Maybe it's because I'm Canuckian and all, but I really don't understand where the "tragedy" part comes in.
You have a white seperatist @!#$ family living in the woods armed to the freakin' teeth who do just about everything to look suspicious to cops and the federal government, including SHOOTING at neighbours and being involved with spooky anti-government groups; and then when the government charges them with something instead of lawyering up like intelligent bipeds they think they can just yell and shoot their way out of trouble. Now, I'm not saying the government acted smartly, what I am saying is that the Weavers where chaotic, paranoid, scared and violent people and that kind of an attitude usually leads to someone getting badly hurt or killed.
Also, let's tune in to Reality FM here. If it had been 2002 instead of 1992 and it had been the Ibn-Maliki's instead of the Weaver's everyone in that family would have been wearing hoods and ended up Guantanamo bay with a total news blackout of the events and no proof that they had ever even existed at all. And the hypocrites blasting the Government for how they acted towards the Weavers would have been cheering that very same "Fascist Empire" for how they handled the situation.
For all the complaints that the government acted innapropriately (and to be honest they were a little too hot to trot.) I don't really see Randy Weaver having done anything else but throw matches in a pool of gasoline at his feet. When Federal Agents ask for your surrender. YOU SURRENDER. I don't feel bad for people who get their ass beat after running from the cops, I'm certainly not going to feel bad for this Weaver cat.
I think the "Tragedy" part stems from the fact that a 14 year old kid was shot 2x, once in the back. Notwithstanding the kid was armed as well, and was shooting at FBI.
I think the other part that makes it a tragedy was that the FBI's rules of engagement were altered, and the Weavers were trying to play the FBI against the old rules.
Either way, Weaver did a stupid thing and stuck with it all the way down instead of stopping when he had time.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
I don't necessarily think it was a stupid thing so much as it was an attempt at martyrdom. He fought for what he believed in, he just picked the wrong opponents.
They didn't want government interference. They did what they had to regarding societal participation.
During the standoff the first victom was the dog. Then the 14 year old goes to see what happened to the dog and gets shot in the back (there is no confirmation any shots were fored by the boy). Then the real tragedy is that an infant was shot while being held by the mother. They killed her baby in her arms.
The weavers had issues for sure, but the use of force in this case was over the top, the conflict was escalated by the FBI. Similar to Wacko, the events should not have unfolded the way they did.
How about taking 17 officers to serve a warrant to Bill Cooper? Then shooting him in his doorway, then just leaving the body for his business parner to find.
Sometimes things are mis-handled, that's all there is to it.
PAX
Hahahaha wrote:The weavers had issues for sure, but the use of force in this case was over the top
Sometimes things are mis-handled, that's all there is to it.
PAX
You obviously missed the part where they were shooting at neighbors. As soon as someone becomes a threat to those around them in a capacity that causes death there loves are forfeit.
Don't defend the bad guy.
-Chris
Would they have been firing at neighbors if they weren't being raided and ambushed?
Which dumbasses, the feds, or the Weavers?
The We4avers weren't the ones who basically entrapped Randy Weaver into a gun charge just so he would talk about another group altogether. Also the weavers were not the ones who put the wrong date on the summons that ended up being the only thing to artrest him on. He was charged with failing to appear and declared a fugitive because he didn't show up for a court date that happened a month earlier than his summons stated.
It was a comedy of errors that ended with a tradjedy. Sure they had different beliefs, but they also had every right to hold those beliefs. They were not hurting anyone until somebody put the wrong date on a summons. Imagine being Randy Weaver, declared a fugitive for not appearing when you were not supposed to appear.
How can you trust the guys coming to arrest you when nobody else had followed proceedure. Being ex-military, out of Nam, you might expect him to have some distrust embedded.
Anyway.. Nobody handled anything well, and that's the point.
PAX
PS: Neighbours heard gunshots, they were not fired upon. In fact the only persons ever fired upon where the uniodentified, cammo'd, marshals that were encroaching on the Weaver's property. Look at how the courts handled it and you'll see they just weren't that bad. They were involved with a group that was bad, a white supremisist group but as R. Weaver had said, he's not a white supremist, just a seperatist. Distasteful yes, but also legal.
PAX
