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Friday, February 19, 2010

How Will We View The Austin Attack?

Many are trying to make sense of what happened in Texas yesterday after a man with a grudge against the government crashed his single-engine plane into an IRS building, killing himself and an employee of the federal office.

But how we view Joseph Stack is just as important as how we view his message to us. His online suicide note painted a sorrowful picture of hardships of trying to go into business for himself and struggles with the IRS, which allegedly hurt the 56-year-old’s dreams of being an entrepreneur. It also included frustrations with former President Bush and politicians in general.

How true is his confession is only time will tell.

But what is Stack? A domestic terrorist, a left-wing nut or a simple man driven mad due to dealings with a challenging bureaucracy?

Whatever term we want to use to describe Stack or this terrible incident to help us make sense, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said it best when he called it “a cowardly, criminal act.”

Stack had a lot of issues and right now, we don’t have any solid facts if his suicide note had any truth to it. If there is truth to it, than obviously this is a much bigger issue. A review of how our government does business with us would be a good place to start.  

But it does not change the actions that Stack took. Here was a man bent on revenge and it cost an innocent man, Vernon Hunter, his life.

Whatever we want to call this incident, whatever pity we may feel for the alleged struggles that Stack had with the IRS, we simply cannot accept this type of act. 

Suicidal revenge is never justified and Stack is guiltier than what he accused the IRS of doing: He took away the dreams that Vernon Hunter’s family had of spending time with him.

So in the end, Stack became something much more horrible than what he thought of the IRS.