London Bombers Follow McVeigh Model

Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his “shock” that the four suicide bombers who loused up London’s commute last week were British-born. In the Bush-Blair war on terror, there are the good guys (first personal plural) and the bad guys (third person very plural). The revelation that these wankers were thought of as “us” rather than “them” messes up the prejudices about the enemy. But it need not have been so. All four seem to fit the Timothy McVeigh template.

Until September 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack on American soil had been the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 which killed 168 (about three times what the London attack killed). The man who was executed for the crime (because he was guilty as hell) was Timothy McVeigh, an American who thought more of himself than the world did. The late and unlamented McVeigh had been a gunner on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the Operation Desert Storm, and won a bronze star. His life peaked at that point. He failed to make the Green Berets, left the Army and became a security guard in Pendleton, New York. Falling from war hero to rent-a-cop clearly chaffed on his soul, and he began to blame others for his situation. He became a neo-Nazi, and the rest is shameful history.

The four London bombers are equally unremarkable people. Mohammad Sidique Khan, was 30, married with baby and was a teaching assistant. Hasib Mir Hussain was 18, the British equivalent of a high school drop-out (not a single GCSE) and had turned very religious after a run in or two with authorities. Shehzad Tanweer, 22, studied religion in Pakistan, was a cricket and ju-jitsu fan, and in 2004, was arrested for disorderly conduct and cautioned. Lindsey Germaine was a convert to Islam, born in Jamaica and a legal UK resident – less is known of him than the others and so, he may not be quite a McVeigh-type.

These were, in short, the average sort of bloke one would see in Leeds, or any other English town. But no one likes to be average. There is nothing more devastating to the human spirit than to feel that one is playing a supporting role in one’s own biography. Deep down, every person believes he or she merits being a star. A handful actually become stars, either on stage, TV, politics, sports or whatever. The overwhelming majority find some place where they shine, even if it is only in their own living rooms. But a few people just don’t. They know they are terrific, and the world is too dumb to see it.

Islam for the bombers was an excuse, just as neo-Nazism was McVeigh’s. For Bader and Meinhoff, it was world communism. For the Reverend Jim Jones, it was Christianity. For Charles Manson, it was his own warped religion cum political philosophy. It isn’t insanity in a clinical sense, but rather it is a commitment to something greater than one’s self that, unfortunately, uses others to achieve some kind of self-respect. Hitler was, after all, an ex-soldier and failed painter who clearly just wanted to be somebody. Tens of millions of dead later, he is -- one of the most hated men in history, McVeigh writ large.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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