
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 22, 1993                   TAG: 9308310300
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ANNE GIURANNA RHODES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SPREADING THE BLAME FOR WACO

WACO IS no longer a name in the news. The ashes have been cleared. David Koresh is gone, along with most of his followers, including the young children he held as hostages. America has moved on to Bosnia-watching and Clinton-bashing. And yet a national tragedy has occurred. Where is the outrage, the backlash, the mourning for innocent lives?

If you try to see the ruins of the compound in Waco, you will be told that no visitors are allowed because it is a crime scene. A crime scene, indeed. The crime of religious fanatics abusing their children, shooting four Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and setting fire to their compound? Or the crime of a government that refuses to admit any wrongdoing, who tear-gassed little children, who continuallytaunted and pressured an power- and attention-hungry cult leader?

After months of hounding David Koresh in his compound, the decision is made to bombard the area with tear gas in the hopes these people will respond rationally (as they always had in the past) and leave the compound. The popular joke was that Waco stood for We Ain't Comin' Out. Well, they weren't coming out and they didn't always do the rational thing.

The government simply provided the Apocalypse David Koresh had predicted. Unfortunately, Koresh he and his followers weren't the only people in the compound. They may have asked for their own destruction, but their children did not. The children were victims, victims not only of David Koresh's insanity, but of the government's criminal lack of concern for their lives.

All of the blame cannot be put on the shoulders of David Koresh. Our government failed these children, for it helped to put them in the middle of a war zone, a place where they could not escape the hatred and the violence. And, in the end, they died in a fiery inferno, ignited by the government's need not to be embarrassed.

We won't leave, the government said, and if you won't come out, we'll come in, no matter what the cost. In the beginning, four ATF agents were killed. In the end, more than 50 people died in the fire in Waco, many of whom were too young to understand that justice was being served. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

\ Ann Giuranna Rhodes is a graduate student at Virginia Tech who recently traveled in Texas.

by CNB