Las Vegas lives on gambling. I bet you that if it wasn’t for the addicts who believe that the next flip of a card, the next roll of a dice, or the next spin of a wheel would bring instant riches, there wouldn’t be places like The Golden Nugget, The MGM Grand, the Bellagio or Caesar’s Palace.
And I’ll double down on that bet and wager that when the mob — the New York, Miami, Chicago and Philadelphia Mafia — who turned Las Vegas from a sleepy desert town into Sin City in the late 1950s, they did so only to maximise their profits from entertainment, its vices, its prostitution, its racketeering and its money laundering.
Sure, it’s respectable now — big investors have big investments and make big returns there. And amid all of the 24-hour schlock, the glitter, the neo-Parisian ambience, the neo-Venetian huffery and the Elvis-impersonation puffery, it’s a mostly fun place.
After all, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Some advertising genius 20 years ago came up with that slogan for the city — a get-out-of-jail-card, a marketing pass to forgive frolicking follies, absolve adult-rated misdemeanours, and extend an explanation to the over-extended at the card table.
It’s where adults come to party, let loose, forget life — and die in a murderous rampage of Stephen Paddock.
On the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, Paddock took an arsenal of weapons, barricaded himself inside, and began to fire away at a country music festival down below. Inside 11 minutes, Paddock had killed 59, injured some 500 more, and made himself America’s worst mass killer yet.
Paddock set up cameras so he could record his last acts of murder, presumably that there would be no doubt for authorities that he did it all by himself. He even fitted the weapons — which were all legally obtained — with bump stocks, mechanisms that it’s all perfectly legal to buy, for $99.99 (Dh367) each online.
‘Pure evil’
The Las Vegas Police Department says Paddock rented another hotel room, overlooking another country music festival, and may have used that as a dummy run before last Sunday night’s act of murder.
United States President Donald Trump has described the events in Las Vegas as “pure evil” and called Paddock “demented”. For once, I agree with Trump’s phraseology. Paddock’s actions were evil. And for him to deliberately open fire on so many, there can be no other explanation, other than he was indeed, demented.
But no one has used the ‘T’ word.
I will.
Stephen Paddock is a terrorist.
He is no different from any other terrorist who sets out to deliberately kill and maim so many, to spread fear and terror in so many — except that Paddock managed to do so.
Why?
Because Paddock is white, and not a Muslim.
Can you imagine the invective coming from the Oval Office now if it had turned out that Paddock was a Muslim? Or that he had served overseas in Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan? Or had become radicalised? Or was a violent militant intent on waging war on America? Or if there were Islamic materials on his computer? Or if he had shouted “Allahu Akbar” before he began his murderous killing spree?
Nope, none of the above.
Paddock, 64, was an American who believed in what he was about to do, for whatever political or personal reason.
Terrorists do that.
Using legal means
Paddock wanted to kill as many people as possible in the quickest possible manner.
Terrorists do that too.
He recced another event and used the intelligence gathered to see what would work.
Terrorists do that as standard operating procedure.
Paddock amassed weapons as quietly as he could, using legal means available to him to fly beneath law-enforcement radars.
Sure, terrorists do that too, and how often have we read about the planning that went into their deadly attacks.
Paddock chose a place and time to strike that would maximise carnage.
Sadly, we all know terrorists do that too.
And Paddock filmed the attack, for whatever reasons. And yes, terrorists do that too.
So, with all of the boxes ticked for a terrorist attack, why isn’t Paddock being branded a terrorist?
Is it because he was a “lone wolf”? Well, guess what? There are lone-wolf terrorists too.
Is it because Paddock wasn’t a Muslim?
Is a non-Judeo-Christian belief system what’s needed to call someone who kills so many, so quickly, and with so much evil, a terrorist?
Surely not.
Before the horrific events of 9/11, the greatest act of terrorism committed on US soil was at the hands of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols when they bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed 168.
They weren’t Muslim.
Since, then, however, everything has changed.
There’s a president in the Oval Office who believes it’s OK to exclude ordinary people from across the Muslim world from visiting the US.
Automatic gunfire
But it wasn’t anyone from the Muslim world who locked himself into a hotel room and riddled an audience at a country music festival with automatic gunfire.
Until the events of last Sunday, more than 11,000 people have been killed in the US by gunfire so far in 2017.
And there hadn’t been blanket surveillance of their places of worship, leading up to all those deaths. Nor, I would hesitate to wager, would there have been mobile phone conversations listened upon, nor all forms of electronic surveillance read.
I can’t find statistics on this, but I hazard a guess to say that most were non-Muslim, and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, or involved in crime or some other random act that warranted their deaths then and there.
How many were on no-fly lists? How many were hauled off planes for not speaking English? Or for a turban being mistaken as Arab dress?
No one knows, and no one cares.
After all, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
