Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Bombings reflect change in terrorism tactics

By Carl Heintze

I've been trying to figure out why people like to go around setting off bombs on airplanes and in parks.

It's a mystery. It's even more of a mystery when the bomber doesn't want to acknowledge the bombing. But that certainly seems to be the case at the Olympics in Atlanta and on TWA Flight 800, if, indeed, Flight 800 was blown up by a bomb.

I mean, if someone feels strongly enough about something to finish off a couple of hundred people or disrupt the biggest event of the year, you'd think they would want some recognition for their handiwork.

Not so in either of the cases before the public this month. No one wants to claim either deed as theirs. Nor did the Saudi bombers who tore off the front of the American apartment house earlier on. Terrorism is changing, even domestic terrorism, as, for instance, in Oklahoma City. No one wants to own up to that one, either.

So, if it is not recognition, then what is it?

It could be simple revenge, I suppose, paying America back for some previous supposed wrong. The problem with this explanation is that if it is revenge, how is America to know who is getting even for what?

The TWA disaster makes some sense from this point of view.

Like the Pan Am explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland, presumably the bomber was getting even for some wrong, real or otherwise, for which we are to be held blame in the Middle East.

And Oklahoma City happens to coincide with an icon date to the far right of the far right. It seems to suggest that the bombers were trying to get even for Waco and Ruby Ridge.

But setting off a randomly situated pipe bomb in an Atlanta park early in the morning doesn't seem to prove anything except the bomber didn't like rock music, hated athletes or wanted to find out if his or her bomb worked. It could even be that the bomber simply wanted to protect people from the bomb he planted so he could be a hero.

The trouble is that bombers don't think like you or me. (Thank heavens, we can all sigh. Otherwise, there would be a lot more bombs going off.) Bombers aren't rational, and thus it is hard for rational non-bombing human beings to find rational reasons for their acts.

But I'm sure the bombers think they were acting rationally and with good sense.

(The Unabomber, for example, thought his bombs had real reason behind them. He argued his point to 30,000 words or more, but even at this length, who could follow his arguments to any logical conclusion?)

The other thing to understand about bombers is that they represent an immense amount of supposed or real injustice. Setting off a bomb is not something anyone takes lightly.

Setting off a bomb is a big statement, even a pipe bomb. A bomb is sudden, loud, destructive. It is intended to get everyone's attention. And it usually does.

Bombing also is a fairly recent addition to what one might call international politics, but what a lot of us today would term international terrorism. This movement, if we can so dignify it, got its start in the 19th century. Anarchists, who believed the state and all its agents to be evil and targets for destruction, began throwing bombs in earnest. Their targets usually were kings, prime ministers or other such officials, but the anarchists didn't seem to care if a few innocent people got killed in the resulting explosions.

After the end of World War I bombers waned, only to return again in the Cold War and its aftermath. But instead of seeking out rulers to bump off, terrorist bombers became more indiscriminate. It didn't so much matter who the bomb's victims were so long as they were from the other side.

The end result of this kind of thinking is that the more bombs there are and the more of the other side gets killed the better. Or so the bombers seem to rationalize. I'm not sure, however, it works that way. Bombs have been going off all over the Middle East and Africa for the past decade with little appreciable change in attitude by anyone.

Rather than cause the faint of heart to quit, bomb terrorism only seems to increase the resolve of the other side to get revenge, to "get tough," to keep on the same course that brought the bombs in the first place. Terrorism has seldom succeeded--in fact, it may never have succeeded--without some more substantial political revolution to back it up. Terrorism is a sterile kind of statement. It hardens the survivors, it makes more plain the differences between sides; it usually results in the exact opposite of the bomber's desires.

But tell that to the bombers They are convinced that the statement they're making by killing innocent people in a spectacular, loud and frightening way is going to cause the tide to turn, the desire for revenge to be satisfied, the millennium to arrive. The millennium may, indeed, arrive, but on its own terms, not on those of any bomber.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.