-Caveat Lector-
The political lessons of the Waco massacre
Reprinted from The International Workers Bulletin -April 26, 1993
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/wac2-a27.shtml
The WSWS is here republishing the statement which first appeared in The
International Workers Bulletin , the printed newspaper of the Socialist
Equality Party, which was the forerunner of the World Socialist Web Site.
In the days following the incineration of 86 people, including 25 children,
at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas, the explanations
supplied by the Clinton administration and the FBI for launching the assault
have begun to fall apart. Administration spokesmen like Attorney General
Janet Reno, FBI Director William Sessions and Clinton himself have flatly
contradicted each other on the circumstances of the attack, its timing and
motivation.
The claims that the final assault on the religious cult was carried out to
save the lives of the children or to stop their sexual abuse by Koresh have
no credibility. The assault was mounted in a fashion which was deliberately
provocative and with wanton disregard for the innocent lives which were
placed in danger. There is no indication that FBI and Justice Department
officials gave the slightest consideration to how the 25 children, including
17 under 10 years of age, could be saved, and there were no special tactics
devised for this purpose. The FBI did not even call the Waco fire department
until after the blaze began.
Judging from its statements, the White House apparently believes that the
great mass of people are simply gullible fools. Clinton's absurd declaration
placing sole blame for the massacre on David Koresh is self-serving and
contradictory.
He denounced the Branch Davidian leader as "irrational and probably insane,"
claiming "he bears ultimate responsibility for the carnage that ensued." But
if Koresh was insane, he was by definition not responsible for his actions.
How could federal officials then expect him to respond rationally to an
assault on the compound by an armored vehicle?
Moreover, there is mounting evidence to disprove the initial FBI claims that
the deaths were the result of mass suicide. All six survivors who have
spoken to defense attorneys have given similar accounts that the fire began
when an armored vehicle smashed through a wall of the compound and ruptured
a large propane tank.
The survivors have also stated that the tank attack caused structural damage
inside the compound that made it impossible to open doors once the fire
began. The position of the bodies so far discovered, distributed widely
throughout the compound, indicates that the victims were not herded together
or held at gunpoint by Koresh and his closest aides. Rather the fire raced
through the old wooden structure so swiftly that most were overcome by smoke
and only a handful could make their way out.
On Thursday, the medical examiner in Waco angrily contradicted government
claims that gunshot wounds had been found in several bodies.
Regardless of what started the fire, it was an armed assault by dozens of
federal agents which began the confrontation February 28, and a second
assault, spearheaded by armored vehicles, which set in motion the tragic
events of April 19. Throughout the siege, the federal authorities rejected
such elementary measures for defusing the situation as allowing relatives of
the Branch Davidians to speak directly to cult members and seek to convince
them to leave peacefully.
A political decision
Any objective consideration of the Waco events leads inexorably to the
conclusion that political considerations were behind the decision to launch
a tank-led assault on April 19. Clinton administration officials were under
growing pressure from the federal agents on the spot to settle accounts with
Koresh. The New York Times reported, "It was not in the nature of the law
enforcement officials, who had seen the federal agents killed during the
initial raid on Feb. 28, to let the cult go on with its way of life." Other
press accounts cited the determination of federal agents to wreak vengeance
for the death of four BATF officers and the wounding of 16 others. They
spoke of "bringing things to a logical conclusion."
While the need to reassure the FBI and BATF played a role, so did the
prospect that Koresh's continued defiance was undermining the authority of
the federal government. "These people had thumbed their noses at law
enforcement," said Larry Potts, the assistant director of the FBI's criminal
division. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "An important factor in deciding to
proceed, said one FBI agent, was the feeling among FBI and Justice
Department officials that they should take back control of the situation."
The press has been silent on the obvious connection between the Branch
Davidian siege and the prison uprising in Lucasville, Ohio, which broke out
in the final week of the Waco standoff. The rebellion by over 400 inmates
fueled the concern of federal officials that their failure to suppress the
Koresh group was encouraging others to challenge the authority of the state.
Two days after the Waco massacre, the inmates at Lucasville surrendered,
obviously preferring promises of a partial settlement of their grievances to
serving as the targets of another exercise in mass slaughter.
There is an obvious and enormous discrepancy between the scale of the force
used against the Branch Davidians and the actual threat which this tiny
religious group represented. This disproportion reveals the tremendous
nervousness of the capitalist ruling class, which presides over a society
wracked by economic crisis and deepening poverty, unemployment and
homelessness. So fearful is the ruling class of the explosive potential of
the deep-rooted social antagonisms in America that it reacts with frenzied
violence against any challenge, no matter how minor. It seeks to drive home
the message, "Thus perish enemies of the state."
Waco is not the first such incident, but the latest in a series in which the
ruling class has displayed its real character-violent, bloodthirsty and
ruthless. From the National Guard assault on Attica in 1971 and the FBI
siege of Wounded Knee in 1973 to the bombing of the MOVE group in
Philadelphia in 1985 and this past week's destruction of the Davidian
compound in Waco, such confrontations have ended the same way: in a hail of
bullets or a funeral pyre.
The role of Bill Clinton
Despite claims by Clinton that he had only brief discussions with Reno about
the decision to launch the final assault, a report last month in the Wall
Street Journal noted that he was following the Waco siege with great
personal interest and was keeping informed about minute operational details.
A Clinton crony from Arkansas, associate attorney general-designate Webb
Hubbell, ran the Justice Department during the early part of the siege and
sat in on the meeting with Reno Saturday evening where the final decision
was taken.
The role of Clinton and the actions of his government come as no surprise to
Marxists who proceed from a class analysis of all political phenomena. But
such events invariably come as a shock to those who base their judgments on
the superficial criteria of American radical politics. Taken in by the
political packaging of the capitalist media, the middle class reformists
hailed the election of Clinton as a shift to the left and gushed over his
appointment of wealthy women, blacks and Hispanics to high cabinet
positions.
But when put to the test, the Clinton administration, which boasts of the
first woman attorney general, has proceeded just as ruthlessly as any of its
predecessors. Indeed, this show of force is now being portrayed in the
capitalist media as a sort of "rite of passage," demonstrating that the
former antiwar protester is willing to spill blood when required.
Lessons for the working class
It is not necessary to be sympathetic with the religious conceptions of
David Koresh and his disciples to feel outrage over their fate. When all is
said and done, the terrible truth is that 86 people are dead due to the
actions of the US government. There was no talk of constitutional rights for
the Branch Davidians; none of whom was ever convicted of a criminal offense
before they were wiped out to the last man, woman and child.
The actions of the Clinton administration are far more dangerous and its
defense of the Waco massacre far more chilling than anything done or said by
David Koresh and his band of fundamentalists.
There is one major political lesson that should be drawn from the bloody
events of the last week: If this is how the capitalist state proceeds with a
small group of religious fanatics of the kind that were openly cultivated
during the years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, how much more
brutally will it proceed against militant struggles of the working class,
which pose a real challenge to the profit system?
It should be pointed out that a much larger police-military bloodbath was
only narrowly averted in Los Angeles, where thousands of police and National
Guard troops were mobilized last week in anticipation of new riots if the
police were acquitted for a second time in the Rodney King beating trial.
Janet Reno was actually presented the FBI plan to storm the Branch Davidian
compound on April 12, but she delayed taking action on it until after the
King jury returned its verdict.
The Waco massacre is an object lesson in the fig-leaf character of American
capitalist democracy. Behind the electoral trappings, the essence of the
capitalist state is organized violence against all those who are seen to
challenge its authority.
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