Eight Feet Deep

“Tastes great! Less fill­ing! Tastes great! Less filling!”

I sup­pose it to be some­what flip­pant to talk about the after­math of yesterday’s sui­cide plane crash in Austin in terms of a beer com­mer­cial. But then, some of the dis­cus­sion bounc­ing around as to whether the inci­dent was solely a crim­i­nal act or an act of domes­tic ter­ror­ism is about as weighty as the 1980s Miller Lite com­mer­cials.

There is no doubt that some minds and hearts were filled with ter­ror when 53-year-old Joe Stack of Austin flew his single-engine Piper air­craft into a multi-story North Austin build­ing that housed almost 200 IRS employ­ees. The crash and result­ing fire injured more than a dozen and killed an IRS employee as well as Stack.

Much is to be exam­ined and digested in the after­math of this act which a man who appar­ently had years of rage bot­tled up, over the IRS, Catholic Church and other insti­tu­tions he felt wronged him, came uncorked. But seem­ingly one of the least impor­tant mat­ters, it seems to me, is whether this act should be labeled just a crim­i­nal act or a case of domes­tic ter­ror. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence to pick one when it comes to a word describ­ing the intended crash as crim­i­nal or domes­tic terror.

Today, Fox News, which in my mind is about the most pissy news orga­ni­za­tions around, had an online story titled: Austin Plane Crash: Crim­i­nal Act or Domes­tic Ter­ror­ism? The answer is, to para­phrase another old TV com­mer­cial  tagline, this one from Certs breath mints: “It’s two, two, two acts in one.”

Yes when Stack went on his ram­page and dived into the build­ing along U.S. 183 near Loop 360 in Austin he cer­tainly com­mit­ted a crime, most likely sev­eral. That is not to men­tion inten­tion­ally set­ting fire to his own home before head­ing to George­town Munic­i­pal Air­port to launch his airplane.

What Stack did Thurs­day morn­ing like­wise fits many def­i­n­i­tions of what an act of ter­ror­ism is. As left-leaning blog “Crooks and Liars” writes: “Huh? Since when is attempt­ing to blow up a fed­eral build­ing not an act of domes­tic ter­ror?” How­ever, I’m not cer­tain the build­ing or build­ings in the office park where the crash hap­pened were actu­ally “fed­eral” build­ings rather than just com­mer­cial build­ings leased by the gov­ern­ment. But until I read the C & L  piece I had, quite the oppo­site, felt Fox was try­ing to hang the ter­ror label on the inci­dent in order that the right may use it to claim Obama and his min­ions are soft on ter­ror and let this hap­pen. But I see I had mis­taken Fox’s motives. They are still pissy.

What does it mat­ter though, I mean, really? The act was ter­ror­ism in the legal sense as Crooks and Liars points out in their link to the FBI’s ter­ror­ism def­i­n­i­tions:

**Inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions are con­ducted in accor­dance with “The Attor­ney Gen­eral Guide­lines for FBI For­eign Intel­li­gence Col­lec­tion and For­eign Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Inves­ti­ga­tions.” These guide­lines set forth the pred­i­ca­tion level and lim­its for inves­ti­gat­ing U.S. per­sons or for­eign nation­als in the United States who are tar­get­ing national secu­rity inter­ests on behalf of a for­eign power.

The act was one which did noth­ing but hurt peo­ple. It didn’t solve any prob­lems. You can call it a “sui­cide bomb­ing” or as Fox News used to say, while duti­fully kiss­ing Pres­i­dent Gee Dubya Bush’s ass, a “homi­cide bomb­ing.” I can’t see any earthly rea­son why it mat­ters if this be couched in a par­tic­u­lar term because any term cov­er­ing this cow­ardly, crim­i­nal, rep­re­hen­si­ble, ter­ror­is­tic act seems just about apt.

It was all a big waste, was what it was.