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Monday, April 26,1993
Opinion
The Battalion
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Did federal agents handle the Mt.
Carmel stand-off successfully?
As the charred
remains of Waco
cultists are sorted
by investigators,
both the media and
public alike are
placing the actions
of federal agents
under a micro
scope.
Most are con
cerned with the
fate of the children,
and why they had
to die. While no
one wanted to see
the members of the
Branch Davidian
cult die, federal agents could not have
prevented the mass suicide.
First, the standoff need not have oc
curred. Cult members were initially
alerted to the gpvernmejnt raid. Without
that informatio.iv-cultists.-wou.ld have not
had the time tp prepa^a counterattack,
leaving the arrest warrant served and the
operation only a footnote on the back
page of a Waco paper.
Cult members remaining in the com
pound had murdered four U. S. Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents.
Law enforcement authorities had a right
to demand that cultists leave the com
pound; by not leaving, cult members
were breaking the law.
Second, Davidians brought the stand
off to an end, not federal agents. Al
though some argue that the fiery conclu
sion was due to the tear gassing of the
Davidians by ATF agents, this is ridicu
lous.
The compound went up in a blaze due
to cultists starting a fire. In the 51 days
preceding the blaze in Waco, Koresh was
given ample opportunities to surrender
to authorities. Even after promising that
he would abandon the compound after
he was allowed a radio address, he did
not leave.
That is why the children died. The
children did not die because of federal
agents. The children did not die because
of tear gas. The children died because
Koresh failed to evacuate, even after he
had promised that he would.
Firefighters also could not have been
expected to attempt to put out the blaze
because of the explosive nature of the
compound. Recall that the reason U. S.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
agents raided the compound on Feb. 28
was to serve a warrant for illegal
firearms.
If the cultists had the number of explo
sives and other firearms as they were pre
sumed to have, firefighters would have
been in a deadly situation. If the cultists
did not shoot at them — as many sup
posed they would — explosions from the
detonating arms could have added to the
number of dead federal agents.
Finally, citizens and the media must
realize that the cultists were not planning
on coming out, as thousands of bootleg
caps and shirts attest to. Regardless of
how long agents waited, Koresh and his
band of followers would not have left.
Long before the mediators began talks
with the leader, cultists had decided that
they would never be taken. With the
waiting would come only more abuse to
the cultists' children, and more cost to
taxpayers. Under the conditions faced at
the Waco site, federal agents did the best
they possibly could. Their deaths were
the fulfillment of their prophesy.
There is no
doubt that David
Koresh was re
sponsible for the
terrible deaths of
the men, women
and children who
perished at Mount
Carmel. However,
a review of the
standoff clearly in
dicates a federal
operation plagued
by error from be
ginning to end.
To begin with,
why was the raid
even necessary?
Koresh could have been arrested during
one of his trips to town, but agents from
the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms (ATF) complained that he rarely
left the compound. Perhaps this is be
cause the pre-raid information gathering
agents — some posing as college students n
living in a shack across from the com
pound — were so obvious that the Da
vidians joked about them.
In the first days of the standoff, ATF
officials inexplicably allowed Koresh to
give interviews and negotiate with vari
ous outside news sources instead of im
mediately cutting off power and phone
lines. This ridiculous freedom only fed
Koresh's obvious desire for media atten
tion and heightened his sense of power.
The ATF was certainly not alone in the
series of miscalculations. Attorney Gen
eral Janet Reno explained that tanks and
tear gas on the 51st day were necessary
for three reasons. The federal agencies
had exhausted all their options, and ne
gotiations had failed. FBI agents were
tired, and no suitable backup existed.
Finally, there were the unsubstantiated
reports that children were being abused.
The idea that every option had been
exhausted is absurd at best. After the
devastating fire last week, a mother of
one cult member lamented, "We wanted
our tapes and letters to be broadcast
rather than the screaming animals and
music they (authorities) played. We feel
we did not get the opportunity to know if
our influence might have had a more
positive outcome." Granted, it is not
common policy to allow members of a
standoff with federal agents the opportu
nity to communicate with family mem
bers. But, then, how common is it for
them to meet extensively with their
lawyers?
As to the tiring of FBI agents, there are
a number of highly qualified agencies in
the state of Texas, most notably the Texas
Rangers, who were more than willing to
provide quality relief. Backup was in no
short supply.
Finally, if agents were trying to negoti
ate for further releases, their treatment of
the first Branch Davidians to leave the
compound was unfathomable. Two el
derly women were paraded before the
media in hand and leg irons, then held in
jail after charges against them had been
dropped. This well-publicized treatment
was certainly a deterrent to other Branch
Davidians who may have considered
turning themselves over.
While federal agents are not responsi
ble for the maniacal actions of David Ko
resh and his followers, they should be
held accountable for obvious strategical
errors. Without this accountability, mis
takes will be repeated, and the list of cult
related tragedies will only grow.
RICH
HENDERSON
Columnist
TONI
GARRARD
Columnist
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A semester's worth of work at once
Library, Freebird's fail in last-minute study efforts
I may have to sue my professors
for mental anguish, for the pain
and suffering they have caused
me by assigning 375,000 projects, all
of which will be due in the next few
days.
This may be a dumb question but:
Do profs really expect us to finish all
that stuff? A follow-up dumb ques
tion: Are they CRAZY? I don't
know about you, but I have more
than one class to worry about —
don't they know that? Isn't it
enough that we BUY the books?
Now we have to READ them?
Gimme a break. I go to class, some
times. I pay attention when I'm awake. So what's with
all the assignments and quizzes and tests all of a sud
den?
They assign papers and homework as if there were no
life after class. Don't they know we have televisions?
Don't they realize that summer's almost here, and we
gotta lay out and work out and chill out so we can look
good and fit in with all the nubile, taut bodies carousing
at the pool, looking like some hedonistic scene from
Greek mythology?
Who has time for 90-page papers when the sun is
beckoning on 90-degree weekends?
But we press on. We labor; we struggle; we stay up —
all night if we have to — just to get those assignments in.
As I prepared to tackle my pile of assignments, I real
ized I wouldn't get anything done in my dark storage
closet that some clever landlord labeled an "efficiency."
It's really not that small, but with a bed and a dresser in
there, I barely have enough room to change my mind.
The library, I decided, would be a great place to lighten
my workload. Besides, going to the library would mean
not having to touch my homework for another half hour.
Walking into the library, I felt so studious, so academic
— even if it was Evans Library. Hey, it's still a library.
Well, sort of. Actually, it's getting better. As I walked
around, looking for a good place to sit, no one even
propositioned me. Of course, I avoided the fourth floor
restrooms, just to be safe.
Finally seated, I began to reach for my books. Yes,
NOW, I told myself, I could get some things done.
No, something was wrong. Maybe the library was too
quiet. Maybe I didn't bring the right books. Maybe I
was just stalling. So much homework, so little time.
Maybe if I ate something, I reasoned, I could muster up
some motivation.
A trip to Freebird's was in order. I decided to try their
"world famous" burrito, officially known as "The Super
Monster." It's called "The Super Monster," not because
it resembles Godzilla or the Blob, but simply because it
weighs the same as Godzilla and has the same cubic vol
ume as the Blob.
Now, I'm no food critic, but the Super Monster tran
scends any dining experience I have had to this day. It
wasn't light; it wasn't refreshing. It was BIG. It was
more food than most families eat in a year. It had
enough lettuce, chicken and beef to feed "The Facts of
Life" cast for an entire week. Yes, it's THAT BIG.
It was good too, but it took me a good three hours to
finish the killer burrito, not including the 20 minutes tak
en for breathing between bites and 10 minutes for re
stroom breaks.
Needless to say, by the time I finished, I was in no
condition for homework. I think it's a proven fact some
where that students shouldn't study with full stomachs.
It cuts off circulation to important organs or something.
Maybe I could get something done at the Batt, I
thought. I think something's due there too, I thought.
I'm so efficient, I thought. Finally, I could complete one
assignment.
So, here I am writing a column, when I could be com
pleting very important assignments, designed to aug
ment my education and generally drive me insane.
How's a student to get it all done? There's just not
enough time in the day. Maybe I'll finish it tomorrow.
It's kinda late for all that now. A student needs his rest.
I'd better go now. Letterman's coming on in a few
minutes.
Vasquez is a lazy, senior journalism major.
ROBERT
VASQUEZ
Columnist
Standoff ends but
loss of life lingers on
Last Monday, the nation was finally
permitted a catharsis of a problem that
had plagued it for 51 days. The nation
was allowed to watch as the Branch Da
vidian compound burned to the ground.
As I sat glued to the television, I began
to wonder if the catharsis was entirely
beneficial. The television generation has
in many ways become desensitized to the
tragedies of human life. Because televi
sion has served primarily as a mode of
entertainment, the media has learned to
capitalize on the public confusion be
tween that which is truly entertaining
and that which is startlingly informative.
Where do we draw the line between
that which serves to inform and that
which serves to entertain? Have we be
come so dumb to the images on our
screens that we do not see the loss of hu
man life as something to be mourned?
Throughout Monday afternoon, dis
cussion centered on the events surround
ing the burning of the compound. Phras
es like, "Did you see how cool it was
when the walls caved in?" and "Those
nuts deserved to bum," lingered as if no
human beings were actually involved.
Even I sat captivated for about 45 min
utes, until I realized that I was no longer
being fed new information, but only a
stream of monotonous images.
It is true that the human psyche is in
trigued by the gruesome, but we must
not allow those that feed us those images
to capitalize on the entertainment of sor
rowful death. Regardless of how each of
us may feel about the events at Mt.
Carmel, let us not forget that 90 human
lives were needlessly lost.
We must allow ourselves to feel the
pain accompanying weaknesses in soci
ety that lead to the loss of any human life
by unnatural causes. We must remember
that we have had no opportunity to lead
any of those 90 lives, just as they had no
opportunity to lead ours. I am sure that
none of us would want the ways we lead
our lives to be trivialized to the point
where others can simply write our choic
es away as insignificant and implicitly
sentence us to an early death.
Shea Rial
Class of ‘94
Laundry thieves
must not know Code
Last Sunday, I did my laundry behind
the Student Services building thinking
that my clothes would still be there when
I returned. I came back an hour later and
found all my jeans gone! This is the sort
of bad bull I would expect from t-sips,
but not Aggies! I sometimes wonder
what the Aggie Code of Honor really
means to us, and to some it means very
little. The person(s) that did this may get
some thrill now, but they will never truly
understand what it means to be an Aggie!
Manuel E. Ramirez, Jr.
Class of '96
Opinion Page needs
a good dictionary
I can't stay silent any longer — I have to
let loose my frustration at seeing certain
words consistently misspelled on the
Opinion Page. Although it may be silly
to lose my cool about this, I think it's bet
ter to say something rather than feel like
I'm losing my mind every time I read The
Batt. Let it be an example to us all.
Patrick Edwards
Class of ‘90
Editor's Note: Point taken, Patrick. We'll
try to keep a better eye on those mis
spellings. Thanks for the constructive
criticism. - SF
V
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