Bush administration endorses "McVeigh Doctrine"

Portends grave consequences including world war and an American revolution

By Liz Michael
www.lizmichael.com  For release March 24, 2003

Remember when this columnist wrote an article entitled "Did Timothy McVeigh have the right idea?" This columnist had concluded that Timothy McVeigh was wrong. Apparently, someone in a high place begs to differ with me. And that man is President of the United States.

The Bush administration has decided to phrase their justification for the war in Iraq in a very dangerous way. The latest Bush propaganda philosophy goes like this: if you have a tyrannical government you're trying to get rid of, anywhere in the world, you bomb its government buildings, target its leaders, and label yourselves "freedom fighters", and you can morally do anything you want. If there is collateral damage in the death of innocents and babies, well, that's okay. That's just the price of war. War is hell. We'll "kinda, sorta, try" not to hurt innocents, but if we do... oh well... all for the liberation of the Iraqi people: all for "Iraqi Freedom".

Now, I'm not going to say that that's right or wrong. Saddam Hussein is a bastard. He is unquestionably one of the most vicious bastards in human history. I frankly hopes he gets what he deserves, and frankly, burning in hell forever would be too good for him.

And there may indeed be other motivations. Perhaps Iraq DOES have weapons of mass destruction. I think that is a very likely probability: after all, American corporations sold him those WMD's, so we ought to know better than anyone. Perhaps he IS supporting terrorists intent on going after America. Perhaps he IS going to attack either America, or other nations such as Israel with these. Perhaps we can prove that.

Or perhaps he just has oil that we want and can't get any other way.

George W. Bush and his administration could have used the above justifications. They could have shown us the proof to back up the WMD and terrorist allegation. But instead they chose the current doctrine, and I'll repeat it: if you have a tyrannical government you're trying to get rid of, anywhere in the world, you bomb its government buildings, target its leaders, and label yourselves "freedom fighters", and you can morally do anything you want. If there is collateral damage in the death of innocents and babies, well, that's okay. It's the price of war. No big whoop.

How many of you agree with this doctrine?

Good. Those of you who do have a lot of good company. Let's start with Timothy McVeigh.

Object until you're blue in the face, but what George W. Bush is using as justification now is exactly what Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and whatever coconspirators they almost certainly had, used as justification to destroy the Murrah Building and 168 of its occupants. Almost to the letter. The Oklahoma CIty Bombing was, according to McVeigh, a reprisal for a terrorist act committed by the American government: the butchering of some 80 Branch Davidians at Mount Carmel, Texas, including some 20 infants and children. Yes, McVeigh killed innocents. No matter, as long as he got a goodly number of the people responsible for the Branch Davidian massacre: after all, they killed babies, too. Not any different than the Bush doctrine.

Essentially, you can call the Bush doctrine, the  "McVeigh Doctrine".

But I'm hardly finished.

Those of you who endorse the Bush/McVeigh Doctrine have more good company.

First of all, you have Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Hamas. Yes, suicide PLO bombers do kill innocent Israelis. If you listen to their side of the story however, you will hear them say that they are an occupied people lacking their own state, and that the Israelis are their captors. Many of the so-called "innocent Israelis" are currently or soon to be members of the Israeli military which will be shooting their Uzis at them and rolling in tanks to demolish their homes, often with them in them. We call them "terrorists". But they call themselves "freedom fighters".

So you are in good company with the Palestinians.

And the Israelis.

The Israelis use the same justification, the murder of their citizens, to go in and utterly destroy Palestinians, their homes, and their possessions. And if anyone gets in their way, tough tookas. Ask the parents of Palestinian children killed by the Israelis. Ask the parents of Rachel Corrie. The Israelis didn't give a damn about her, and she wasn't even Palestinian.

Feel good with that company? Okay, if you're still cool with the Bush/McVeigh doctrine, let me give you someone else who practices it.

Al Qaeda. And current Public Enemy #1... well, okay, #2... Osama bin Laden. (I forgot: this week, we're at war with Eurasia, not Eastasia.)

Do you think that Osama sees himself as a vicious bloodsucking butcher who mercilessly wants to snuff out as many Americans as possible, and has bloodlust over it? You haven't read him or listened to him then. He considers himself a freedom fighter. A freedom fighter for devout Muslims all over the world. He consider the American society in general, and the American government in particular, as having exploited the Muslim world grievously. Does he want to conquer America and reduce it to rubble? That's not what he himself says. He himself says that he wants the American people to rise up and overthrow their "infidel government". When he says this, you would almost think it was a right wing militia patriot saying it, the way he phrases it.

So Osama is "down" with the Bush/McVeigh doctrine as well.

Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not trying to say any of you are wrong for supporting the Bush/McVeigh doctrine. I just simply want you to own it, own up to it publicly, and shout to the world, that yes, it is right to dispatch a tyrannical government, anywhere in the world, by bombing its government buildings, and killing its leaders, as freedom fighters, even if a few innocents and babies get killed. Don't shy away, just admit that that's what you think. It's not necessarily a bad thing, really. After all, someone assassinating Adolf Hitler and his inner circle in 1936 might have prevented the Holocaust.

And now that you've owned it, you're really not going to like what I have to say next.

The American government has had a long history of terrorist acts of its own. Some of these acts rival some of the worst tyrannies of world history. The most egregious agencies have been the IRS, the FBI, the BATF, the CIA, the NSA, and the Treasury Department. But there are others, too. And let's not forget all those state governments, local governments, state and local police and sheriff's departments, tax assessors, homeowner's associations, motor vehicles divisions, judges, etc., etc., and so forth. After all, I can recount thousands of stories of tyranny by the American government in the past generation, going all the way back to the bloodthirsty murders of the Bonus Marchers by future "heroes" MacArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower.

So here's my question. Why shouldn't the American people employ the Bush/McVeigh doctrine against the government agencies that have victimized them? And let's not stop at government. What about all those corporations that have victimized not only the American people, but the world? Shouldn't the American people employ the Bush/McVeigh doctrine against them?

Why not? Our President has just enshrined bombing buildings and killing government officials as effective foreign policy. Not some right wing, or left wing, radical. Not some militiaman, gun aficionado, antiwar protester or animal rights activist. OUR PRESIDENT. The President of the United States. The leader of the Free World. He just TOLD us it's okay. He's doing it RIGHT NOW.

And having enshrined this tactic as good foreign policy, undoubtedly foreign movements hostile to the United States are considering implementing this into THEIR foreign policy.

Unknowingly (perhaps) Bush has given endorsement to every enemy of the American government to do the same thing to downtown Washington, and any other "government center" in America. Not incidentally, the Bush administration has also given the wink and nod, unintentionally (perhaps) to Al Qaeda itself, and to other violent revolutionary movements such as Hamas. He has supplied the Palestinians with a moral authority for THEIR acts of war, or as we call them now, "terrorism". He has supplied the moral authority for every Israeli tank to roll over every innocent young woman, just "because".

He has also supplied a moral authority for every American dissident group to do the same thing to their enemies the American military is doing to Iraq. I can almost predict that radical groups like ELF and ALF are going to use the McVeigh doctrine, now become the Bush doctrine, as justification for everything. And antigovernment groups on the right have been just waiting for the excuse to restore some manner of a limited constitutional government instead of this Soviet-style leviathan we now have.

This is something substantially different than Afghanistan, where we were going in to get specific targets of operatives, who we thought killed 3,000 of our citizens, and an already existing war of revolution against the Taliban was already underway, and we were using and assisting the revolutionary movement toward that purpose. And the fact that there's oil in Afghanistan didn't dissuade the Bush administration any either.

This is different. In Iraq, we have now said that WE, not they, WE, have the moral authority to begin THEIR revolution.

Well, hello... what if movements abroad decide the same thing about the American government? Why will it then be WRONG for them to do the same thing to Washington we are now doing to Baghdad? Because it's us and not them? Because might makes right?

What of a band of lone wolves wanting to remove a corrupt and out of control federal government, or a corrupt state or local government, initiating an action against government buildings and agents here? If it is right to begin SOMEONE ELSE'S revolution, how can it be wrong to begin our own?

I think I see WHY the United States government trusts foreign governments like Germany and Russia to protect U.S. bases during the War On (some) Terror moreso than they trust the American citizens to guard them. After all, what will the American citizen do, with a corrupt and out of control government, with all those guns and tanks and planes and ordinance? I mean, how many sorties would it take to destroy every IRS Service Center from the air?

This is all a very bad precedent for those who want to see peaceful reform and change through diplomacy anytime soon. And I think the Bush/McVeigh doctrine will be used as justification, and used often, in the inevitable American revolution and inevitable third world war which will follow all this. Yes, we have given Saddam Hussein 12 years to do the right thing, and he has utterly refused. Well, we have given the American government a LOT more due process than 12 years to right itself. America's enemies have given the United States, and its corporations, a LOT longer than 12 years to quit meddling in their affairs. War has now been set as the primary standard to dispense justice. Even Fox News Channel has employed the slogan "Give War A Chance".

And if that is not bad enough, many in the Pentagon are now actually seriously discussing the use of the American nuclear arsenal in Iraq, and talking about it gleefully. This brings to mind a biblical prophecy. It's the one where the angel pours out his wrath, which dries up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the main tributaries of modern day Iraq: this act precedes another little battle. The one called Armagheddon.

Liz Michael has formed a committee to run for the U. S. Senate from Arizona in 2004.
http://www.lizmichael.org

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