'll come across the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Any cop, marshal, or other LEO who dies in the line of duty in this country gets memorialized there, or at least can be. I found his name there.

Lots of names. Lots of people to remember. That's what the names are for, y'know- not for the sake of remembering the Great Thing that Happened, but for the sake of remembering the people involved. The individuals. The ones who were part of the Great Thing, whether they wanted it or whether they didn't.

Today there are a hundred and sixty-eight people being remembered in the United States, at least in some places. There will be different ways of doing it- minutes of silence, names read aloud, all kinds of things. Remember the dead. Fair enough. They're entitled.

Someone else, however, is not.

Two men put those hundred sixty eight people in their graves. Two men who thought that by unleashing ammonium nitrate hell upon a building full of people whose only crime was being part of a System, they could change this country for their idea of the better. I'm told they were under the impression that striking at the government in an openly violent manner would cause people all over the rest of the country to rise up alongside them and overthrow that System. Could be that's what they thought. Could be they thought other things. I dunno. All I know's what I read in the papers, and see on the Web, and hear on the radio and see on TV. I've never been inside those two heads. I've seen a lot of vileness in my life and I don't much want to add more if I don't have to. I do know this, though.

The men who did this thought they were accomplishing a very great thing. Or at least a very important thing, whether it was particularly big o great or not. They thought they would be part of making something critical happen. Maybe they thought they were heroes for it, in their own way. Heroes get remembered.

These guys don't deserve to be.

These men were brass-balled cowards. They weren't afraid to kill for what they thought was right, but did they kill people who had offered them violence? Nope. Did they pick a target that was capable of defending itself? Nope. Did they attack someone whose death would stop some kind of critically important policy, or whose absence would make it immensely difficult for the System to continue doing the stuff that they thought was so wrong? Uh-uh. The Murrah Building was stuffed with bureaucrats and families. Important bureaucrats, maybe, but not exactly the kinds of people who could set national policy forward or back by their actions. Lousy target. Lousy tactic. Lousy strategy. And the guys who blew it up thought they'd be starting off the most important war of their time by doing it.

The guys who blew up the Murrah Building were idiots, and first-class jerks, and don't deserve to have their names remembered. Their deeds, yeah, because otherwise we lose the importance of what happened and we leave ourselves open to that kind of thing happening again. The living and those who come after need to remember that on April the 19th of the year 1995, two clean-cut all-American ostensibly Christian (or at least raised Christian) white guys blew the shit out of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City because they believed this country was going to pot. They need to know what these guys did, and they need to know why they did it, and they need to understand how it happened and how to keep it from happening again if that's at all possible. . . but the Oklahoma City bombers do not deserve to have their names remembered. They were cowards. They were fools. They were murderers, not warriors, and they forfeited their right to be part of the country's memory the day they lifted their hands to strike against people who had never done them harm.

Let their names be remembered in the history books if need be, since some people will always need to see the letters in black and white to be reminded that the most deadly terrorists to strike against the people of this country prior to September the eleventh of 2001 were white guys with good whitebread Christian names, but beyond that let the deeds be remembered and the names be forgotten. It's no more than the bastards deserve.

Comments

[quintus.livejournal.com]

There's something for the ancient Egyptian schtick of erasing the names of the unrighteous dead.

[camwyn]

Yeah. That or a trip over to the realm of fiction, where the Romulans write a person's name three times and burn it to expunge them from the rolls of people who should be remembered, or even acknowledged.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Heh. You _do_ know what my elder daughter's name is, right? :-)

[camwyn]

Yup. Thought of you when I thought of the custom, actually.

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

This inhuman place makes human monsters, I would say, but it can't be laid at the door of the country any more than at the door of the System: what happened in Oklahoma is entirely the fault of men.

As always you put words together just right--you reach down inside thought and tweak the axons and dendrites left from before thought: you produce reaction, rather than asking for it.

Fuck. Now I need a tissue.

[camwyn]

This's been in my head a while now; there are other people whose names I do my best to erase, too. Mostly murderers, of various stripes and scales. They don't deserve recollection. Their victims do. Their deeds don't deserve remembering, but have to be remembered, or the rest of it loses meaning. But their names? No.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yes. You've nailed it - that is why I'm so bothered by people who can name off serial killers. They don't usually even follow by naming off their victims. I once posted a picture to a Yahoo group of a guy who shot several people at an office where people I knew worked (everyone I knew escaped) and it felt wrong to me to post his picture but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. I was horrified by the whole situation, and seeing a picture of him had an impact on me, and I wanted to share that, but I suspect none of it is transferable to other people. That was the Edgewater shooting in 2000:

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/LAW/12/26/office.shooting.02/

I've found several articles about it, I just grabbed the top one. It seems to be much harder to find the names of the victims in this case. *searches more* Ah, here we go:

http://www.courttv.com/trials/mcdermott/040402_ctv.html

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if we could remove people's names from them, once they prove themselves so comprehensively unworthy of the privilege.

[camwyn]

In college I had to write a term paper on a health issue that had impact on women and/or children at a national or international level (the class was in Maternal and Reproductive Health). I did domestic violence. Although I referenced the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murder several times, including both Nicole's and Ron's name (funny how poor Ron is all but forgotten, despite his parents' efforts to the contrary), I'm still fairly proud of the fact that I got through the paper without using the name of the man acquitted in the criminal courts once.

[he-dreams-awake.livejournal.com]

*quietly* I came here from metaquotes, and all I can say to you is thank you. This is the single most profoundly powerful thing I have read anywhere in a long time: and I don't mince words nor exaggerate. And right now, I'm in a very personal position to listen and understand and feel for the words you're saying.

Thank you for redeeming my faith that people still have... I don't know. Some sort of nobility.

[camwyn]

You're welcome. I'm glad this post was of use to someone who needed it.

I remember a different occasion today.

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

77 men gathered on the outskirts of a small village to prevent troops from arresting two of their leaders and confiscate their weapons. A shot was fired (http://www.fightthebias.com/Resources/gundebate/shot_heard_around_the_world.htm), no one is sure which side fired first, but 8 of the 77 died in the ensuing firefight.

April 19, 1775. Lexington Massachussetts. If they'd obeyed their tyrannical government instead of resisting and going to war, the world would be a very different place indeed.

Re: I remember a different occasion today.

[camwyn]

Rather a different situation. Active resistance to active oppression is different from two guys in a truck blowing the crap out of a building with kids in it. This is a much healthier thing to remember, and I salute you for bringing it up.

Re: I remember a different occasion today.

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

Yep. If it weren't for them we'd be a very different country, and probably world right now.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Permission to metaquotes?

[camwyn]

Go ahead. And don't forget to remind them of what darkeros commented, too.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Done (http://www.livejournal.com/community/metaquotes/2959866.html) and done.

[camwyn]

Merci.

[mephron]

Frelling brilliant.

[elbiesee.livejournal.com]

As an Oklahoman that knew people that lost a loved one ten years ago, thank you.

I posted something similar in my journal (I don't think I was as eloquent, but at least I was honest), and I mentioned that whenever I see the memorial in OKC, I realize that the two rednecks that blew up the building failed. They may have destroyed a building and killed people, but they did not get the wholesale disruption I know they were hoping for. They brought out the best in people. And they underestimated the strength of Oklahomans. We're rough-necks, yo.

Anyway, thanks again.

[camwyn]

You're welcome, hon.

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say something as brilliant as that, but... May your life be blessed.

There should be more people like you out there.

[camwyn]

Thank you, hon. I'm sure they're out there; they just need to be provoked forward a little, that's all.

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. But I mean it.

admiration

[monkeywithpaint.livejournal.com]

powerful words. you've given a beautiful message on such a horrible act of violence (one of many)

[graylion.livejournal.com]

the deadliest terrorists? I beg to differ. Names like Bomber Harris for instance come to mind. who waged a campaign of terror and killed hundreds of thousands.

[camwyn]

My apologies, then; I had never heard of Harris' acts. Please, tell me where I would find out more about that particularly ugly piece of history.

[graylion.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/harris_sir_arthur_bomber.shtml

this is a reasonably neutral account of his endeavours.

[camwyn]

Thank you.