WACO: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED Just Two Days after WTC93 from NStarZone.com
WACO: WHAT
REALLY HAPPENED
For many Americans, Waco represented the nightmare
their government had become. On February 28, 1993 federal BATF agents
arrived at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. They used the
pretext that the Davidians failed to pay a small fine on a minor firearms
charge. Apparently the government believes Christians who own guns are a
greater threat than street gangs, who have turned entire sections of cities
into war zones.
Instead
of knocking on the front door, they jumped out of the back of their truck,
and stormed the compound, shooting their machine guns at the building,
supposedly to arrest leader David Koresh, who quite frequently went jogging
outside of the compound and often drove into town to pick up groceries. The
government could have easily arrested him without incident.
But they weren't interested in simply arresting
Koresh. They wanted to make a statement. They wanted a confrontation. The
Branch Davidians who originally opened the front door to greet them had to
slam it shut to save their lives. Several Davidians and BATF agents were
injured and killed. The BATF claimed the Davidians shot at them, however
the door showed 13 bullet holes coming from the OUTSIDE IN, and none going
from the inside out. This door mysteriously dissappeared and has never been
found (funny how these things happen in cases like this, isn't it?). For 51
days we watched the puppet politicians and media villify Koresh and the
Davidians as agents of the US government surrounded the compound, cut off
power, cut off phone service so the people inside could not tell their side
of the story to the public. They set up loudspeakers outside the compound
and loudly played the sounds of pigs being slaughtered and heavy metal
music 24 hours a day.
It
all ended on April 19, 1993 when Delta Force agents showed up dressed to
kill in Gestapo black uniforms. They hopped into their A-1 tanks and
punched holes into the side of the building. They then flooded the building
with nerve gas, and apparently started a fire that consumed the building
and caused the deaths of 86 of the men, women, and children inside.
Although the American public was brainwashed to view Koresh as a sexual
maniac with dozens of dazed followers in his hypnotic thrall, the truth was
far from that officially endorsed deception.
David
Koresh was not the raving lunatic who the media and FBI demonized on a
daily basis. Koresh wasn't an unstable egotist who sought solace and
validation in any oddball religion that came down the pike. He was born and
raised a Davidian, a religion whose origins stretch back to 1934. Far from
a Jim Jones figure with a fly-by-night theology, Koresh was a seemingly
devout man with a lifelong understanding of the Biblical scriptures, and
his followers appreciated that. This clearly symbolized how we live under a
de facto executive dictatorship. The White House never felt the need to ask
permission of the Congress before it undertook the raid, and the Congress
never raised a serious challenge to the White House's assertion of complete
sovereignty. Our elected representatives and media provided the illusion of
participatory government, while Reno and various anonymous and unelected
underlings held the reins of government and abused their power on a
horrific scale.
Waco was neither a leftwing nor rightwing issue.
It is instead an issue that transcends such political categories and cuts
to the most profound of questions as to what kind of country this is, what
kind it should be, and the very meanings of liberty and tyranny. At Waco,
the U.S. government treated the Branch Davidians as any total state might
treat its most alienated subjects. It broke into their home aggressively,
shot at them recklessly and mockingly defiled their graves. It blocked off
their water and their communications with family, counsel and the press. It
waged psychological warfare on them. It showed no mercy on the little
children that it gassed. It imprisoned the survivors, including one man who
wasn't even in the building during the siege. The Davidians were
effectively dehumanized by the central state's lapdog press, and so all too
few voices, even on the hyper-sensitive left, came to their defense when
Clinton and Reno's federal police stampeded them under their weight.
There
are always groups that receive less sympathy when they go head to head with
the state, and the ruling class knows it and thrives off it. For years, in
different ways and to varying extents, it's also been gun owners, pro life
activists, home-schoolers, divorced fathers, and independent entrepreneurs
among others. It can be one group that endures the jackboot today and a
seemingly opposing group that suffers tomorrow. But the primary concern for
a free society is not which kinds of people should have their freedom
smashed. The real concern is liberty for all. The capacity of the state to
divide peaceful people into groups and set them against one another is its
capacity to oppress. When anyone is victimized by the state, all who
believe in and love the universal values of freedom, as well as the finer
principles on which America was founded, have a moral obligation to oppose
it. A government that can get away with what it did at Waco is essentially
unleashed, constrained only by its own whim.
After
Waco it was becoming more popular to criticize the government and there was
more open hatred of their tactics. At that time it was mostly the right
that spoke out against unchecked government power, erosions of the Bill of
Rights, and the imperial executive. But the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah
building in Oklahoma City, which occurred on Waco's two-year anniversary,
saved the Clinton presidency and government from a population becoming
angry at government abuses of power as it's partisans successfully blamed
the terrorist attack on anti-government attitudes.
After
the OKC bombing, suddenly we were to believe that even the mild criticism
of government heard on mainstream conservative radio was aiding the
terrorists. Then the most dramatic change occured with 9-11. After that it
became even more politically incorrect to openly criticize government
excesses, whether under Bush or Obama. One side will accuse the other of of
siding with "the terrorists".
Waco
is a reflection of a greater problem. Look at the many laws and policies in
America leading up to Waco, and Waco shouldn't be any surprise. Look at
Waco, and the post 9-11 Homeland Security police state falls into place.
The continuity between the Clinton and Bush and Obama presidencies on
issues of civil liberties demonstrate something that many people don't want
to wrap their minds around. America's police state is utterly bipartisan.
It is designed to persist and indeed extend its reach with each
administration, no matter the party in charge. In fact, the political party
illusion serves to distract people from the real issues, the state's
trampling of our liberties, and instead devote their hopeful attention and
energy to getting one dictatorial gang elected rather than the other.
Both Clinton and Bush, and now Obama have gotten
away with massive prosecutorial abuses, federal police brutality and
dramatic attacks on due process for the accused, all while the people have
argued over which side is the worse liar and central manager and not how
best to restore liberty in America. So Bush's Patriot Act was condemned by
the left while he was in office, but Obama's and Clinton's assaults on
privacy are ignored or encouraged. The right called Clinton's seizure of
Elian Gonzalez tyrannical, but thought Bush had the "inherent
authority" to detain and abuse people without trial or due process.
The left lamented how loyally the mainstream media toed Bush's line on WMD
in Iraq, but wasn't nearly as critical when the media parroted Clinton's
Kosovo war propaganda.
Obama's
and Clinton's gun grabbing are decried as totalitarian by the right,
whereas the Bush federal government got away with door-to-door gun
confiscations in New Orleans after Katrina. The federal response to Katrina
alone should have lost Bush all of his support among those who found Waco
unacceptable.
The
worst of this problem of the bipartisan police state is seen in the
"they did it, so why can't we?" form of argument. How many times
did we hear Bush's defenders cite something horrifying that Clinton did or
said as evidence that Bush's actions weren't as beyond the pale as his
critics claimed, after all? This is a disingenuous line of argument coming
from those who lambast Obama or Clinton. But it is effective so long as
Americans care more about their team winning the electoral championship
every four years than about the fact that the whole game is fixed. If
Clinton's officials conducted a large civilian massacre on American soil,
should Bush have been allowed to as well?
One
interesting thought experiment is to ponder what would have happened if it
had been Bush who torched the Branch Davidian home. My guess is that he'd
get away with it just as Clinton did. In contrast, however, the American
right would not be nearly as outraged as it was, or pretended to be, in the
early 1990s. The left, on the other hand, would be quite enraged, far more
than it actually was in 1993. It might even point out that half of Bush's
victims at the Waco siege were persons of color. As it actually happened,
the left didn't even notice the demographics of the slaughtered. You see,
the establishment left typically saves the race card to play in partisan
games.
America's
had this bipartisan police state for a long time. It was Republican Abraham
Lincoln who waged war on half the country and suspended the Bill of Rights
in the other half. It was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who really honed the art
of imprisoning dissenters. It was the Republicans in the 1920s who
adamantly enforced alcohol prohibition. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt tossed
the Japanese Americans in concentration camps. When Republicans turned the
heat on leftists during the Cold War, they were only emulating their
Democrat predecessors' surveillance and harassment of Old-Right and
far-left dissenters in the 30s and 40s.
Both
Republicans and Democrats are fervently pro-gun control. Neither party has
ever done anything significant to rein in the IRS. And just as Clinton's
men helped to whitewash the massacre at Ruby Ridge, which occurred on the
first Bush's watch, Republican fixers were eager to cover up the Clinton
administration's wrongdoing at Waco.
The
trend continues today. Although Obama and his cadre have set some
precedents, the Republican opposition offers little hope. Bush spied on
Americans with no regard for the Bill of Rights or even the meager
statutory restraints imposed on him, and all the Democrats did was whine
that they weren't in on the snooping, and that next time they wanted to be
informed. Of course, they all have an interest in keeping the police state
healthy and strong. The idea that the Democrats are more sensitive to civil
liberties while at the empire's helm is too absurd for words. Obama's
abuses of power far outshine any of his predecessors.
Waco
should remind us that Democrats are no more restrained than the Republicans
when it comes to being "tough on crime," if all that entails is
using the bludgeon of state power against all social elements the ruling
class has deemed less than human. It should also remind us that that
bludgeon is no more surgically precise or benevolent no matter who wields
it, and how corrupting it is for those who do. This should have been
obvious to all, as the Bush government turned Iraq into one big Branch
Davidian compound.
If
ever Americans are to have their rightful liberty, a political realignment
must emerge that shatters the dishonest and distracting constructs of left
and right, Democrat and Republican, and focuses instead on liberty versus
the state. Asking a liberal what he thinks of Waco, or Obama's list of
abuses might give you an idea of whether he tends toward liberty or
statism. Asking a conservative about Iraq or the door-to-door gun
confiscations in New Orleans after Katrina may provide similar
illumination. The atrocity apologists on left and right should be seen as
on the same side on the issue of state power, and those of us who oppose mass
murder must work together against the criminal bipartisan police state.
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