1,200
Years Of Prison For 1993 World Trade Center Convicted Terrorists
by Cliff McKenzie, editor, vigilancevoice.com
GROUND
ZERO PLUS 1264 DAY--New York, NY, Saturday, February
26, 2005--Just
after noon on this date in 1993 the first shot of 21st Century
Terrorism shook the security of the 100 million families in
America.
It was the bombing of
the World Trade Center, eight years in prelude to another attack
that would come from the air rather than from a van parked in
the garage loaded with explosives.
The 1993 attack, celebrated
today in a memorial to the six who died in that disaster, is
a reminder that Terrorism is not new, that it never has been,
and that it will be always ever present in our lives.
Each of the five Terrorists
responsible for the bombing received 240 years in prison based
on 38 counts of against the defendants. More than 1,000 people
were injured in the attack that was hoped by its Terrorist architects
to kill 35,000. Damage to the World Trade Center was estimated
at more than a half billion dollars, but the rip in the security
fabric of the United States was far more severe. Unfortunately,
how bad a rip wouldn't be realized until the morning of September
11, 2001 when an orchestrated attack from the air punctuated
the failed attempt on the ground eight years earlier to bring
America to its knees as just as vulnerable as any third-world
nation to the ravages of Terrorism.
But, the celebration
of a horrible event in 1993 is not the most important Terrorism
news of the day.
The
1993 earlier rip in our security was made more apparent
on NineEleven
Perhaps more insidious
and virulent is the resurgence of one of America's most frightening
home-bred Terrorist, the BTK serial killer. From 1974 to 1986,
the BTK suspect is linked to the deaths of at least eight people.
The killer acquired the nickname "BTK" because his
Terrorism includes binding, torturing and then killing his prey.
Go
To
While there is a tendency
for America to look abroad for its Terrorists and imagine them
wrapped in ski masks and speaking foreign tongues, countless
thousands of "Continental Terrorists" roam the land
plotting and planning their next attack on the innocent and
unsuspecting.
Terrorism after all is
said and done, is nothing more than imposing upon others Fear,
Intimidation and Complacency in a variety of degrees. The label
attached to Terrorists might start with "cruel" and
"abusive" and, or, such euphemisms as "bully"
or "mean." But, carried to the "nth" degree,
such acts hold one purpose: to render the subject in state of
emotional or physical subjugation, and, in some of the extreme
cases, brutally killing them.
And abusive parent, for
example, isn't unlike the BTK killer. He or she can strike such
Fear, Intimidation and Complacency into a child so that the
child quakes in his or her bed, fearful that the parent may
lash out with the whip of his or her tongue and demean the child
into a state where the child's bladder cannot be controlled,
or that the child crawls deep into the bottom of the covers
fearful the enraged parent might use the child for a whipping
post either with his or her hands, or to issue out vicious verbal
assaults upon the child for being "ugly" or "wishing
you weren't born," or "don't bother me," or,
"you're always getting in trouble," or, worse of all,
ignore the child's emotional thirsts to be loved and treat the
child with indifference of a rock.
Human arrogance is often
the fertilizer to horrible ripples of Terrorism that turn into
tsunamis as a child grows into an adult and then morphs into
parenthood himself or herself.
This arrogance assumes
or presumes that the way a parent was treated or mistreated
provides a roadmap for the way a child should be. It is commonly
understood that violence from a parent to child often begets
violence from the child to its children in the later evolution
of life. A father who beats his wife often sets a standard of
violence for the future of the children who, if male, see the
modeling of violence as a way to rule the roost, and, in the
case of a female child, to absorb such violence in the "name
of the family" and become a doormat, a punching bag for
both emotional, psychological and physical attacks.
Personally, I find it
unconscionable that our society banners headlines on all forms
of egregious Terrorism as though these acts were isolated to
the "extremes" of human nature, when the truth of
these "pinnacles of Terrorism" is that they are natural
evolutions of a host of smaller forms of Terrorism that ultimately
aggregate into horrific acts of violence.
The Terrorists who flew
their planes into the World Trade Center grew up with families
condoning such actions, either through Complacency to their
children's thirsts to 'let' others blood in jihad or to the
actual encouragement of such acts. Our society forgets that
there are millions upon millions of "foreign Terrorist-like
people" who disavow such violence, and train their children
to be respectful of all human nature and to abhor the violence
upon others--for any and all reasons.
The BTK
serial killer is symbolic of the fact that within us all
sit the Seeds of Terrorism
In America, the BTK serial
killer has popped up out of the dormant slime of his Terroristic
primordial ooze. He is symbolic not of some anomoly of human
nature, but of the fact that within us all sit the Seeds of
Terrorism waiting to either be fertilized or crushed by beliefs
and actions that either denude or annoint them.
Perhaps it all begins
with what we see in the mirror. If we look at ourselves as "creatures"
of abuse--by others, life or simply our own failing ways--then
we become "nothings," veritable shells whose only
worth may be in degrading and denigrating others, for by suppressing
the value of others we may find some false elevation of our
own self worth.
The BTK serial killer
has stuck his hand up out of the crowd and waved it to remind
the American people that looking outside this nation for the
Osama bin Laden's, and clinging to some false belief that if
we "kill all the Terrorists abroad" that somehow our
children will be safer and more secure, is nothing more than
fantasy.
Let's
focus on what are doing to protect our children from becoming
Terrorists and being victims of Terrorists
The reality is that we,
Americans, need to teach our children and ourselves to be wary
of the Beast of Terror Within. If we are Sentinels of Vigilance
regarding our own lives, and live them by adhering to the Principles
of Vigilance, then the Beast of Terror Without will have no
cracks in our armor to penetrate.
So, on the anniversary
of the 1993 World Trade Center attack we should all take a moment
and reflect not on what Terrorism exists abroad, but focus on
the BTK serial killer and ask: "What are we doing to protect
ourselves, our families, and our children's families from the
threats of Emotional and Physical Terrorism that wound them
into becoming not only Terrorists, but the victims of them?"
If the answer is, in
part, that we take the Pledge of Vigilance and apply it daily
in our lives, then we are on the right path.
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