Good article by Anthony Gregory on the causes and consequences of the Waco and Oklahoma City atrocities. Like Anthony, I’m appalled by all the Democrats who shriek about the PATRIOT Act, but whipped out their presidential kneepads to defend the slaughter at Waco and Clinton’s power-mad reaction to OKC – and by the Republicans who bashed same but claim that “9/11 changed everything.”
Face it, lefties and righties: Waco was a microcosm of Iraq. What the ATF did to the Branch Davidians is what the U.S. military has done to Iraq over the last decade and a half – an inconclusive initial attack, followed by a crushing siege, then a bloodbath. Don’t yelp about one and praise the other.
And before I see one more lazy journalist interview Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center about the continuing threat from militias and hate groups!, let me point out that Timothy McVeigh never belonged to a militia, the KKK, or a “Christian Identity” group. The only militant organization he ever belonged to – and the one where he first took human life – was the US Army. Of course, Potok and the rest of the court intelligentsia left and right earn their keep by deifying Leviathan and demonizing its Lilliputian enemies. Omigod, a bunch of angry rednecks with shotguns! Angry Venezuelans with AK-47s! Angry Arabs with aluminum tubes! (And so on.) Something must be done!
Nobody puts on a two-minute hate like the hate-hunters, and nobody terrorizes like the Terror Warriors. As I wrote of McVeigh almost two years ago, his “response [to Waco] bore the seal of his schooling.”