| 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.
R.J.E., Anthony Gregory |
No comments:
Post a Comment