About the massacre in Oklahoma there is only one thing worth saying, namely, that it is the vilest possible crime, committed by people who have fallen into deep wickedness, and who should be executed as soon as they have been tried and convicted. Until they have been tried and convicted, however, any comments we make are inevitably speculative and may look silly within a few days. The original assumption that the criminals were Mideastern terrorists was not itself unreasonable; the World Trade Center had been bombed by such people, and terrorist groups in that region are the people most experienced in planting large car bombs.
Next time a massive car bomb explodes—and there will, alas, be a next time—the pundits will be careful not to hazard a guess that Hezbollah is responsible. Yet the Oklahoma massacre—which has alerted such groups both to the vulnerability of the heartland and to the impact such an outrage makes—has made it more likely that they will be the perpetrators of some future bombing.
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