But “John Doe” is not an Arab name; it’s part of a Frank Capra movie title, resonant of everything American. On Thursday, when the sketches went out identifying the suspects as wearing crew cuts and tattoos, we feared we might have been too hasty in concluding that the bombing’s origins lay in the Middle East. By Friday, with the arrest of American Timothy McVeigh, the old line from the Pogo cartoon strip came to mind: “We have met the enemy-and he is us.” The threat was not just to Middle America, but from it-yet more sickness somewhere within the American family. The huge bomb blew up some huge stereotypes: that swarthy man with the Arabic accent next to you on the bus is most likely a generous family man; that self-described “patriot” who looks like John Wayne could be a baby-killer.
And so among the lessons to learn is one against jumping to conclusions. Actually, government officials were sensitive to this from the start. Spokesmen “showed uncharacteristic restraint in avoiding a rush to judgment,” as Rashid Kbalidi, a Middle East expert at the University of Chicago, puts it. But the rush was on in the press and public. Dave McCurdy, a former U.S. representative from Oklahoma who lost a bid for the Senate last fall, got the antiArab finger-pointing going early by sounding on TV as if he knew what he was talking about; he didn’t. Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert, told viewers not to believe Islamic groups when they denied involvement. Early reports also cited rumors of “three men of Middle Eastern origin” fleeing the scene and invoked comparisons to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires and the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, among other attacks launched by Arabs.
In the Oklahoma case, some suspicion was justified, but only with the proper caveats. “When car bombs are involved, it’s understandable, because there’s a long history behind it in the Middle East,” says Khalidi. “But even though there’s this history, that’s no reason to assume it’s true in this case.” Much of the coverage was cautious -especially in print. The careful, staid quality that is causing declining circulations at newspapers across the country paid off this time; many papers avoided speculation about Arabs. But the temptation was harder to resist on television. The low point came on Thursday when CNN reported that two suspects had been arrested in Dallas and one in Oklahoma City. The network actually named the Arabs who had been detained even though there was no confirmation of any connection to the case. This was simply shoddy joumalism-the only major flaw in CNN’s otherwise strong coverage.
Perhaps the media are once again rushing to judgment. After all, no one has yet been convicted of the crime. But as the Oklahoma City bombing is increasingly connected to heavily armed, “freedom loving” right-wingers, we may soon begin to redefine our domestic villains. Before the turn of the century (in labor strife), again in the teens and 1920s (during the mostly trumped-up Red Scare) and in the 1970s (against the radical Weather Underground), conservative governments routinely invoked national-security threats in order to infiltrate and suppress left-wing terrorists who were planting bombs in the United States. Now the tables have turned, and we’ll see how far a post-cold-war government will go toward infiltrating and suppressing right-wing terrorist groups. This will require changes in law and attitude. In the name of security, it could lead to restrictions on the right to build and maintain private armies. More immediately, NRA-backed bills aimed at hindering the ability of federal agents to search for guns will likely be set back, not to mention GOP efforts to lift the assault weapons ban.
The militia movement has mostly operated below the country’s radar-this despite the fact that the numbers of violent right-wing extremists dwarf those of the much more publicized left-wing radicals of the past. But leftists were easier to stigmatize as “Other” -agents of international communism, the enemy within. Right-wing groups are much harder to stereotype, which makes the need for vigilance against them all the stronger. They look like mainstream Americans (white, male, rural, blue collar), and their selfproclaimed patriotism masks their sometimes treasonous intent. If they are not us, they are close enough. Before long, we may even before jumping to conclusions about ourselves.
