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Mon. Aug 22, 2005

Closing The Door On Rudolph

Back in April, I wrote “from the day it happened, this has been like a dark place in my heart.” On the day Eric Rudolph was brought to Atlanta to plead guilty, I made a trip to Centennial Park to try and find some personal closure. And today, I’m closing the door on the man himself.

As much as this bombing in my hometown affected me, I was safe in bed asleep when the explosion actually occurred. The reactions to the court session today have varied widely for the people who were truly affected. While all of the victims had a right to be there and make a statement, some refused to give Rudolph another second of their life.

Ted Riner, a now-retired trooper for the Georgia State Patrol, won’t be among them.

“I don’t need to go up there and look at [Rudolph] smirk,” Riner said. He was part of the security team the night of the blast, which knocked him down and left him bleeding heavily. “I was lying there saying to myself, ‘That’s a lot of blood. Am I going to bleed to death like a deer drowning in his own blood?’ ” he said.

It’s not that he’s bitter. Riner said life-altering risks are part of police work. He’s moved on with his life, though the shrapnel that remains in his head sometimes sets off metal detectors.

But ”[Rudolph] had a choice,” Riner said, referring to the plea agreement. “The rest of us didn’t.”

AJC: Rudolph faces victims, reads apology

Others simply could not avoid this day, right down to the cruel coincidence of its date:

An angry John Hawthorne, widower of Alice Hawthorne, the Albany woman killed in the July 27, 1996, Centennial Olympic Park explosion set off by Rudolph, told the 38-year-old drifter that today would have been their 19th wedding anniversary.

“Every Aug. 22 has been filled with weeping, anger and sorrow. But, this day is a new day for me. A long, continuous time of sorrow is over … there is joy in my heart this day because Alice can finally rest in peace,” Hawthorne said.

Hawthorne wanted to know why Rudolph did not have the courage to die for his beliefs.

“If your cause is just are you not willing to die as so many others have in a cause?” Hawthorne asked.

“I think I know. For I watched you in Birmingham [during his sentencing there for the fatal bombing of an abortion clinic]. I watched as you winked in our direction as if this was a cat and mouse game and my daughter started to cry.”

“You are really a very small man [in spirit] ... a little person, big bomb. Your arrogance hides your fear of a dismal future in prison where you will never see a flower, you will never see the beauty of a rising sun.”

“You are a young man,” Hawthorne finished, “may God bless you with a long, long life.”

That is eloquence born of dark suffering, yet with its own unique beauty (more here). Mr. Hawthorne calls him out for the moral coward Rudolph is, unwilling to give his own life in a cause for which he willingly took the lives of others, and wishes him a long life in confinement with one tenth the suffering Mr. Hawthorne has endured.

Alice Hawthorne was a random innocent victim of a terrorist’s ideology, no different than the random innocents killed in the Trade Center on 9/11, or the random innocents killed on trains and a bus in London on 7/7. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Victims of Rudolph’s other Atlanta bombings felt more specifically targeted … even politically targeted … and responded on that level:

Bev McMahon, co-owner of Otherside, a gay nightclub, told Rudolph the Feb. 21, 1997, bomb that injured several bar patrons and shattered the Midtown establishment was “disturbing to even to some who share your views [on homosexuality].”

“You did more harm to your cause than good, whether or not you realize that,” she said, adding, “There’s no rationalizing with a madman.”

That much was made clear by Rudolph’s statements at his previous sentencing in Birmingham last month:

When it came time for Mr. Rudolph to speak, he likened abortion to infanticide and said its legalization made the state “the handmaiden of the new hedonism.” An “abortion mill,” he said, was the “vomitorium of modernity.”

“Those who attempt to save the lives of unborn children and who wish to promote a culture that respects life are now treated as fanatics, threats to American freedom,” he said.

The prosecutor, Michael W. Whisonant, compared Mr. Rudolph to “religious extremists who set off bombs in subways and fly airplanes into buildings.”

Judge Smith likened him to a Nazi, telling him: “You misused your gifts. You allowed yourself to be overcome and overwhelmed by bigotry and intolerance.”

NY Times: Victims Have Say as Birmingham Bomber Is Sentenced

 

Mr. Rudolph, who has not expressed any remorse, insisted in court that he would be “vindicated.”

“What they did was participate in the murder and dismemberment of upward of 50 children a week,” Mr. Rudolph said. “I will be vindicated – my actions in Birmingham that overcast day in January 1998 will be vindicated. As I go to a prison cell for a lifetime I know that I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.”

NY Times: A Remorseless Rudolph Gets Life Sentence for Bombing at Clinic

No remorse in Birmingham, he even claimed vindication. But “There’s no rationalizing with a madman,” especially when the madman suffers from such grandiose delusions of his own competency, never mind the simple physics of the acts he planned in Atlanta:

In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington, millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations invested billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect the games. The purpose of the attack on July 27th at Centennial Park was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.

The plan was to force the cancellation of the Games, or at least create a state of insecurity to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested. The plan was conceived in haste and carried out with limited resources, planning and preparation — it was a monster that kept getting out of control the more I got into it. Because I could not acquire the necessary high explosives, I had to dismiss the unrealistic notion of knocking down the power grid surrounding Atlanta and thereby pulling the plug on the Olympics for their duration.

The plan that I finally settled upon was to use five separate low-tech timed explosives to be placed one at a time on successive days throughout the Olympic schedule, each preceded by a 40 to 50 minute warning call to 911, giving the location and time of detonation. My intent was to thereby allow each area to be cleared, leaving only uniformed, arms-carrying government personnel exposed to potential injury.

AJC: Eric Rudolph’s statement at sentencing

Witness the psychological delusion. Once he realized that he did not possess the cartoon superpowers required to be a one man grid buster, he figured he could build a bomb that would injure only those wearing uniforms … in a park that contained an estimated 50,000 people that night. And he would do so to void a celebration of “the ideals of global socialism” and to protest the “abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.”

Yep, that’s the first thing I thought was the cause on the morning after. Global socialism and abortion. His “message” was perfectly murderous and entirely muddled, at the same time. His very actions confirm it. Once he’d seen what he’d done with that one bomb, he tucked tail and abandoned his grandiose delusions.

And now he wants to apologize:

The responsibility for what took place that night in the park belongs to me and me alone. Despite my belief in the justice of my cause, despite the mishandling of the 911 call, the choice to use that particular tactic was mine, and I accept full responsibility for the consequences. I fully realize that all of this may be no consolation to the victims who suffered as a result of my actions, but I would do anything to take back that night.

To these victims, I apologize.

Does an apology clean up this river of blood? Should we be prepared to accept an apology from Osama bin Laden, or even the failed second team of London bombers?

I can’t. And maybe that means I’m just a petty curmudgeonly old man, who wasn’t even stirred from his safe sleep by the actual blast. Maybe I could learn something from a 14 year old girl, who was not only there, she watched her mother die:

Alice Hawthorne’s daughter, Fallon Stubbs, was more compassionate when giving her victim impact testimony, saying a long period of sorrow had not made her hate her mother’s killer.

“My message to you is one of acceptance and forgiveness,” she said.

“In all honesty Mr. Rudolph, I would not be who I am today without you,” said Stubbs, who was 14 at the time of the bombing. “I have learned to be a tolerant person because of you, to accept people who are different than I am, and embrace their differences.”

She compared his bombings to other acts of terror; “Sept. 11, your bomb, the DC sniper [are all acts of terrorism], but you, too, can change.”

“I would not be who I am today without you” ... and she’s clearly a bigger person than I am. In my opinion, there’s no one more affected by this attack than Fallon was. She’ll be 23 next week, half my age, and to hear those words from her makes me feel small and petty.

But I can’t help it. All I can do now is close the door on this man. Take solace from the fact Mr. Outdoor Survivalist will never again see so much as a blade of grass. And that he need never take up another speck of my consciousness.

He no longer exists.