The Feds Are Back To Their Murderous, Ruby Ridge, Waco Ways!
Apparently, the lessons learned from the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing have been forgotten.
At 9:02 am, on April 19, 1995, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was severely damaged, killing 168 people and injuring another 680, when a 4,800 lb. truck bomb was detonated on it’s north side. All told, 324 buildings were damaged or destroyed, 86 vehicles were totaled, leaving a 30 feet wide by 8 feet deep crater, and roughly $652 million in damages.
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Why?
Ruby Ridge- In late August of 1992, after using a federal informant to sell Randy Weaver an illegally shortened shotgun, federal agents attempted to arrest him at his rural Idaho property, shooting his dog, son, and wife; Victim of a sniper while she was holding her baby daughter, losing a single federal agent in the various armed exchanges.
(there is much more to the story)
Waco- On April 19, 1993, after a 51 day siege, federal agents effected a breach of the Branch Davidian Compound, setting it on fire, and killing a total of 82 people, including 28 children and at least 2 pregnant women, while losing 4 federal agents during the course of events.
(obviously there is much more to this story as well)
I realize the easy, automaton response is- “Tim McVeigh was a terrorist, and he shouldn’t have blown up that building"! Terrorism is evil, and killing innocent people is wrong!!”
And “yes”, that’s all true, but it belies the deeper point. Right or wrong, good or evil, actions have consequences, and whether or not we approve of said consequences is immaterial. Self righteous judgements and pseudo-moralistic quips won’t bring back the 3 souls from Ruby Ridge (4 if you count the dog), the 86 from Waco, nor the 168 from OKC.
However, what is very relevant is that if you abuse the citizenry enough, they will strike back, in one form or another. Whether it’s merely despising law enforcement, resisting arrest, going full blown Chris Dorner, or doing a Micah Xavier Johnson, or initiating and enacting a multi-month plan to source materials, design, construct and detonate a truck bomb in front of a federal building that coordinated the Waco siege and breach.
On August 9, 2023, starting at approximately 6:00 am, FBI agents attempted to effect an arrest warrant on 75 year old Craig Robertson at his Provo, Utah home, in response to various online threats he had made over the past few months, and more specifically, multiple posts eluding to assassinating President Joe Biden during his visit to Utah
"Digging out my old ghillie suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle,"
Having been spoken to previously, and apparently, peacefully, by FBI agents regarding his past posts, on this occasion federal authorities decided that they would instead, try the “aggressive home raid at dawn” approach. Thus, on Wednesday morning, just hours before Biden was scheduled to arrive, federal agents showed up, surrounded his house, broadcast the obligatory audio announcement “Craig Robertson, come out with your hands up! This is the FBI.” then tried to break through his front door. However, seemingly “unable” to do so (reportedly), they next decided to use a motorized battering ram to break open the front of his house and ingress.
Then, a handful of gun shots are heard, followed by the canned verbiage “shots fired, shots fired, he’s got a gun”, which was immediately followed with a reported cacophony of gunshots, then silence.
Craig Robertson was dead, and in this story, no federal agents were killed or wounded.
Then they added an exclamation point to the endeavor, by dragging his body outside, and laying it on the sidewalk, in full view of the world, to sit there in the sunshine for over two hours.
I realize that the innate knee jerk reaction is something along the lines of “you shouldn’t threaten to kill the president!”, and or “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”, and there is nothing wrong with either reaction. However, this isn’t about “that”. This is about “why?”
Why did the feds take this approach? Why did they opt for the hyper-aggressive, escalatory, dynamic, all-but-guaranteed-to-end-poorly, home raid at dawn approach?
Claims are that he was being surveilled for months, and I’m quite sure that they knew he was at home; He’s a 75 year old man, at 6 am on a Wednesday, of course he is. They had managed to speak with him previously, and nobody died, so why “this”, and why now?
My theory- Biden’s popularity is in the toilet, the news is dominated by his many gaffes, his familial corruption, a tepid economy, the Ukraine debacle. Add to all of that, the heavy handed approach to the Jan 6th protestors, and the ongoing flurry of probably political prosecutions of Trump, and you get the dynamics whereby Team Biden would LOVE the headline of “Dastardly Mega MAGA Trump supporting extremist, taken into custody just hours prior to the president’s arrival, in dawn raid, after posting highly credible online threats to assassinate President Biden during his visit to Utah!”
Let’s not kid ourselves, the feds had all kinds of options as to how they wanted to handle this, and they chose this option.
This is where the parallels come in: The primary criticism of the Ruby Ridge Raid was “why did the feds choose to take that kind of approach?”. Same with Waco, why the heavy handed, hyper-militarized, mass of armed feds, “locked, cocked, and ready to rock” siege at The Alamo, option?
Simple answer- The Means IS The Message!!
It gets said every time- Why not just arrest him while he’s driving down the road in an isolated area, or walk up behind him in the grocery store parking lot when his hands are filled with bags of sundries, or when he walks out of a sandwich shop with a footlong sub and a soda in his hands?
These are just a few of the options, if you actually wanted the event to go down without violence, wanted everybody to survive, and didn’t desire “the spectacle” of the armed raid.
They choose the armed raid, because that is exactly the message they desire to send. It’s the “we will crush you” communique.
There is a saying- “When you want to beat a man, attack his weaknesses, but when you want to break a man, attack his strengths!”
The feds go after people while they are in their homes, because that is when we all feel the safest. That’s our strength, our castle, our sanctuary. It’s also where someone like Randy Weaver has his wife, son, infant daughter. It’s where the Branch Davidians had their families, children, friends, fellow worshippers.
And as a minor aside, it’s also, precisely, the place where everybody is most likely to be most heavily armed, ammo’ed, fortified, and likely to take a defensive posture. “Fight or flight”, when you are in your own home, pretty much guarantees a fight.
In this case, I’m pretty sure that Craig Robertson wasn’t going to assassinate Biden from his bed in Provo at 6 am. Thomas Welnicki was arrested after a voluntary interview with Secret Service agents.
In fact, plenty of people “threaten to kill presidents and politicians”, but when was the last time you heard of one being killed in a dawn raid? Do you think it’s a thing, reserved for people in Western states, rural areas, or is it more political?
Travis Luke Dominguez was in Utah when he threatened to kill President Trump, and just for added spice, threatened to commit mass murder at a movie theater. “Officers observed Dominguez at the movie theater in South Jordan, stopped his vehicle and took him to custody.”
But not so for Craig Robertson, David Koresh, or Randy Weaver. Not that being pulled over is a guarantee that you won’t be killed, if the State wants you killed, like Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, and he didn’t threaten a president, or anyone for that matter.
Janet Reno may be gone, and Bill Clinton is relegated to just being Hillary’s husband, but it appears that the murderous ways of the FBI, ATF, DOJ, etc., are back.
“When you are holding a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail”
If you want to use heavy handed, oft deadly, means of arrest, you’ll get plenty of chances. Especially if you spent months or years, vilifying your political adversaries as enemies of the State.
Let’s not forget that the Biden DOJ still has plans to arrest another 1,000 US citizens because of January 6th. Which should be incredibly alarming, considering their constant efforts to de-humanize their political foes as Nazis, White Supremacists, Extremists, and basically, immoral non-human terrorist extremists.
(I guess everyone’s forgotten about James Hodgkinson, and maybe it’s because he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page; All he did was attempt to kill a bunch of Republican politicians at a Congressional softball game.)
These days, as in the past, it’s more about who you are, who you support, and who you don’t, that determines if you get a casual arrest during a voluntary interview, a roadside stop, or an armed raid at dawn.
People tend to forget why Timothy McVeigh decided to plan an attack, buy or steal explosive materials, identify a target, rent a truck, and kill 186 people.
“"I chose to bomb a federal building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost the bombing was a retaliatory strike; a counter attack for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco). From the formation of such units as the FBI's Hostage Rescue and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the 80s, culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government - like the Chinese - was deploying tanks against its own citizens.”
“'For all intents and purposes, federal agents had become soldiers (using military training, tactics, techniques, equipment, language, dress, organization and mindset) and they were escalating their behavior.”
“…I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government…
Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option.”
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He died with his eyes open.