Oh The Government Would Never Be Completely Inept... Definitely...

What happened in Waco is a tragedy, and both sides of the conflict are to blame. Addressing the Branch Davidians first, I would personally say that the group was a cult, considering the severe level to which Vernon Howell’s followers abandoned their normal lives to follow his orders. Obviously religion itself isn’t an inherent wrong or danger, as many religions are culturally significant, impactful, socially generous, and more, and so they have had profound positive impacts on their followers and others. The Brand Davidians, however, do not fall into that category, and instead delve into the dangerous realm of belief in a figure that claims to receive revelation from God and instructs them to do things like give up their wives for him to have sex with, child abuse, and stockpiling guns converted into automatics. Their entire belief that they would need to fight the U.S. Government to bring about the second coming is genuinely insane, and all of that together is what makes them into a cult, in my opinion. That being said, the Brand Davidians would not have harmed that many people outside of their group, other than the children they were abusing which is extremely serious, so the government should not have gone about it the way they did. This was not an extremist group with plans to mass murder innocent civilians, they were a wacko cult that was harming its own members. The proper response by the government should have been adequate reconnaissance and peaceful measures until they knew that a raid could occur with few casualties. Instead, the ATF and later the FBI were reckless in their handling of the raid. Had the government committed to understanding these people, they would have known of the extreme lengths the Brand Davidians were willing to go and found an alternative strategy. But instead they did what they did and it ended in the unnecessary death of agents and Brand Davidians. The thing is, with us not knowing whether or not the fire was started by either party, we still have to understand that it was the government who was ultimately reckless and irresponsible. These agencies, backed by billions of taxpayer dollars, have a higher standard for what we expect of them, and it is clear that incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge are major failures of the U.S. government.