Posted on 04/22/2015 2:37:06 PM PDT by Kaslin
April 19th has come again this year, but it never quite goes. How can it? It stands out like a scar. It may no longer be the bleeding wound it was on that first April 19th -- except to those who were there and in a way still are. And can never leave. Their lives, their families, even their memories will never be whole again.
The explosion that tore through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, reducing it to a burned-out hulk, left more than an unforgettable stench in the air. It left a gaping hole in the American consciousness. It was a spiritual blow, which is why rituals like Sunday's in Oklahoma City are necessary and will be necessary -- like lighting a candle for the dead or saying the kaddish on the anniversary of a death in the family.
Ron Asbill was there that first April 19th. A first responder, they call those like him -- one of those blessed types who hurries to do whatever they can to help in the midst of the unspeakable. First victim would be more like it, for he, too, can be numbered among the casualties. The spiritual casualties. For years he couldn't even go to the commemorations. Memories came flooding back. His knees buckled. He turned back. He knew even years later that he had to get away.
When he got to that awful sight 20 years ago, Ron Asbill -- who lives in Siloam Springs, Ark., now -- saw the police officer first. The cop was crying on the back of his patrol car. Sirens were still sounding, screams still pierced the air. Mr. Asbill was an EMT (emergency medical technician) and you'd think he'd be used to such sights by now. You'd think wrong. You never get used to it, and Ron Asbill certainly isn't over April 19th. How could anybody get over it?
Turned back from the still smoldering remains, Ron Asbill made it to the hospital, where a man asked him to help unload some black nylon body bags from the back of a truck. "I grabbed it, and I was expecting it to be heavy. When I picked it up, everything went to the middle," Asbill said, pausing to regain composure. "So we carried those into a dark room off the side of the street there. Makeshift morgue. Seven kids."
No, you never get over it. To quote LaDonna Battle, who on Sunday was standing between two of the 168 memorial chairs, one for each of those who had perished there. These honored her mother and father, who were at the Federal Building that day to fill out some paperwork for their Social Security benefits. "We're completing a journey with steel hearts," she says. "We're rebuilding our lives."
All wish the lady and her family the best, which would surely be to forgive. But how forgive the unforgivable?
There is another April 19th on the calendar -- two years to the day before Timothy McVeigh chose that anniversary to exact his pitiless revenge at Oklahoma City -- with the usual pointless result. "Revenge is Sour," to quote the title of an essay by George Orwell, who knew.
The massacre at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas, took the lives of 76 members of a religious cult -- all either buried alive or suffocated by the effects of the fire that broke out when a raid went tragically wrong. Including 17 innocent children.
Only that April 19th wasn't the work of a lone lunatic, but the misguided result of a concentrated effort by masterminds at the White House like Attorney General Janet Reno and "Judge" Webb Hubbell, who had once served as a special judge in Arkansas, and took that empty title with him when he went to Washington as part of Team Clinton.
Incompetence, it turns out, can prove as homicidal as malice. This current administration might keep that in mind as it retreats in the face of evil across the globe -- in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and beyond -- or even collaborates with it.
It won't do just to remember and commemorate the April 19ths. We must learn from them. Hard as that will be to do. But we must try. And not just every April 19th.
I believe the date was selected because it was the anniversary of a government massacre. Ruby Ridge?
Wasn’t teh 19th also Lexington and Concord? Paul Revere’s riode was on the 18th.
I believe the date was selected because it was the anniversary of a government massacre. Ruby Ridge?
Wasn’t April 19th also Lexington and Concord? Paul Revere’s riode was on the 18th.
“I believe the date was selected because it was the anniversary of a government massacre. Ruby Ridge?”
The Branch Davidians.
Yes. I have always celebrated April 19 as the day the American Revolution began.
I believe the massacre at Waco was one of malice. When the ATF invaded the compound some of their agents were shot. And by God they were going to kill those Davidians.
The Ruby Ridge standoff happened in 1992 and different month (August)
One thing the media will never be curious about is whether Hillary pressured Bill into using massive force against the Branch Davidian compound. The standoff was a political embarrassment.
I was four when this happened and I hate to say but it wasn’t really mentioned much when I was in school.
That does not surprise me, because it happened during Clinton’s first term in Office. Janet Reno was his AG if I am not mistaken
She was the AG but Holder called all the shots.
Yeah, but wasn’t she the one who send the tanks into the Branch Davidian?
“A Scar On The Calendar”
Followed by the disgusting pus filled cover up to prevent ALL of the truth from coming out. Since they had a convenient, ‘right wing’ culprit, the bent one and company wanted the story to end.
Sadly, one of the people that should have been investigated in Oklahoma bombing, later worked at Logan International Airport, in the food service area. Seems like some airplanes flew out of there with box cutters possibly hidden on board - probably by some member of the ground crew.
Don’t worry, he’s disappeared since then.
Why do you think that’s a problem above and beyond the massacre? You used the term pressured, how about just normal spousal entreaties.
It was a disgusting display of Police state politics. A spouse advising her husband is not against the law and is not even abnormal — even for a high level politician.
Hillary is sunk already on Benghazi and apparently some new news coming out regarding tit for underage tats for Bill and tit for tat for Hillary.
Keep the issues clear and don’t feed the ‘VRWC’.
In everything she “did” she was following instructions from Holder, the “assistant” to her.
Paul Greenberg can kiss my American ass.
What a tool.
April 19th is not about the Hagiography of the Victim, whether OK City or Waco.
For all Americans it is about standing up, not lying down and being a victim. This is what differentiates us from ALL other nations (except maybe Israel).
TownHall you should be ashamed of publishing this turd.
The date is the date of awakening for many of us. I will never see our federal government in the same way. The buddy ranch is an example of the lessons learned. I can mourn the lives in both places but the Feds drew first blood.
Years later, some wit Photoshopped Timothy McVeigh, somewhere in the Middle East, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh headdress.
Yes. April 19th is indeed an infamous date on the calendar:
April 19, 1993. Waco. When the U.S. government murdered scores of innocent Americans.
April 19, 1995. OKC. When the U.S. government murdered scores of innocent Americans.
See a pattern there?
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