McVeigh's victims, his collateral damage, were just as dead. It is pretty to think so. If big war is for the moment obsolete, collateral damage remains, as if to keep up tradition. We have drifted far out of sight of the Geneva Conventions, or of any rules at all. Collateral damage is supposed to mean a mistake, but this killing was deliberate, focused and recreational.
War is a great and terrible permission.
A spirit of satanic play shoots a jolt of lethal impulse through the trigger finger. It tends to corrupt absolutely. Degenerate violence takes on a life of its own. It feeds especially on women and children, the victims of convenience. It seeks them out.