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Pentagon and elite opinion seem surprised that the Taliban continue
to fight with determination in marked contrast to the Iraqi
army of 1991, which promised "the mother of all battles,"
but which waged war like a bunch of second-grade girls. The Pentagon,
and the American public, need to remember how determined pure evil
can be. Consider the lessons taught by the tenacious followers of
another evil man: David Koresh.
Part of what
went wrong at Waco was a failure to understand that people sincerely
devoted to evil will behave quite differently ordinary criminals
and thugs. The ATF's plan for the Waco raid was to use a 76-person
attack squad with machine guns, grenades and helicopters to "serve"
a search warrant for the Branch Davidian home/church, and an arrest
warrant for David Koresh.
Before the
raid began, the ATF learned that the Davidians knew that a ATF attack
was coming. (A TV cameraman apparently tipped off a mailman, who
happened to be Koresh's brother-in-law.) Visiting the Branch Davidian
home was a potential "convert" whom the Branch Davidians
well knew to be a ATF undercover agent. Koresh made a point of telling
the "convert" that the ATF would be attacking imminently.
The undercover agent promptly called his supervisors, and warned
them that Koresh knew the raiders were coming. The commanders went
ahead with the assault anyway.
As the agent
in charge of the Waco operation explained: "in almost every
situation where we use a rapid entry and an overwhelming force,
and what we think is overwhelming firepower ... people surrender
rather than fight law enforcement." In one famous case, a hundred
and fifty members of a California motorcycle gang had advance notice
that ATF was coming, but surrendered anyway. Drug dealers, gang-bangers,
and other street thugs turn out to have a pretty pragmatic view
about making sure that they stay alive, once they see a large law-enforcement
force deployed against them.
What ATF refused
to consider at Waco was that the Davidians were sincere in their
strange religious beliefs. The ATF undercover agent, as well as
the apostate Branch Davidians whom the ATF had interviewed, all
told the ATF that the Branch Davidians fully expected to be massacred
at the hands of "Babylon" (the American government).
The Davidians
intended to become martyrs and enter into heaven, where each of
the men would have a "perfect" mate, made from the feminine
part of his being compensation, perhaps, for the men having
allowed Koresh to steal their earthly wives.
And so when
the ATF attacked, the Branch Davidians fought back, killing three
federal agents (plus one more agent probably killed by friendly
fire). The Davidians forced the ATF agents to throw up their hands
and retreat from the compound. The greatest show of force in ATF
history had turned into the most humiliating defeat in ATF history
in part because ATF's opponents fought with the zeal of martyrs.
When the FBI
took over, the commanders continued to assume that mere physical
might would overcome the Davidian will to resist. Again, the government
refused to take the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidians seriously.
The Branch Davidians got the same kind of treatment that Panamanian
dictator Manuel Noriega had received when he took refuge in an embassy:
Electricity was cut off. High-volume loudspeakers blasted annoying
music, as well as the sounds of rabbits being slaughtered, and other
"psywar" sounds. Noriega found the whole experience so
unpleasant that he surrendered, thus improving his standard of living
by getting some peace and quiet in a jail cell. But Manuel Noriega
was simply a successfully criminal who had managed to take over
a country for a while. The Branch Davidians, subjected to the same
treatment, drew closer, and grew all the more convinced of the truth
of Koresh's prophecies.
Eventually,
the FBI, with the assistance of Delta Force, stormed the Branch
Davidian home. They saturated the building with CS chemical warfare
agent so intensely that several people died from respiratory
failure caused by methylene chloride, the carrying compound for
the CS agent.
The FBI knew
that the adults had gas masks, but the children didn't. The FBI
expected that the intense, wrenching suffering of the children would
motivate the mothers to bring them out of the building. Alternatively,
the FBI hoped that when the mothers started getting hit with the
CS (once the gas-mask filters were used up), the mothers would abandon
their children, and run out of the building.
Certainly,
ordinary criminals would have fled the building after a few minutes
of CS attack. In U.S. army training exercises, soldiers exposed
to a concentrated indoor CS environment quickly attempt to escape.
But the Branch Davidians did not. Not one of them left the building
after hours of CS attack. Even when the building turned into an
inferno, only a few of them fled. As the Branch Davidians saw things,
they faced a choice: a few final hours of suffering on earth, followed
by an eternity in Heaven or an eternity in Hell, for deserting
their prophet in the moment of greatest crisis.
It didn't matter
that the Branch Davidian religion, as expounded by David Koresh,
was a false religion. It didn't matter whether Koresh himself was
entirely sincere (he had a habit of revising religious doctrine
in order to expand his sexual access). What did matter was that
the Branch Davidians were sincere. Faced with martyrdom or damnation,
they chose martyrdom.
The Iraqis
were no Branch Davidians. Iraq is simply a kleptocracy, and loyalty
to Saddam means nothing more than loyalty to the man who has the
most immediate power to punish disloyalty.
Now, the Department
of Defense is reportedly disappointed in the positive but not immediately
decisive results of their bombing raids on Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
DOD, we are told, can't understand why the Taliban is fighting on
despite the fact that they cannot possibly win the conflict, and
DOD is surprised that Taliban forces are not switching sides.
But the Taliban
aren't the Iraqi army. Taliban's core is graduates of the Saudi-funded
Madrassas, the hate academies of northern Pakistan. Like the Germans
soldiers who fought quite effectively for Hitler's army even
in 1945, when it was clear that the war was lost the Taliban
army includes many sincere dupes of the forces of Evil, the products
of an education system founded on hate. Like the deluded Branch
Davidians expecting their perfect mate in Heaven, the bin Laden
terrorists (as well as Hamas terrorists) look forward to death and
their reward of 72 black-eyed virgins in paradise.
There's nothing
wrong with religious (or other) devotion to a cause, even when faced
with overwhelming force. Churchill would never have surrendered
to Hitler, even if the British faced certain defeat. In fighting
against bin Laden, or Hitler, or Stalin we rightly expect Americans
and American soldiers to resist at all costs and not to switch
sides depending on who's winning. The problem isn't devotion; it's
when devotion is used in the service of evil including bin
Ladenism, a modern version of Hitlerism.
Nothing we're
saying is an argument against relentless air and land war on al
Qaeda and the Taliban. What we are saying is that our government's
actions should be based on a realistic understanding that many followers
of the Evil One are sincere in their hate-filled apocalyptic beliefs.
They contrast markedly to the soldiers who followed Saddam Hussein
and Manuel Noriega only as long as Hussein and Noriega appeared
powerful. We should not make the foolish assumption that sincerely
religious evildoers will behave in the same way as ordinary criminals
or Iraqi soldiers, whose primary goal is self-preservation.
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