Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 3, 1993 TAG: 9303030390
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BLASTS
PERHAPS New York City and the rest of the world will soon know who blew a crater in the World Trade Center last week, killing five, injuring hundreds - and why they did it. Investigators are checking every clue. More than 50 anonymous callers claimed credit after the event.That some people would want to claim "credit" is itself, however, a reminder that no answers are likely to prove satisfactory or make sense.
There's no shortage of violent grudge-holders out there, from Serbs to Iraqis, from Colombian drug lords to the IRA, who might have perpetrated the despicable act. Assuming the motive is political, that makes the deed hardly less insane than if a disgruntled ex-worker or crazy person did it.
Compounding the shock is the traditional assumption that America isn't an explosion kind of country. Terrorist bombings hit London streets or Israeli buses. More characteristically American is the violence outside Waco, Texas, where local authorities have held a shootout with a religious cult.
Americans like their freedom too much to put up with some of the security measures peoples in other nations endure. Yes, we tolerate and have accepted as routine the baggage searches in airports, the metal detectors in courthouses, the identity cards for office workers.
But there are limits. It would be wise, for instance, to insist on tighter restrictions and record-keeping on the 4 billion pounds of explosives purchased in America every year. But civilian buildings cannot be armor-plated. Every car going into an underground garage cannot be searched.
Aside from their cost, inconvenience and impracticality, such measures would mean a victory for terrorists. Acts meant to inspire fear are rendered empty if people don't yield to it. It's notable as such that New Yorkers, even those whose lives were disrupted by the blast, are rebounding with resilience. Terror has won too many victories as it is.
Indeed, the most characteristically American terrorism is the sort that holds hostage millions of good people every day, millions who fear to leave their homes or to walk on certain streets at night because they may be robbed or raped or shot.
Crime is America's terrorism. With the number of handguns in circulation approaching the national population, it's not surprising that more people are murdered every day in New York than were killed in the trade center explosion.
Images flickering on the television news blend into gory entertainment fare. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's comments, on the "Today" show Monday morning, bear repeating:
"We're more threatened by ourselves than we are by foreign terrorists. What happened in Waco, Texas, wasn't a bunch of Croats or a bunch of Chinese. It was a bunch of Americans killing one another with guns.
"We're still the most violent place in the world, not because they do it to us but because we do it to ourselves."