Andrew Cohen: Learning the Lessons of the Oklahoma City Bombing 15 Years Later
Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed 168 lives, the memory seemed so distant even in the state where it happened that Oklahoma officials earlier this month passed a law requiring the state's board of education to develop and teach courses about the death and destruction that occurred at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at precisely 9:02 a.m. on Wednesday, April 19, 1995.
Discussing the new measure at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, Gov. Brad Henry found it difficult to explain why the state had to mandate the teaching of a topic of such obvious local and national significance.
"Although the events of April 19, 1995, are indelibly etched in the minds of so many Oklahomans, most of today's school children were not even born when that day dramatically changed our history," Henry said. "It is essential for them and the generations of students that follow to learn the significance of this horrific event.."...
At the time, however, the Oklahoma City bombing was the largest and deadliest crime in American history. Former soldiers McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and maybe (or maybe not) others unknown, murdered 168 men, women and children and wounded hundreds more. The colossal flash of homemade explosives ended that generation's burgeoning anti-government movement -- a movement reflected in such incidents as the standoff in remote Ruby Ridge, Idaho, with a separatist family and the FBI's siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. To this day, the explosion that ripped the heart out of a "heartland" city remains the worst domestic crime ever committed by Americans and is otherwise surpassed in scope only by 9/11.
About 17 times as many people were murdered on 9/11 as were murdered on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City. There were more people (255) who died on 9/11 whose last names began with the letter "S" than who died at the Murrah Building. But, as I wrote about on the first anniversary of 9/11, it isn't just the orders of magnitude involved between the two dreadful days that explains why the latter has superseded the former for most Americans. It isn't just that one was broadcast live on national television while the other one came to us in the 24/7 news world of the Internet age. It isn't just that one occurred at the cores of power and population while the other occurred in that vast expanse of country between both coasts.
Compared with the rippling (and in many ways crippling) effects wrought by 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing was a tidy affair from start to finish. It was the sort of storyline with which most Americans are familiar. There's the evil plot, the warped reality of the planners, the attack upon innocents, the heroic work by rescue workers and law enforcement officials, the lucky break and, ultimately, justice. Although many of the same elements exist, there has been no such straight narrative in the wake of the terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. It's still clearly an "ongoing event," as intelligence officials like to say, both in terms of future terror attacks and the fate of the terrorists we have in hand....
They probably don't teach irony in Oklahoma's public schools. But the great irony of the timing of Oklahoma's new education initiative is that while the import of April 19, 1995, has faded for many, the stark political and economic and racial and cultural dynamics that fueled its tragedy are ascendant again. Indeed, the enduring strain of American anger toward government, which led McVeigh to his deadly act of violence, April 19, 1995, persists. We saw it in last summer's rhetoric over health care, in the language used to describe the president of the United States, and in the signs painted for and proudly produced at "Tea Party" rallies.
We see it all over cable news and hear it on the radio. Go back to the language and tone of 1993 and 1994 and listen to the echoes we hear today. It's very real. And it's really scary. Which means that, despite the new legislation, there are only two vital questions that Oklahoma's teachers must help answer for their students in the years to come: What lessons did America truly learn from the tragedy that befell it on April 19, 1995? And what lessons has it forgotten or merely chosen to ignore?