I don’t think we “need” either the terrorism laws or the label, as a matter of policy or enforcement. Not for the Bundy gang, and not for anyone else.
But it’s possibly useful to talk about what they were doing, what they meant to do, their ideology, how to describe and contextualize all of these. Not for the sake of the prosecution, but so that we better understand the import of their movement.
That’s exactly where they belong.
I have to hair split a bit here. I don’t think “we” are going to be debating 20 years hence about the terrorism label. If this is the beginning of confrontational militia goonery and if some of those lead to injuries/death of civilians or police, then I’ll associate these buffoons with Mcveigh.
If this turns out to be a one-off, then I’ll continue regarding the occupiers as idiots, buffoons, Darwin Award candidates – and I think that’s how the’ll be viewed by the general populace. They’ll be a fitting topic for jokes on talk shows, unlike people who plant bombs and kill people.
So, no debate in 20 years, because it will be a fairly clear yes or no – but it’s not a given that this will be seen as a significant opening of a significant movement.
Bundys in the dark the snacks ran low
Planning to tell the Feds just where to go
Drink up your lite beer and call up CNN, they said
After you deliver the idiot screed
Send out a list of what you need
Cute throw rugs and tampax will allow us to overcome
There’s a tarp man laying on the ground
He’d like to think he’s hidden but we see the big blue mound
There’s a tarp man playing with his gun
He’d like to think he scares us but we laugh and all make fun
He told me
Let the rednecks posture
Let the rednecks bluster
Let all the rednecks save us
Them boys aren’t good planners so they need you
For their French vanilla creamer and shampoo
They need to groom their beards for their appearance on channel 2
They really think that they can win this fight
But the marshals have decided it will end tonight
Don’t leave the compound if you know what’s good for you
See the tarp man take off in his truck
He should know it’s over but he has a lot of pluck
There’s a tarp man dying on the ground
He tried to make his last stand but he was quickly downed
He told me
Let the rednecks posture
Let the rednecks bluster
Let all the rednecks save us
I completely agree re: mass murderer McVeigh but Rudolph was a victim, an accident of birth. And his red nose never hurt anyone.
Though not very likely able to overthrow the government, that subculture is absolutely capable of inflicting a lot of mayhem, killing, maiming, major destruction including serious environmental damage, disease et al. They are extensive, HEAVILY armed, festering and growing unabated for a long time. They consist of the most fanatic and/or deranged, inchoate, deluded, paranoid, fearful* of our species.
We should thank these clowns for drawing the public’s attention, thus compelling the powers that be to deal with them. Just maybe, now they will begin to be dealt with as forcefully and thoroughly as they need to be. They are a much more serious threat to the USA than foreign terrorists.
Example A is a terrorist act. The bomb was purposely used to create fear with the general population regardless if the physical target was a government building. And, for general information, most government buildings have civilian workers.
At least conceptually, you can’t separate a government building bombing in the heart of the capital as non terrorist from a public bombing like the Erawan shrine. I will agree there is a continuum where the Erawan shrine was unequivocally a terrorist attack targeting civilians and tourists, and a government building bombing is not quite so black and white.
Take Nadal Hasan and the Fort Hood Shooting. Was that terrorism or a work place shooting? Senate committee called it the worst terrorist attack since 9-11. Investigators in the FBI and U.S. Army determined that Hasan acted alone and they have found no evidence of links to terrorist groups. They are satisfied that his communications with Awlaki posed no threat at the time. The decision by the Army not to charge Hasan with terrorism was controversial.
Bundy and ilk can be plausibly argued that they fall somewhere on the mild end of the terrorism continuum. It isn’t a slam dunk, obvious to all, that their acts and intention falls outside of what can be in layman terms a terrorist act.
Rumor has it that the remaining Ranch Stupidians are using heavy equipment on-site, perhaps to lay the foundations for a lightly-used dildo store?
Also, Y’all Quaeda.
Maybe 2nd amendment enthusiasts might start to gain a little understanding about how being a “legal gun owner” or “a good guy with a gun” doesn’t always give a warm and fuzzy feeling to everyone else. Universal firearm registration, eliminating private sales between individuals and funding to enforce laws on the books are not gun grabbing but common sense measures to place a modicum of control on private gun owners.
While I applaud how LEO didn’t go in with guns a blazing, I sure as hell hope they rewrite the playbooks to avoid this goat rodeo in the future. If there is an armed takeover, then set up and enforce a perimeter, cut the power, jam cell phones, allow media coverage as per both the constitution and the fourth estate watchdog practice while avoiding as much as possible a propaganda clown show, etc. Ie, avoid the wet dream middle aged fantasy camp aspects that came through so strong this time around.
I don’t want to align myself with coremelt because his arguments are asinine, but I don’t think what they’ve done so far is terrorism. For it to be called terrorism, the immediate goal has to be to create terror in the general population.
The yahoos’ threats of violence were not intended to create terror; they were intended to help them maintain control of the property they seized. Those threats certainly deserve prosecution, but it isn’t terrorism.
Just because some people feared for their lives as a result of the wackos’ actions, it’s not enough to label it terrorism without terror being the intent. I can drive a car down the freeway at 100 mph weaving through traffic, and people would rightly fear for their lives. It doesn’t make me a terrorist.
This situation could have easily escalated to the point of terrorism. But it isn’t there yet.
Fist-Bump 
[
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_vmQrTi3aM):dubious::rolleyes:
I will send a shiny nickel to the first person who records Tarp Man and I Don’t Like Bundys. Genius!
Hey folks, don’t go thinking this situation is over yet:[
](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5c7034144c63436d9964df9fec37f55e/latest-fbi-4-holdouts-remain-oregon-wildlife-refuge)Aye, yer all shining stars, Mr. Anderson; that’s what you are. :rolleyes:
And a new song parody begins to write itself. I wonder if Weird Al has a new album in the works?
:D:D:D
Claiming that the fact that you have money proves you’re not a moron simply demonstrates that you’re a moron. So does thinking I must be bitter because I think you’re a moron. So does thinking you have a better life than me. (However, there are plenty of imbeciles who are quite happy because they’re too stupid to know any better.)
coremelt doesn’t seem to understand that calling someone a moron doesn’t make them a moron. It’s his history of incredibly stupid posts that makes him a moron.
Is that you, Mr. Trump?
Last you heard? You need to hear from someone else regarding the state of your life? You can’t figure it out for yourself?
This is more or less my line of thought. They’re not trying to effect change through violence - they’re not saying, “Disband the BLM or we start killing people,” they’re just occupying a bird sanctuary. The only violence threatened is if the cops try to arrest them for talking over the sanctuary. That puts it just outside “terrorist” to me, as using a threat of violence to stop the cops from arresting you is a fairly common criminal tactic. A guy who screws up a bank robbery, and ends up holed up in the bank threatening to shoot any cops he sees isn’t a terrorist, he’s a common criminal who’s actively working at getting a longer sentence. These militia dickheads are pretty much in the same boat, as I see it.
Course, that could change fast if these guys get any stupider before this ends.
Heh, I love how after all the talk about how they’re pissed off military veterans, they finally admit they’ve never served and they’re just clowns who like to pretend they’re really soldiers.
That’s the think that I always found preposterous whenever militia types get portrayed in pop culture, like Law & Order or something like that they’re always portrayed as ex-Special Forces or something like that, but most were never even in the military. They’re just losers motivated by their own inadequacies rather than whatever preposterous political beliefs they’re spouting.
That’s where I think you’re wrong. For at least some of them, their goals were not just to get a couple of ranchers released by seizing the sanctuary. They seized the sanctuary in order to provoke a violent confrontation with law enforcement. Their intention was not merely self defense, it was to intimidate the government to change policy - and for some of them, it was to provoke an insurrection.
This. Starve them of food, water, heat, and most importantly, communications. Then wait for them to crack and come out.