and the kind of domestic terrorism exemplified by the Oklahoma City bombing is that foreign terrorism, as in the Middle East against Israel, for example, has more of a chance of affecting policy change. In the latter case, there is a powerful cause at work and in place--the liberation of the Palestinians, for example. In the United States, however, McVeigh and others of his ilk would be hard put to define clearly the goals they wished to achieve. Was it vengeance for Waco or Ruby Ridge? Was it an expression of rage at the system in general for the failed lives of the bombers McVeigh and Nichols? What did they hope to accomplish? And if general destruction was their first goal, was there any sign of what they would establish in the place of that which they destroyed?
Juergensmeyer notes a number of domestic terrorist attacks--the World Trade Center in New York City, the Oklahoma City federal building, the shootings of children at a Jewish day care center in Los Angeles, the bombing at the 1996 Olympics, and ab
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