Waco

On this date 24 years ago, the Branch Davidian church and residences was burned down, and the available evidence suggests either a misuse of government incendiary devices, or at best, a driving of those within to think that immolation was their best option.

I respect that some people are intensely law and order. But honestly, sometimes it is better to just leave some alone. The general consensus is that this started as a suspected weapons violation, and then other crap was made up and thrown on afterwards to retroactively justify such a massive display of force.

Bringing a tank to a church fight is probably over-kill.

What needs to be remembered is that it is better to take the time to be careful. It would not have hurt to have waited for food to run low, even had that took a year.

What needs to be remembered is that the solution should never be worse than the alleged problem. Perhaps it was of concern to have a lot of rifles in one place. Perhaps it was of concern to have a rifle be able to fire more than one bullet at a time. But I think the death of any was worse than just having left them alone.

What needs to be remembered that if one unpopular and odd ball church can be destroyed, then so can the next one. And the next one. The precedent is set.

In my youth, after it was all over, I hitchhiked over and saw it. The few survivors who had not been on site that day were bravely trying to rebuild. Other, non-Davidians, were planting trees, one for each who died, as a memorial.

Others, still non-Davidians, put up a stone monument with an inscription marking the needless deaths of the Davidians. Seeing that, the Davidians put up one mourning the deaths of their own attackers.

Many years after that, I took my sons to see the site. We were visiting relatives in Texas, so it wasn't that far out of the way. The memorial grove was coming along, new buildings, new church. Still very few members, understandably. But such as were there were taking care of the site.

And yeah, with mixed feelings I noticed the "touristing" of it, in that they sell postcards and such and "accept donations". I had donated the whole ten dollars I had the first time I visited. I only donated the same amount the second time as regardless as to motives, I felt the site was worth being preserved.

From what they related to me and my sons back in 2004, they would get half a dozen or so visitors per day from all over the nation. So I wasn't the only one who felt that the site was worth seeing.

If you're ever down there, go see it. It's like America's own concentration camp, an eloquent reminder of the great need to keep a sharp eye upon how "our" government conducts it's affairs.