THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Anything the left gets away with using against anybody will eventually be used against us.

I don't care about Koresh. But I do care about what HAPPENED to Koresh, because it can happen to us.

I believe that the fire was started by the Davidians, on orders from Koresh. The point is that it would not have been started if the FBI had done the sane thing, which was to blockade them.

Yes, I DID say that at the time. In fact, I was mystified at the whole idea of an attack when a blockade would do the job. But the rule at the time was, if the militant isn't a leftist, blast him to pieces.

The chief negotiator for the FBI at Waco was being interviewed on CNN. He said he had recommended that, instead of attacking the compound, the FBI should have just surrounded the place, cut it off, and waited for the Branch Davidians to come out. Van Sustern said that sounded very good to her, and asked why the FBI didn't do it.

Well, said the negotiator, an FBI man had been killed. So they had to attack. He gave a couple more lame excuses.

Commentators seem to have very conveniently forgotten the situation at the time. Before Waco, liberals AND CONSERVATIVES had given the BATF and FBI a license to massacre anyone who resisted them, as long as the resisters were not left wing. I even remember seeing the situation depicted in a major movie of the time.

The hero of the movie was working with the FBI, and he and dozens of other officers had a guy in a nazi uniform trapped. The man knew he was surrounded and dead, so he took out a pistol and fired random shots in the general direction of all the heavily armed and hidden agents. They fired hundreds of rounds, enjoying every minute of it, cutting him to pieces. The hero looked a little disgusted at the butchery.

Back then, not so long ago, Federal agents were under tight scrutiny if they trapped black militants or leftist militants or career criminals. But liberals gave them a license to kill any armed rightist, and conservative leaders cheered them on.

So the BATF had attacked the Branch Davidians, but they got shot to pieces doing it. So the FBI was called in to prepare for another attack.

Now, one might imagine that right wing leaders would long since have realized that this sort of government violence would eventually threaten them. But this ignores the fact that we are dealing here with a bunch of cowardly nitwits.

As soon as liberals declared that some group of rightists were evil, all the other rightists immediately shouted "Kill 'em! I'm with you, liberals, I ain't no Evil Nazi!!!"

This right wing routine of praising liberals for using violence or slurs against their enemies has been standard practice for years (See September 26, 1998 article, "Respectable Conservatives Kill Their Wounded").

It is a vicious circle. In their desperation to avoid being labeled whatever liberals are calling their latest enemies, conservatives denounce the latest liberal target wildly. This makes the liberals denounce more people. In their desperation to avoid being associated with this wider circle of people being denounced, conservatives wildly denounce them too, and demand even stronger action to crush the "evil racists" or "gun nuts" or whatever. And the process continues.

Inevitably, we will eventually find OURSELVES in the group being denounced by the liberals. When that happens, the group screaming loudest for our blood will be our former allies on the right.

You know, the guys we were shouting with last week for the last group's blood. (Please see October 3, 1998 article, "Defining Respectable Conservatives: They're just Bureaucrats".)

But finally, when the Davidians got attacked, even the cowardly nitwits on the right got scared. You see, when this attack took place, a comforting illusion was blown away.

Before Waco, right wing leaders had thought they had a foolproof way to keep the liberals off of them. They thought they could hide their political heresy behind religion. They thought all they had to do was say, "Well, I would be a good leftist, but I am a right winger just because of religion." Liberals wouldn't DARE attack them then! (Please see article for August 21, 1999, "The Topeka Decision on Evolution").

"But the Davidians were a group of RELIGIOUS nutcases. They even had a Star of David on the flag outside their compound! With the attack on them, the illusion that claiming religion would save you collapsed. When the FBI and the BATF threw their full force against a bunch of armed RELIGIOUS extremists, it scared the right half to death.

"DUHHHH!" said the right, "That could happen to ME!!!"

In the same period, the right even got perturbed about violence against a white separatist -- an Evil Racist, no less. When a sniper shot down Randy Weaver's wife with a baby in her arms, even rightist leaders said "DUHH! (the one-word motto of the Shrewd Right ), "That could happen to ME!!!!"

Let us say it again: Anything the left gets away with using against anybody will eventually be used against us.

Today, many a member of the League of the South goes into a fainting fit when our enemies call Lee and Jackson Nazis. When the liberals called Professor Arthur Jensen a Nazi, most of the right laid low. They didn't want to be mixed in with anything "controversial," and the minute anybody gets called a racist by leftists, they become "controversial." Time after time, a group or a person becomes "controversial" because liberals label him anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews. As soon as they are declared "controversial," rightists refuse to defend their rights.

So now the liberals have declared that Jackson and Lee - and anyone who admires them -- were naziswhwanttokillsixmillionjews.

Could any reasonably intelligent person have imagined that this would not eventually happen?

And many League members are astonished that there is no outcry against this label being applied to us.

But, you see, everybody ELSE is just trying to stay out of this "controversy."

Just like so many of us did.

I think Koresh and his Davidians set the fire that killed them and the children they were holding. I also think this would not have happened if the FBI had not resorted to an unnecessary assault. The FBI should have cut off the Branch Davidians and forced them to come out by blockade. But they went in after them, guns blazing, because that was the way things were done then, with the full approval of the left and therefore of the respectable right. It never occurred to the FBI that the right would actually go "DUHH!," wake up and finally realize they, too, were threatened.

For those who have not learned this lesson yet, they'd better learn it. As I pointed out on October 24, 1998, in "Liberal Spores," if the liberals haven't made your nightmares come true yet, they WILL get around to it.

For the third and last time, we must learn this rule: Anything the left gets away with using against anybody will eventually be used against us.

Maybe, just maybe, we can finally learn that, if you wait for them to come get YOU before you say anything, you are doomed.