Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 21, 1993 TAG: 9304210329
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
All along he apparently believed - and warned authorities and his followers - that the standoff would end in an apocalyptic blaze. And so it did, the false prophet casting himself into a lake of fire, taking with him more than 80 adults and children. A worse outcome can hardly be imagined. The government's misjudgments seem glaring in retrospect.
Yet we shouldn't be confused about innocence and guilt. Assuming the cultists started the fire, as the evidence certainly suggests, this was - in the name of God - an act of mass suicide. And of mass murder, of children. The feds were simply unwitting players in an evil dream of martyrdom.
Yes, there's plenty of room to second-guess the government's tactics:
Attorney General Janet Reno says she never considered the "chances were great for mass suicide." Yet Koresh had issued doomsday threats and warned that agents trying to take his compound would be "devoured by fire." Koresh's psychotic behavior and the memory of Rev. Jim Jones's 1978 suicide cult in Guyana should have prompted authorities to take more seriously the worst-case possibility.
The FBI says it was reluctant to position firefighters and equipment on the scene because they'd be vulnerable to shooting from the heavily armed cultists. Perhaps there was no chance in any case of saving lives consumed in that inferno. Yet, with the amount of time the government had to prepare, some sort of contingency response to fire might have been devised beforehand.
Government sources say bugs planted inside the compound indicated Koresh was becoming increasingly violent. There were worries about the children being abused. Yet impatience, as well, apparently accelerated the timing of the assault.
The tear gas introduced into the compound was neither lethal nor permanently damaging. Officers did not return fire directed at them. Yet the Justice Department should have figured the paranoid Koresh would view Monday's escalation not as an "incremental" increase in pressure, but as the final battle.
In hindsight, the response to Koresh seems to have been bungled from the start, when the raid by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms left four agents and an unknown number of cultists dead. With all the high-tech armed might at its disposal and 51 days to work out a strategy, the United States once again found itself less than competent to deal with irrational, fanatical opponents. An investigation is warranted.
Meantime, though, Americans shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the authorities' miscalculations, however consequential, can't be compared with the lapses of reason that drove the Branch Davidians to their fate. President Clinton was right to express amazement Tuesday at the suggestion that Reno resign "because some religious fanatics murdered themselves." The decision to die and kill was the cultists' alone.
Indeed, a crucial lesson to draw from the ashes in Waco is the importance of individual responsibility. A cult leader like Koresh dehumanizes his followers by seeming to relieve them of responsibility for their own actions. He makes their decisions for them. Whenever individuals in this way renounce critical thinking and swear blind allegiance to any authority, they put themselves and others at risk. In Koresh's case, his insanity consumed the flock.
The existence of Koresh-types and the potential for their proliferation add another reason for considering gun-control laws the absence of which, in Texas anyway, allowed this man to acquire the kind of arsenal that Bosnian Muslims could only dream about. Law-enforcement officers deserve better than to have to constantly confront the volatile consequences of social pathologies and gun lobbyists' clout.
The tragedy also underscores the need to emphasize critical-thinking skills in public education. In the mournful conclusion to the Waco madness, reason lost a battle against darkness - but the struggle continues.
by CNB