Good. Between insurrections in DC, women's clinics burning down, church fires, etc., etc., etc., we need a federal-level team coordinating efforts against this stuff.
It’s weird to use Waco and not a multitude of other legitimate examples of government law enforcement overreach. At any rate, none of those would qualify for the label “domestic terrorism” in the strict sense of the word but would suffice for a broader point you might be trying to make. To wit, are there adequate checks on the abuse of police power. The answer is no and one group that tried to bring up this issue, ironically given your apparent political leaning, is BLM. Police in the U.S. regularly mete out non judicial punishments and there are virtually no real checks against this.
The common ground, perhaps, that we share is that government overreach and abuse of police powers ought to be addressed in a meaningful way before expanding police powers or creating new investigative units. Especially when the charge is to stop domestic terrorism. That phrase can be twisted and abused in a such a manner that a non violent advocate like Martin Luther King could be labeled a domestic terrorist.
>'The answer is no and one group that tried to bring up this issue, ironically given your apparent political leaning, is BLM'
Is this supposed to be some smear at me suggesting I don't believe many very real claims that have been made by black demographic regarding police abuse? What do you even mean by this being ironic?
>The federal government executed a search warrant on the Branch Dravidian compound
That's the most charitable view I think I've ever heard described defending what happened at Waco. You believe what happened was 'legally executed'? Or that those killed were legally executed? I'm not sure if number of people who died means anything in terms of who was right and who was wrong, but it's pretty telling you mention the 4 government agents that died by number but don't number the 25 dead children (mostly burned alive) and 2 pregnant women. This all after Koresh could have just been grabbed peacefully outside the compound rather than in a standoff. Afterwords agents POSED over the rubble and dead bodies.
But a few paragraphs of us describing Waco isn't going to do justice to ourselves or fellow HNers, so please the few of you who haven't read about it please study and make your own decision.
Lastly: I didn't say Waco had to be interpreted by the reader as 'domestic terrorism', I said they (DoJ) should start with the 'domestic terrorism organization' that carried it out. Do you understand the difference? You can decide for yourself what agency or body(ies) that applies to.
All of the blame rests on the people in charge of the cult. Nothing they did was moral or justifiable. A government should have the power to exercise legally obtained warrants. Otherwise it is a useless government.
I take this as basically accurate.
>All of the blame rests on the people in charge of the cult. Nothing they did was moral or justifiable. A government should have the power to exercise legally obtained warrants. Otherwise it is a useless government.
You make a lot of presumptions about what I've said about Waco. ALL I said was DoJ should start with the 'domestic terror organization' that fired upon civilians at Waco and Ruby Ridge. I said nothing about morality, whether the WARRANT was justified, or even who the blame for Waco rests on.
This is starting to look like your own rabbit-hole we're going down where you think something you say about who is to blame at Waco discredits the ONLY assertion I made about Waco (which was civilians were fired upon.) It's starting to look like your own personal vendetta, one I'm very confused of the reason behind.
>All of the blame rests on the people in charge of the cult.
Even I don't have this level of confidence as to what proportion of blame to assign to who at Waco. The fact that you've reached such confidence about an event where we still lack full accuracy of details, is one of the most stunning and clear cases of Dunning-Kruger-esque effect I've seen on HN.
Regarding a useless government? Nah I think the government can still maintain functional ability to execute a search warrant without executing in in the way the fatal siege was executed in Waco.
It is incorrect in my opinion to use Waco as an example of a law enforcement agency being in any way comparable to a domestic terror organization.
Dunning-Kruger has nothing to do with this exchange. That effect is an observation that less intelligent people tend to overrate their abilities more than higher intelligent people. I’ve not rated my abilities at all in any of these exchanges.
False again. Dunning-Kruger is not about intelligence. It is about 'the cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.' If you're saying you don't assign yourself any ability to determine if someone was to blame, then I guess you're also saying your claim of 'all the blame' being with the cult leaders to merely be a meaningless statement made by someone devoid of any confidence in their ability to make it.
"Dunning-Kruger-esque": I'm referring to the limited ability we have to know what actually happened at Waco, which you then parley into the ability to outright assign that you have the ability to know where ALL the blame lies for what happened at Waco.
>Calling a federal law enforcement agency a domestic terror agency over Waco is precisely what I’m objecting to for the reasons I’ve given.
How many times must I repeat myself? I said DoJ should start with 'the domestic terror agency that fired upon civilians at Waco and Ruby Ridge.' Again, where are you pointing out that I said that I was calling them domestic terrorists BECAUSE of Waco? We've belabored this straw-man over again, it's not what I said.
If you don’t believe Waco makes the law enforcement agencies in question domestic terror organizations then why bring up Waco? What is it that causes those agencies to be domestic terror organizations and why not give those reasons instead of bringing up Waco? These are rhetorical questions by the way.
So you just went off spouting all the blame lied on the 'cult' [or leaders thereof] without even bothering to make the slightest judgement whether you had the ability to say that.
I didn't expect such a stunning admission, but at least we got the truth.
It’s strange that you don’t see how your reasoning about Dunning-Kruger applies to what you’ve written. You should strive to be consistent in your reasoning and apply it to your own arguments. It’s sloppy thinking to engage thusly.
I think we have way more information about the government and these agencies when looking at our national history, than just looking at single event Waco. With much more information, we have higher ability to make a statement. This is precisely why I did not say BECAUSE of Waco.
But sure, Dunning-Kruger is merely observation of human trait, and not a sin at face. I think it's a lot more forgivable merely to actually over-estimate yourself after genuinely attempting to do so accurately. If I'm guilty of over-estimating my ability to think DoJ should investigate domestic terrorist organization that fired upon civilians at Waco, that can be your opinion. More forgivable than straight up not even assessing if you have ability to truthfully assign ALL of blame for dozens of horrible deaths with members of 'cult', but making the accusation anyway, which you have so sloppily done.
I mean if they didn't, what are we paying them for?
No wonder Walmarts, schools and places of worship are getting shot up.
I guess it's good they created one now, but if they didn't have a unit with dedicated resources on the domestic terrorism problem previously, it really does demonstrate a lack of military sense.
My interpretation of this story, is they are creating a dedicated team of people within the Counter-Terrorism Section to handle "domestic" terrorism, rather than having the same team(s) handle a mixture of "international" and "domestic" cases.
It really is a nothing story. It is nothing like the Space Force – that involved a major legal change in the high-level military structure, changing reporting lines for senior officials (the Air Force's space head was elevated to membership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), this seems to just involve a change in the internal team structure of an existing government office (a section of a division of a department). They just want to make it sound like they are doing something.
How do you decide what is "international" and what is "domestic" terrorism anyway? If someone is recruited by Islamic State to commit a terrorist attack, that's international. But if some lone wolf radicalises themselves by spending hours a day watching Islamic State propaganda videos, and that inspires them to commit a terrorist attack – is that "international" or "domestic"? And how is that different from if the lone wolf had spent hours a day watching QAnon videos instead?
The US military is forbidden from domestic enforcement action, except in certain circumstances. Google "posse commitatus" for details.
Kind of. The Posse Comitatus Act doesn't apply to the Navy. However, the DoD and/or the DoN has regulations that align with the Posse Comitatus Act. So it's not the military as a whole which is forbidden, just part of it, and the other part can change their own rules to allow it.
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...
The term scales. There are many, many lessons learned in the service that have application to the civilian world. If those lessons will be received by the learners.
Shit just in the last few years we've had pipeline protestors charged with domestic terrorism, BLM protestors facing gang enhancement felony charges for property damage (paint not arson if that matters).
It's good that the government is ready to back down its stance of "ignore extremist violence as long as they call themselves patriots" but I don't want to find out what the tucker carlson administration would do with a domestic terrorism task force ya know?
This sounds like it's creating a central function instead of leaving it to regional JTTFs.
That leads to the situation where any violence is allowed, and I don't want to live in that society.
The threat list you provided seemed like it was from someone left-leaning. It did not mention the commonly-occurring mayhem, riots, vandalism, and arson coming from people describing themselves as affiliated with Leftist organizations (sorry, I cannot find better wording here. I am not trying to sound partisan here.)
How can they form a new unit when Washington is trashed, but stand by when inner city neighborhoods are set afire? History wouldn't judge that kindly.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Perhaps you view the protestors as terrorists but I suggest this is a twisting of that term. I do not embrace a domestic office of terrorism for the same reason that I oppose the Department of Homeland security. We Americans have become a divided people wallowing in fear of those fellow countryman who adhere to the wrong ideology. It is too easy for a demagogue to usurp the normal functioning of the law enforcement to go after “domestic terrorism”. Too many people will willingly support the infringement of the rights of those with the wrong ideology.
One thing we should all agree with is that major police reforms are badly needed.
Terrorism - the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion
They were exactly terrorists. Also, insurrectionists...