I was watching a TV special in which they were interviewing some of the children who survived the Koresh cult near Waco and were let out before the final fire.
It got me thinking about the whole issue.
Here we are, almost exactly 10 years later.
Here’s my question:
One a scale from 1 to 10:
if 1 means Koresh and his followers were totally responsible for their own deaths and the deaths of the ATF agents
and 10 means the US government was totally responsible for their deaths and the deaths of the ATF agents
so 5 would mean that the Branch Davidian and the government were equally responsible
What number would you give to asssign blame?
Hmm… That’s a toughie. More than 1, less than 5. Probably around 3. It seems quite possible that the BATF could have handled things a little better from the onset, but despite the various investigations, it’s still unclear exactly how much they did right or wrong. There’s BS on both sides, really. There was the bit hidden about the hot CS-gas grenades, and on the other side, some video that was supposed to prove that the tanks had flamethrowers on them (Which was complete crap). There was also a bit about flashes on the thermal video supposed to indicate that the BATF opened fire first, and when they said afterwards they hadn’t, but later testing showed they hadn’t (Until it was discovered they’d used the wrong type of M16…).
But the Davidians still holed up in their compound when the BATF showed up, refused to surrender peacefully (Regardless of what happened at the initial point of the raid), and the fires were almost certainly set by them (IIRC, the thermal tapes showed the fire starting in a place rather distant from where the hot CS grenades had been thrown), so I think they carry more responsibility than the BATF. I’d be much less pleased with the BATF if they didn’t take Waco as a very important lesson, and improve how they handle things, though…
2-3 range. I had to do a paper defending the Branch Davidians and the two points I made were that a) Koresh showed indications of an individual who reacted to provocation, not instigated it himself, and the feds totally disregarded that information when they planned their operation. And b) the people themselves were textbook brainwash cases, meaning with few exceptions they never questions Koresh’s orders. So if he did in fact tell them not to fire unless fired upon they most likely would have listened.
But cults can be unpredictable. I wouldn’t want to the person responsible for knocking on their door and asking them to hand over the weapons. And ultimately if David Koresh hadn’t stockpiled arms in the first place no one would have died.
i’ll go with a 9-10. while i’m very sorry for their loss of life, i have to say that the BATF surely were a bunch of idiots, with their ‘dynamic entry’. They were too busy being cowboys; if you saw gillions of guys with weapons charging your house i bet that your reaction would be similar to that of the koresh group. i bet that if a BATF officer saw a bunch of men in black running up his lawn with assault weapons drawn, he would shoot same. they could have just gone to the door… it happens all the time with better results. the fbi was worse…what kind of freaking idiot would do the loudspeakers with gregorian chants stunt? iirc, it was against most advice-you want to deescalate a situation, not make someone susceptible to nervousness via lack of sleep. and driving a tank into a building doesn’t seem like the best way to promote longevity…'i want to save these kids from koresh…let’s see…i know! i’ll drive a tank into the bldg in the middle of the night!"
The ATF could’ve arrested Koresh on his daily jog into town, but instead decided to fulfill their rambo fantasies by instigating a big shootout, resulting in obvious disaster.
I think they wanted to make it an example to anyone who might want to resist them.
Ultimately it was Koresh who decided to kill everybody. He could have surrendered and everything would have been fine, but he was so narcissistic and sociopathic that he had to take everyone with him.
The BATF was arrogant and they disregarded advice from cult experts who warned them that Koresh would go Jonestown if they didn’t back off, but they were not the malevent thugs that they are portrayed as by the some. (It’s amazing that many of those on the right, who are very pro-law enforcement, will paint the BATF as cartoonish villains).
The government didn’t force Koresh to boobytrap the place and then set it on fire. Additionally, Koresh and his followers could’ve very easily complied with the law and surrendered when the authorities served the warrant.
What some people are still forgetting 10 years after the fact is that the ATF had a search warrant for Koresh’s property, not an arrest warrant for David Koresh. So the idea that they could have just waited and arrested him when he went to town is a fallacy. They had no evidence on which to arrest him. That is why they got the search warrant in the first place.
Nonetheless, if executing the search warrant required them to enter while Koresh wasn’t in, it’s absolutely kosher to do that. I hold people responsible for their own actions, and it’s pretty clear that the Branch Davidians set the fire themselves, so I have to put it in the range of 1 to 5.
However, I hold people responsible for their own actions, and Reno, the FBI, and the BATF were all clearly quite wide of sensible procedure in ever establishing a siege in the first place, since it left them without the possibility of executing the warrant (since their target was now full of armed alert people with nothing to lose), not to mention that it created the desperation that led to the fire; equally important, Reno particularly seemed bent on turning it into an implied demonstration of what would happen if she didn’t like you, and invited the media along to further that agenda. A quick, mundane resolution wouldn’t have made for good TV, so she didn’t pursue it.
This leaves it at exactly 5, with most of the government’s responsibility resting on Reno particularly, as well as on every single field officer who had less tactical sense than your average medieval footman circa 1000 AD. Sieges are the last resort, not the first plan of attack.
Even when the men in black have “BATF” emblazoned in bright yellow reflective tape on their uniform? I don’t think you could find anyone that could spin that as “self-defence”… Not successfully, anyway.
Of all the criticisms I’ve seen leveled against the BATF’s handling of it, I think this is the weakest one to criticize. They had a warrant to search the premesis, not arrest David, and had very good reason to believe it was a high-risk warrant… So they went in and served a high-risk warrant. Look, they were right.
Some Guy, that’s a hell of an assertion. They tried to go in twice at the begining, IIRC, and were driven back both times, and only then setup a longer-term “siege.” A siege was never the first plan of attack… And the media, as I’m sure you should know, doesn’t wait for the authorities to invite them over. You don’t have to plead with CNN to get them to cover you going in. If it’s going on for more than 20 minutes, there will be media there, wether they FBI/BATF wants them or not!
Yes, there were some things they might have done better, but I think it’s absurd to give them the same responsibility as the Branch Davidians…
I did see someone suggest that they just send a couple agents to the door, without all the backup, and inquire that way… But even in hindsight, considering the responce they got performing a high-risk warrant, there still seems a fair chance that they would get similar results. Even in hindsight, it would get judged as a high-risk warrant.
I think I would pretty much choose to do my fighting in a court of law. Trying to go head to head against the government’s firepower has only one possible outcome.
By the same token, there may have been a less “dynamic” method of serving the warrant that would have achieved more positive results.
For those of us who watched it on TV, we saw a military tank push into a wall on the end of the building and a huge fire started at the tank and traveled through the entire building in seconds. It was said at the time the tank hit a propane storage tank behind the wall. They did not commit suicide the military tank started the fire. We saw it on TV live.
It’s as amazing as you blaming Koresh for the deaths involved in the storming of the Waco compound while blaming Bush for the current situation in Iraq. Very very strange.
It never fails to amaze me how the militia lunatics and gun nuts rally behind those Waco whackos. We are much better off with this group all dead, it saved us from the expenses of trials and incarceration. Too bad about the kids, but their blood lies on Koresh’s hands.