The arrest of the ringleader-monkeys at Malheur last week, and the death of one Mr. Finicum during same, seems to have the usual monkeys chattering and flinging poo in record-setting cacophony of rage.
Well, tough.
As the lone video has shown incontrovertibly, Finicum, at the wheel of the truck in question, fled a felony stop, presumably instigated by federal agents.
He did so at high speed, with no plan other than "Cheezit! The cops!" in the best manner of idiot perps in every episode of C.O.P.S., in every country they've visited.
It worked out for him about as you'd expect (the police catch something like 98.xxxx% of those who choose this brilliant ploy).
He came upon a blocking position set up by OSP. Who clearly knew their business, and had deployed their vehicles the real way (fishboned engine-forward) rather than the Hollywood-Smokey and the Bandit way (engines outward, empty trunks at the center pointed away).
The former stops a vehicle; the latter spins cars and makes a great cheeseball getaway for Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise every time. Tough luck for Finicum and Co.
He was either unable to come to a stop on the road, or thought, foolishly, he could plow through the snowbank on the left side, and go around the block. Almost nailing one guy at the roadblock, to within something between inches and a couple of feet, which always makes armed police officers with guns drawn a lot calmer - NOT.
Two or three feet of snow being what it is, this attempt failed as well.
He then, likely (at 10M:1 odds) absent any instructions to do so, elected to leap out of the truck, hands out, and start prancing around outside the vehicle.
To date, we don't know if he stumbled and tried to catch himself, reached for his jacket, or was clutching at the first (unjustified) gunshot. If it was the latter, we'll probably never know.
Based on the chain of unbridled stupidity for 20+ days by this bunch, I'm going with he made a foolish decision on his own. His actions that day alone, to this point, are those of a panicky foolish jacktard, at every opportunity.
For whatever reason, when you have a presumed felon, in flight from arrest, confronted by half a dozen armed officers, guns drawn, who makes a move towards heavy clothing and concealment, you get a hail of lead flying your way in a hurry.
Which he did, right in his carcass.
That the feds and state police did not, at that point, hose down the other occupants of the vehicle a la Bonnie and Clyde in their final moments alive disproves that this was intended to be an assassination. It was, as Hognose phrases it weekly at Weaponsman, simply a case of cops being cops, and crims being crims.
And group-effort Darwin Award, Second Class.
If, at any point at either Stop #1 or Stop #2, he had stopped, turned off the engine, tossed the keys out, and complied with instructions at that point, exactly like the other three folks in the truck, he'd be alive and eating creamed chipped beef on toast in the Portland federal lock-up now, and have a shot at freedom via jury nullification, rather than being on a slab looking forward to a soft padded coffin and a fine headstone.
If that reality crimps razor wire in your underpants, I humbly and sincerely urge you to get over it.
I'd be a sight happier if he was alive, as I suspect his family and friends would be, but some mistakes in life you only get to make one time.
Lessons that should be learned, in no particular rank or order:
1. Hanging around with jackholes who don't know what they're doing, and have no plan for doing it, and no intelligent way to get that message out to the greater public despite 20+ days of time to do so, will get you killed. Avoid those groups and situations, or update your estate planning.
2. When you instigate an armed takeover of nominally federal property, to cause a stink, don't act shocked and surprised when the clean-up crew arrives with both machineguns and handcuffs, and is happy to use either one of them on you, at their discretion, depending on how you behave when they tell you to surrender. This is how it works under Big Boy Rules, and if you really didn't know that, or expected anything else, you're far too stupid to be playing in this arena.
3. Occupying anything, unless you have a tactically sound position, and sufficient personnel and resources, is an Alamo, and you're Col Travis. The Malheur @$$clowns had neither the manpower, the resources, nor any sort of tactically defensible position. Go to Google Earth if you doubt me, and tell me how many men and what resources you'd need to position there to hold it against anything more ferocious than a troop of cub scouts with slingshots. (Frankly, putting a troop of cub scouts with slingshots there to hold it would have been much better guerrilla theatre for the occupiers, and made the feds look like true goons no matter what they did.)
4. Gallivanting around the countryside after the arrival of said feds is asininely stupid beyond words. There is NO excuse whatsoever for it which avails.
5. Having said that, if you're still that stupid, there's no excuse for putting all your command leadership in one vehicle, unaccompanied, and driving through what should be regarded as "enemy territory", without comms, route reconnaissance, a larger transport convoy, and a Quick Reaction Force. Yet again, having NONE of this in place (nor, evidently, even contemplated) shows this to be a bunch of amateur jackasses of the highest order, without any excuse whatsoever. There are only about 200,000 former PFCs and Spec4s with time in the sandbox over the last decade with more convoy common sense than that, some of them with no more education than a GED.
6. The lack of any forethought to what to do in this instance was also glaringly evident. No plan, no procedures, no escape and evasion thoughts, no nothing. WTF. Don't be those guys. Just a bunch of yahoos playing ding dong ditch with grizzly bears.
7. As a self-styled guerrilla, pissing off the entire surrounding community, to the point they boo and catcall you and tell you to GTFO, is probably not going to get you any longevity, no matter WHAT your nominal cause is. Since 40-80% of anyone just wants to be left alone to get on with their lives, you'll just turn up the heat on the kettle you're sitting in, and they'll start agitating for TPTB to take you out, or they'll do it themselves.
8. Having no control or way to vett those who join you is a great way to let the other side in on every level of your operations, introduce spies, agents provocateur, saboteurs, disinformationists, and so on. When they can tell outsiders that you've done something as stupid as #4 and #5 above pretty much insures you'll be needing #6, and ultimately, won't be around long to do much of anything. As the KKK found out when it turned out 2 out of 3 were federal CIs, and they were largely sued out of existence. Hint: There are no shortage of posers in the federal correctional system who'd sell their mothers to get out of prison, or on probation who want to never go back. They will be drawn to you like moths to a flame the minute you go active, and some of the brighter ones will find you far earlier.
9. So it's probably a better idea to a) vet your people before you do anything, and b) gain the support and trust of the or a community before you do anything. Trying to shortcut that leads to 20-50 years in prison, or dead, which is surprising to no one with an IQ above room temperature. Ask Che about that.
Jeebus crispies, the relevant texts and military doctrine for guerrilla warfare - and counter-guerrilla warfare - have been out for nearly a century; don't half-ass this.
10. If a mature appraisal of your chances in light of #1-9 leads you to determine that you can't take over an exposed, isolated, and utterly pointless cluster of Forest Service buildings in BFEgypt, maybe start looking at what you can accomplish.
11. Nota bene that doing things a la EarthFirst and fictional characters from Abbey's Monkeywrench Gang may be highly effective in some ways. They are (Duh!) also highly illegal, in a federal penitentiary sort of way, or a dead sort of way, just like they were for the SLA or the Weathermen. In the current environment, they will also get you on a terrorist hot sheet, and if you want to know how that works out, ask Osama bin Laden, or any 43 former AQ deputies who took a Hellfire up the ass. We (or They, if you prefer) have gotten pretty damned good at taking out the trash.
12. Looking at that, a mature appraisal might be that the thing to do now, while it's legal, is to organize, recruit, gather intelligence, train, build up logistics and infrastructure, while swaying more people to a more reasonable and far more constitutional viewpoint and material support of your outlook and efforts (wow, just like a military S-1/S-2/S-3/S-4/S-5 would! Who'd'a thunk??) and avoid direct confrontations until you're either too strong to stop, or desperate and have no other choices.
Option A looks like 1975 in Vietnam, Option B looks like Tet 1968. Choose wisely.
13. If you decide to go off half-assed and half-cocked anyways, despite the above,
"Have fun storming the castle!"
14. The rest of us will at least have the satisfaction of using you as object lessons, and for drawing out and observing the actions of Leviathan in response, because when you're serious and reasonably intelligent, that's what you do. Sorry if the laughter coming from the conference room hurts your pride and rubs salt into your wounds.
I expect one day there's going to be justified provocation, and the feds are going to bump into some serious people with some proficiency and a righteous case of Pissed Off. I'll bet they know that too.
But this wasn't that day.
I live in the Western U.S., and take it as an article of faith that the feds have glommed onto far too effing much of the lands hereabouts going back to statehood, in every state straddling or west of the Rockies. And I am no fan of large, overarching central government in any way, shape, or form. I don't even have much use for the statehouse or even city hall, most days.
That does not mean that every jackass who gives the finger to the feds is automatically my brother, or that I have to join every Children's Crusade of Retards who decides to go throw rocks at the federal bear, nor pledge to lay down my life for such fools.
Ponder that concept, and see if you can grasp it.
And when you ignore that, and the bear bites you or eats you, STFU, instead of BMWing about the injustice afterwards, as though everyone owes unquestioning allegiance to every dipshit with delusions of competence.
If and when I choose to sell my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor, it'll be on my terms, sold dear, and at a considerable profit. Not pissed away on some half-ass escapade manned by a chain of fools.
And BTW, if you want your entire side to all think exactly alike on this, what kind of individual liberty are you preaching?
Anyone, esp. the butthurt monkeys, may rage all you want in comments.
The brighter readers will probably be too busy applying #12, above, as will I.
UPDATE:
Apparently, the newest operative story is "Idiot! This was a peaceful non-violent protest!"
Really?
And these were a small representative sample, garnered in about 2 minutes on Google.
"Peaceful" protest? Oh please...
I've seen peaceful protests. So when some out there use those words, I'm here to tell you that they do not mean what they think they mean.
So mayhap, the next time someone sets out to do a "peaceful" unarmed protest, leave all the guns, and talk of using same, at home.
(Just from an optics point of view, leaving all the camo/tacticool/military garb wouldn't go amiss either. Try wearing day-glo bright colors, if you're really there all about the peaceful non-violent protesting.)
Protestors (and their apologists) can't have it both ways after this sh*t gets real.
You want a peaceful protest, leave the weaponry home. March around with signs. (Of course, doing it closer to a major media center than 300 miles away might be advisable at that point. Just saying.) And get ready for guys - and it'll be Federal mall cops, not the FBI -with pepper spray, tear gas, batons and handcuffs to come mop you up. Like they will. Like civil rights marchers getting firehosed in the '60s, you'll have made your point, (hopefully on camera where it might at least do some good) and suffered your lumps, and everyone gets to go home eventually.
You might hold the moral high ground, but at least the jail time won't include weapons enhancements at sentencing. And you'll at least have pointed out that such peaceful protests aren't listened to, effective, or worth the trouble. (One that worked on any level would be an object of some wonder.)
One gun comes along, and it's game on, for both sides.
It's a little late to call this a "peaceful" protest once guys toting long arms are walking patrol, and broadcast doing so on national news reports.
The Malheur crowd owns that, whether anyone else think they meant to or not. The medium is the message, and perception is reality.
If this is news anywhere, welcome to How It's Been since time beyond memory.
But congrats to the knuckleheads for enacting, in real time, the dopey sub-plot of country hicks going to war with Canada from an episode of The
Two-fer.
21 comments:
Bravo Aesop. Not everyone can provide great analysis, great advice and laughs at the same time. Thank you.
Nicely done!
An excellent summary of the Malheur clusterfuck.
Agreed.
An aside: What is up with the tape measure? Was there "Shove it to THE MAN!" carpentry planned? What? No I don't even know what that might be either, but really.. what is up with the tape measure?
All so freaking bizarre.
Pretty sure in that crowd Bundy's tape measure was for measuring dicks.
I am proud to accept the Truther label.
Aesop,
I’ve been following your commentary for a while now (tuned in during the Ebola stuff and still check in regularly), and find both your content and writing style to be powerful, entertaining and informative.
In my assessment, you are a clear thinker, a subject matter expert in applied emergency medicine, and generally well read and thoughtful guy.
I struggle to follow you on your interpretation of these unfortunate events, as your analysis seem to be less expertly developed than much of your previous work.
You say that these guys can’t involved in a peaceful protest, because they are armed.
When did privately held arms in the hands of private individuals outside of a uniformed state of war become a threat of violence?
And to reduce this suggestion to the absurd: if such a thing were true, the fact that at the first ‘stop’ armed teams fanned out with long guns at-the-ready most certainly implied violence. In which case, a reasonable man would in fact get his ass far away and fast from such a scene.
The possession of firearms is not in anyway illegal, nor can it be reasonable construed as a threat of violence . Yet this seems to be the foundation of your position that this was not a ‘peaceful protest’.
With the possibility of peaceful protest excluded, you then proceed to criticize their failure in both strategic planning and tactical execution of an operation that anticipated violence.
I would like to point out to you that every point you make presumes their intent to engage in or be subjected to violence. If you reinterpret the your own observations in the framework of peaceful protest, their actions were coherent.
They didn’t roll in a convoy, because they were not at war.
They did not have on body armor, because they were not at war.
They left their base of operations, and telegraphed that fact with fliers, because they were not a war.
They were unprepared for an ambush, because they were not at war.
They didn’t act like soldiers, because they were not a war.
When someone died, they told everyone else to go home, because they were not a war.
They were engaging in peaceful protest. All of their actions were consistent with this.
And whomever set up ambush on that piece of road--from the positioning of the obstructions to the placement of human elements, through the rules of engagement—acted they way they did because they were at war.
And that might be the most important lesson to be drawn from this.
You deserve a fair hearing for that.
"When did privately held arms in the hands of private individuals outside of a uniformed state of war become a threat of violence?"
When they take them to a supposed "peaceful" protest.
"And to reduce this suggestion to the absurd: if such a thing were true, the fact that at the first ‘stop’ armed teams fanned out with long guns at-the-ready most certainly implied violence. In which case, a reasonable man would in fact get his ass far away and fast from such a scene."
Or, a reasonable man would understand that having displayed arms during their protest, in what was in fact an armed takeover, would further recognize that the jig was up, fun and pretend games were over, turn off the vehicle, and comply with the instructions of the folks behind the red-and-blue lights so as not to get ventilated, and take their case to a jury of their peers.
That's what reasonable law-abiding men do.
Otherwise, using your initial logic, the men pointing machineguns were just peacefully protesting the truck driving down the road, since openly displaying weapons is no threat of imminent violence.
As I said above, you can't have this both ways.
If you really think that waving guns around in an armed takeover = "peaceful protest", explain to me how you'd take that if strangers did it to your house at 3AM, and explain your response, esp. how A is different than B.
The minute weapons are openly displayed, your protest isn't peaceful. Nor, in most jurisdictions, legal. Playing patty-fingers with the underlying threat of violence doesn't excuse them, and if they weren't serious, they should have in all events left the weapons home. Otherwise why bring them at all??
If anyone wants to seriously, and with a straight face, advance the farcical idea that this all made sense because it was a peaceful protest, they are crazier than the folks at the refuge, and need to get out of the basement more often. If everyone there had been legal CCWing, and no one from top to bottom had ever been so much as seen with a weapon, ever, anywhere, despite being armed, you might be able to try that tack.
But walking and mounted patrols with long arms is guard duty on every continent and in every military on the planet.
No sale.
The clowns who orchestrated this weren't serious about what they were doing, and the people who ended it were. That's why the people who were there are in jail, and bound for trial, or in one case, dead.
Try running across the North Korean border with long arms on display, and pin a note to your soon-to-be corpse that you were only peacefully protesting. Try it at the local police station, or maybe the state capitol. For bonus points, try to thusly armed "peacefully" takeover the meeting hall of your city council or state's legislature. Note for me, in the moments left to you, whether TPTB send a press liaison, or the local SWAT team.
A peaceful non-violent protest has a long pedigree. It means you're willing to take your lumps when they come. It includes Ghandi, the '60s civil rights marches, Kent State, and Tiananmen Square. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you get martyred.
Once you bring weapons, any presumption by the authorities, or pretense by the demonstrators - and it was a pretense in this case - of a "peaceful protest" go right out the window.
Pretending otherwise is worse than building castles in the sky, it's trying to live in them. Clinically, it's a psychosis, and that's why they call those people psychotics. Which is why an insanity defense for this whole takeover is not out of the question.
Sounds like blaming the victim, that skirts a little too short-what or who did you think you were going to attract?
Why would .gov smokem just like they did, white folk don't burn burn down the town. Not yet anyway.
And why cant we have it both ways, the feds get it thousands of ways, any way they want it to put the screws to whomever is the target.
I've noticed you sound a little like a .gov lover when they clearly overreach. Quick to jump on the tin hat crowd and anybody else who isnt fondling of USMIL.
That's funny! Finicum was no victim, he was 100% volunteer.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
You don't get to play it both ways, because you're supposed to be better than the double-standard SJWs and the other big government weenies. If anyone's not better than that, and doesn't want to be, they should wear the Fucktard Army badge with pride.
When Otter says, in Animal House "this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part"..."and we're just the guys to do it" finishes Blutto, it's funny. When people do that exact thing in real life, not so much. And now somebody's dead because he couldn't tell the difference between movie dumb, and deadly dumb. He's wiser now, and probably died with one helluva surprised look on his face, when true wisdom finally sunk in about the same time blood seeped out. That's a craptastic epitaph, and an awful way to go. At 55, with grown kids, he was sure as hell old enough to know better than to act that childish. But, on the day it mattered, apparently he did not.
I have no love for the government, even when they're more necessary than evil, but they did NOT "clearly overreach" here.
They tried to apprehend the leadership of an armed occupation on federal lands.
One of them - Finicum - chose, repeatedly, to attempt to evade and resist said arrest. That ended poorly for him, as do most such attempts. You could look it up.
The rest, merely along for the ride, who did no such thing, are all alive and well. QED
If there is any evidence whatsoever that the OSP shot Finicum before there was any reasonable cause to do so, and you have it, kindly lay it out, ASAP. I've already laid out the evidence of The Stupid right up to that point. It's beyond argument.
What did any of this have to do with USMIL?
And jumping on the tin hat crowd is a hobby, along the lines of clubbing baby harp seals. It's easy, costs nothing, and flushes them out of the woodwork. When there aren't any such trying to tell me they're on the side of goodness and truth, because their ilk are no longer welcome, my work in that regard will be done. Einstein once said the only two infinite things were the universe, and human stupidity, and he wasn't really that sure about the universe.
The number of vicarious Finicum supporters looks to be something like the number of people who said they were at Woodstock: if you really supported the guy and the rest of the Insane Clown Posse there, the feds wouldn't have been able to get within 100 miles of Malheur due to the inbound traffic jam.
Own that, or quit sticking up for 'tards. It's simply counterproductive, and a waste of perfectly good electrons. Peaceful protests that actually are, will draw their share of lumps, just like always. Pretending an armed occupation is one will draw gunfire. Find a better way than either of those, or get used to eternally playing the Washington Generals to the .GOV's Harlem Globetrotters.
If all this is all still a mystery to you, watch The Devil's Brigade.
A) Because it's a great flick, and
B) Because in one relevant scene, Andrew Prine's Ransom character tries to race the Canadians to the base gate, and falls spectacularly right on his face.
See if you can figure out why William Holden's character subsequently gives him a ration of shit, and then see if you can tell me who the Malheur fools most resemble in that scene.
Turning things around is serious business. There's no room for @$$clownery.
...continued...
With regard to CCW, a bit of research suggests that Oregon is an open carry state that doesn’t have reciprocity so open carry was their only available compliant option (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Oregon).
With regard to the question of how I would respond to strangers acting similar in my own house, I reply:
If you’ve been attending to this issue, the foundational issue of this protest is the question, “Whose house is this?” I have strong claims to the lawful possession of my house. The Feds, however, may be on shaky ground.
With regard to open carry being illegal in most jurisdictions, it certainly isn’t in that county of Oregon. In fact, the laws vary so much from region to region, we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble presuming that what is familiar to us is the law of the land elsewhere.
I think I’ve addressed, in the comments above, the points you introduced in your post.
There does appear to be an underlying presumption in your themes, however, that LEOs are somehow a special class of man. They can carry and brandish guns, when others cannot. They must be obeyed, or you’ll get shot up. I’m not aware of any principle (other than charges of excessive force being responded to with qualified immunity) that supports such an understanding in this country. Maybe I’m just reading into this too much.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Thanks for all you’ve done.
IMO, accepting that such a thing as "Federal lands" exist is wrapping the chains of slavery around you willingly.
Good thing that this attitude did not exist in the 18th century, otherwise we'd all be off to tea about now.
Aesop,
LF is dead, and nearly a dozen others are in the Graybar Hotel, for exactly the point you made, re: military planning, preparation, provisioning, and operational posture. But let me offer something which may temper your observations just a bit - I'm going to give the Malheur crew the benefit of the doubt, and baloon the assertion that, they didn't go about it in a military manner, because they didn't believe they were at war.
Ad explicandi, dico ~
They didn't believe it because to engage in violent criminal behavior isn't a respectable or decent thing to do, and they're a bunch of decent and respectable people; so they didn't expect Fed.Gov to "break their own rules", and be the ones to initiate the use of deadly force.
They suffered for their inordinate normalcy bias, and if I had to choose ONE thing for everyone to take away from this block of instruction, that is IT. If you call yourself a "patriot" or a "Constitutionalist", or whatever of the sort, then it would behoove you to jettison your normalcy bias, right here, right now.
Be painfully honest with yourself in assessing the situation. We have moved beyond mere Political Correctness, through Lawfare and Economic Mass Destruction, and have arrived at the main event, where Fed.Gov is marching soldiers around and killing anyone who makes of themselves an "enemy combatant" - else why do you think the NDAA provisions of 2012 through the present provide for military combat, and the capture and non-judicial internment of 'enemy combatants', within our own country? Who did you think that was for, if not for you and those like you?
As Mao put it, "The nail which stands up, gets beaten down." His eloquence nearly matched his diabolical hated of simple human decency; and we ought to learn well what he did and what he taught, before we find ourselves living under it.
Normalcy bias, in the form of believing that .GOV would not use deadly force against a bunch of 'terrorists' - and make no mistake, 'terrorists' is what they consider us all - is a deadly under-estimation, and with my condolences to the Fincum family and all who knew him, such was the root cause of his death. He was an honest man, and expected to be treated reasonably; but that was not a reasonable expectation to hold in regards to our Federal Government.
Even at the best of times, government is not reason, nor eloquence, nor longsuffering, nor any other virtuous attribute. No. Rather, government is compunction and demmand, backed by enormous and often indiscriminately applied force; and by it's very nature usurps rights and priviledges, at whatever rate the citizens will allow it to do so.
So, if you count yourself to be at odds with the government about any little thing, from which you do not intend to back down easily, and cower readily; then know you clearly and full well that you are at war with your government already; and ought to conduct yourselves as such, with great care and attention to the choosing of the battles in which you engage. Because to those who enforce government dictat, you are already an enemy combatant, a terrorist, and they are already justified (in their own minds) for killing you; as the murder of Levoy Finicum and many others of late so plainly demonstrates.
Observe and Orient yourselves carefully, before taking any action which can/will be perceived as hostile by the regime, because they have set a clear standard for disproportionately violent response, and in this you should expect them to continue.
WE HAVE BEEN WARNED
NJMike,
IMO, the fact that you haven't taken your weapons to the US Capitol to explain to them that they're wrong about that shows that you accept the idea as well.
So don't confuse me recognizing the present bastardized reality with liking how we got to it, and I'll accord you the same respect.
And maybe bone up, just a wee bit, on Article I, Section 8, and the finer details concerning the Fifth Amendment, both found in the U.S. Constitution. "Federal lands" is not some alien concept, rather instead going back to Day One of this republic.
@Anonymous, prior:
If you're going to lean on OR state open carry law, kindly cite the precepts found therein as they apply to brandishing versus carrying, conduct and carry during political protesting, and behavior on federal lands and in federal buildings, and get back to me. I suspect you'll find the very laws you lean on provide for a host of firearms carrying charges, all chargeable under state, let alone federal, law.
Once again, if this was a peaceful protest, WHY BRING ANY WEAPONS WHATSOEVER?
Fear of mugging at Malheur? Rampant rabid raccoons? The premise is farcical.
If the answer is "To use in case we get justifiably apprehended", then you've already let the lawless cat out of the bag, and the occupiers deserve whatever they get. In fact, there is NO reason to take them there, if this was ever, at any level, honestly intended to be a "peaceful protest."
Please, stop trying to tap dance around calling an armed occupation an armed occupation.
SNAFU posted some of the Tard Army's finer "non-violent" moments earlier today on his site; please go and have a look at the video. They're frankly lucky that only one guy got shot, after a quarter hour's opportunity to surrender himself, and three weeks' worth of such extreme provocative jackholishness.
As for the status of federal lands, I suggest reference to my comments to NJ Mike, above. If you want to build castles in the Land Of How We May Wish It Was, go on ahead. The fall from the clouds will be painful when you strike Reality.
But I hold LEOs as no such special class; that you'd think otherwise shows that you've missed any number of excoriating posts, on this very blog, where I've tasked their repeated assclownery as mercilessy as I do Finicum's situational retardation now. Cavity searches in NM? Dorner tomfoolery? Shutting down all of LAX for a day for one dead shooter? BTDT, got the t-shirts. And many more.
But when they're making an arrest, they have the right to use as much force as necessary to effect that arrest. And if, in the course of that attempt, you make an ambiguous move for a potential weapon, while they're pointing guns at you, you'll very likely get shot, and possibly to death. I hope this isn't news where you live.
You want to argue probable cause, admissible evidence, and culpability? Lovely. We have a nifty place for that. The forum is called criminal court. Not the side of the road. The only cases that get adjudicated there almost invariably are decided as was Finicum's, without appeal or recourse to host of other rights such criminal stupidity, in every way that phrase can be exegeted, makes irretrievably impossible.
I have been second to none in pouring hellfire and brimstone at officers and agencies who think they're a special class, accountable to no one. But when they turn the flashing lights on, and point their attention (and weapons) at you, you can surrender promptly and peaceably, or resist. Resistance will very likely end with them going home, and you going to Shady Acres in a sack. That's reality, and Finicum was clearly unfamiliar with it. It cost him his life, in a foolhardy display of breathtaking serial stupidity.
He was, in this sense, every bit the white version of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and his apologists every bit the equal of the rabid race-baiters and cop-haters we saw on display there. Only minus the follow-up arson and looting, thus far. Praise the heavens for small favors; we don't need any further publicity like the clowncarnucopia of fail shown so far.
Far better after this floating remnant to jiggle the handle, light a candle, turn on the fan, and tiptoe quietly away from this entire sorry stinking pile, and pretend it never happened. No one sensible holds burial ceremonies for turds. This was wagonload of them.
@LT,
There was no disproportionate response: Armed criminals, fleeing an attempted apprehension, got stopped. One of them gave probable cause for shooting him. (Unless you can produce evidence that the authorities fired before any such provocation).
But the objects of the exercise acted and talked like they were at war, while making no prudent changes in their behavior such a state would imply, and that cognitive dissonance allowed their leadership to be removed surgically, and the tail-dragging remnants to be scooped up in ones and twos as they slunk away. They are merely criminals, andrather pitifully inept ones at that, not combatants, and that's why they'll all be in orange jumpsuits, or already are.
The lesson is not that we are at war - yet, but that if you reasonably think that we someday might (or will) be, then you'd better by God start acting like it, planning for it, and preparing for it, or you're going to get your ass handed to you by people who already grasp the concept, and have near unlimited resources at their disposal to prosecute it.
Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk.
Aesop,
Begging your pardon, but the response was disproportionate. The FBI has quite a number of standard protocols for hostage situations, and other situations satisfying the category of 'hostile takeover and/or occupation of premise or property'. In this instance, for whatever reason, those protocols were set aside, and the occupyers were allowed to play intramural tidly-winks at the refuge while the FBI sat on their hands for three weeks.
I'm speaking here of standard scene control, like establishing a cordon - noone goes in or out. Cut the commercial power supply. Water and Natural Gas get cut, also. And of course, they block all cellular communications. It's a modern extension of the ageless methodology of siege warfare. Isolate your enemy, starve them, let them freeze (or sweat) in the dark, and deny them all means of communicating with anyone but your negotiator.
Sooner or later, sane people are going to surrender when placed in such abject circumstances. And voluntary surrender of the offending parties is exactly what the outcome of such an action *should* be. After all, there were no hostages, and a wildlife refuge doesn't exactly hold the same strategic significance as, say, a nuclear power facility does. So time and circumstnaces were quite certainly on the FBI's side in the matter, towards the resolution of the situation by voluntary surrender of the offending parties, without violence or injury to anyone.
So, either the FBI has suffered a complete brain-shart and unanimously failed to follow their own SOPs, or an order came down from on high which told them to handle this situation in a speacial way... to obtain a special outcome.
I don't wear tinfoil, and so I'll not go any further along the road to postulate upon what flavor of 'special' was so ordered; except to say that, as with the barbequeue at Waco twenty years ago, the FBI detachment on the ground was told to 'make an example of them', or words to that purpose and effect.
But let me offer just one very plausible scenario, which would not have been disproportionate:
The road they were traveling remains within the 'refuge' for quite a ways (I believe nearly 50 miles). Since it is within the refuge, there are no houses and no businesses - it is, essentially, 50 miles of utter desolation - further than they could have walked out, alive.
And we both know damn well that the road could have been closed at the far end, so as to prevent them hitching a ride; and one or two OSP/FBI units in 4X4s or on skidoos could have deployed spike-strips to disable the occupiers' trucks as they rounded that fateful curve, and then those officers could have sped away without having any direct contact with the occupiers.
So, multiple flat tires on all vehicles. No cellular service, so no calling for help. Profoundly limited food, water, shelter, and fuel on hand. Faced with the option of surrender, or freezing to death on the side of the road, I think we can conclude what they would have chosen...
So, taken in the context of the FBI's divergence from SOPs and established tactics (which boast a very high success rate for resolving situations like this) their chosen course to engage in a felony stop - which any cop will tell you is quite possibly the most dangerous detail to which he could be assigned - In that context, YES, the tactics employed, and the hair-trigger escalation of force, was disporportionate in respect to how it would have been handled in accordance with the SOPs and established tactics.
But I digress upon the hypothesis already stated: that orders came down to make an example of them, and so was it done.
But of course, this message will self-destruct in ten seconds... and we will never know the whole truth.
Prior performance does not guarantee future performance."
That's the caveat on every mutual fund prospectus, and it applies here.
The FibBIes aren't hidebound to always doing the same thing in the same way; this was simply a wake-up call to those who didn't know that.
The feds largely got exactly the outcome they wanted. Most of the occupiers are now in federal custody, and alive. And the last three holdouts there are about a red hair away from getting the Finicum treatment, except there won't be any drone video. Some morning about three AM, they'll get flashbanged awake, and then eat a faceful of 9mm from an MP-5SD, and come the dawn, there probably won't even be evidence tape and bloodstains to mark their passage.
Or, if they're very lucky, they'll walk out with their hands up long before that point, prone out, and get handcuffed and taken into custody - alive - to join their fellow clowns.
There won't be a third option.
There's no use in anyone crying that the feds aren't playing by the supposed rules, simply because they found a different way to skin the cat that left the occupiers looking like the retards they were. I'm sorry, but everyone can't be the BATFE SWAT team.
The alternative takedown you suggest still leaves them in possession, presumably, of operable cell phones, possibly HAM transceivers or a CB, and unknown weapons. So now you've taken a contained entity and spread it into 4 or more armed fugitives, requiring a manhunt to track down, unless they helpfully surrender, something they resolutely refused to do for three weeks.
All it takes is one helpful sole riding into the backcountry, and you've got a hostage scenario, or a successful evasion, or an innocent bystander shot by them, or by the feds. That's a can of worms no one in charge is opening willfully, short of having a regiment on the ground. And if they turn around on shredded tires, and drive 20 miles back on rims, you've got the same scenario as what played out, at lower speed, and with them forewarned and more desperate. Unless someone is following them with a pair of Bearcats or MRAPs, and looking to gun them all down, which clearly they were not.
This was a novel approach, and frankly precisely the one suggested by all the Monday morning quarterbacks after Waco and Ruby Ridge for grabbing Koresh and Randy Weaver. The only thing amazing is that 25 years later, they seem to have learned another approach then 50 guys, going "hey diddle diddle, right up the middle".
Be afraid of that: Leviathan is learning from past mistakes. You can count the .gov doing that on your thumbs, most lifetimes. The only thing worse than incompetent oppressors, is competent ones.
Do you refer to the section reading....."and to exercise like Authority over all places PURCHASED BY THE CONSENT OF THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE in which Same shall be?
And you presume an attack against you peprsonally. Twas not. It was simply a statement meant to indicate that I am tired of rationalizing the actions of a Government out of control.
Considering that the Fed and locals injured the Constitutional bar against double jeopardy to start this, to use it AGAINST those who would resist the diminution of said document is churlish.
I am fond of the Declaration and what it has to say about rogue governments.
1) Yes. If you can make a case that was not the situation, and no further law speaks to the issue, by all means, retain counsel and go and make your case - in a court of law.
2) No offense meant, none taken.
3) Considering that the persons so injured demurred, and washed their hands of these armed occupiers, that instance has no more to do with this case than does the price of tea in China. This was an armed occupation, and response to same. Failure to appreciate that, and the consequences of such - certain as gravity - is what got and will get the original protagonists their orange jumpsuits.
4) So am I, but those people had a wee bit more common sense about making their case for their ultimate course of action. They did not invoke their arguments in response to the actions of a mob in the Boston Massacre, to which this entire incident bears far more than a passing resemblance. As someone familiar with both the Massacre and the Declaration noted concurrently, "Facts are stubborn things."
I withdraw from the field, but living in the PRNJ and working for the State as well I see far too much sausage made to not hope for SOME real change.
And as to my comitment, I stood alone in front of the State house; the day before my felow "co-workers" went there to demand more money, wearing a sign thanking the People for my job and the opportunity to serve.
I do all I can, and can only pray it helps.
Be well.
NJM
I hope we see real change for the better as well.
Do what you can, where you can, with what you've got, and don't give up.
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