The Difference Between That Oregon Militia and ISIS

There isn't one.  Stop acting like there is.  Trump should be bombing the shit out of those bundyist motherfuckers.

David Atkins:

The big story of the day is the armed seizure of an empty federal building in rural Oregon by a group of domestic terrorists, some of whom are the sons of federal tax cheat and freeloader Cliven Bundy.

They’re apparently upset at the conviction and upcoming jail sentences of a couple of fellow domestic terrorists for arson. They believe that the federal government has no constitutional authority to own land, that national parks are essentially illegal, and that men like them have a God-given right to mine, log and otherwise destroy whatever forest land they want. (It remains unclear whether they would condone Native Americans for “standing their ground” and responding with force to their trespass on the same lands that God clearly gave to them first.)

I don’t want to dwell too much on the rationales and motivations for these domestic terrorists any more than I would for the people who fight for ISIS or Al Qaeda. It’s always the same thing: a group of armed, angry men believe that the Big Bad Western Government is infringing on their right to do whatever it is they very well please—whether it’s to the environment, or to minorities, women, people of different religious groups, etc. Undereducated, armed angry men are often upset at Western governments for upsetting their private power apple carts because in their small, solipsistic worlds they’re very used to being lords of their manors and local enforcers of bigoted frontier justice. That’s as true of Afghan militants in the Taliban as it is of rural Montana militiamen. The only difference is in the trappings, the external presence of the rule of law and the degree of violence involved.

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As much as restraint is the better part of valor when dealing with entitled conservative crazies, principles of basic justice and fair play also need to apply. What’s good for one type of terrorist must also be good for another.

Actually, there is a difference.  Domestic terrorists - conservatard white guys with guns who think they own the world - are a genuine existential threat to the United States of America, its residents and its Constitution.

 

ISIS is a bunch of thugs in the desert five thousand miles away.

When Terrorism Was a Crime, Not an Excuse for Permanent War

I remember when the news hit our office.  Somebody said it must have been the ay-rabs, but that struck me as ridiculous.  New York, of course. Miami, no shit.  Even Chicago or LA, sure.  But Oklahoma City?  Was there an Arab terrorist on the planet in April 1995 who could find Oklahoma City on a map?

Plus the target of a federal building. Out west, where the anti-government militias roam.

White militia fuckers, I said.  Has to be.

FBI, ATF and every spare federal lawman in the country descended on Oklahoma and in a matter of days they found the motherfuckers. Arrested them, charged them, tried them and executed one and imprisoned the other for life.

American law enforcement. American justice.  No U.S. military troops or civilians were harmed in the making of that victory.

Reuters:

Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday at the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to remember the 168 men, women and children killed when a truck stuffed with tons of explosives blew up at a downtown federal building.

Former President Bill Clinton was among the dignitaries who addressed the crowd outside the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.

"Oklahoma City, you had to choose to redeem your terrible losses by having to begin again," said Clinton, who was in his first term in office at the time of the attack, one of the deadliest of its kind ever staged on U.S. soil.

The museum, built over the spot where the destroyed Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood, includes a permanent display of 168 empty chairs, one for each person who died.

On Sunday morning, the seats were adorned with flowers, teddy bears and other mementos. The name of each victim was read aloud by relatives, coworkers and survivors.

“It was 60 minutes of terror,” said Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett. “But our finest hour has lasted 20 years. This city has progressed in a manner that none of us could have foreseen.”

The bombing was carried out on April 19, 1995, by Timothy McVeigh, an anti-government militant who was eventually convicted on federal charges and executed. His accomplice Terry Nichols received multiple life prison sentences for his part in the bombing, which also injured hundreds.

Release the A-10 Attack Copters and Battle Tanks!

Apparently these morons think the feds will respond to government employees getting killed with assault rifles by shooting back with BB guns.  Remember this stuff?

Digby:

This is disturbing

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is warning its workers in Utah to be on alert after two men threatened an agency wrangler on Interstate 15 about 90 miles south of Salt Lake City. The BLM says the incident occurred on I-15 near Nephi about 11 a.m. Tuesday when two men wearing hoods pulled up alongside a marked BLM truck and held up a sign that read, "You need to die."

KUTV-TV reports one of the suspects held what appeared to be a handgun. The BLM worker slowed down and let the dark blue Dodge truck with an extended cab pass before exiting the interstate at Mills. He says he couldn't get a license plate number because it was covered in duct tape. Authorities are looking for the truck.

Holding random federal workers personally responsible for the issues surrounding the Bundy Ranch protest is beyond radical. It's right in line with Timothy McVeigh's vision of revolution.

This is not normal politics. In fact, threatening random federal workers with death is not politics at all.

And it's not just a few penis-less maniacs:

On the outs with mainstream pundits over "the Negro", Cliven Bundy and his band of armed extremists are still hoping to spark a violent confrontation with the Feds that will go nationwide.

Bring it on, motherfuckers:

Apparently the FBI is starting to investigate the Bundy outlaws as part of "formal investigation into alleged death threats, intimidation and possible weapons violations.

I think a few canisters of pepper spray will take care of the militia cowards; beating up defenseless women and children is more their speed.


 

Real Patriots Pay Taxes

More than any flag-waving, parading or fireworking you can do on the Fourth of July, nothing proves your true worth as an American like paying the taxes you owe to the federal government, even when it spends that money wasteful shit like Mitch McConnell's salary. Don't like the government? VOTE TO CHANGE IT.

Ed Kilgore nails it in this piece, in which he concludes:

Painful as Tax Day might be, and however unhappy we may be with this or that policy or practice of the federal government, this is indeed our government, and there’s no “country” beyond its jurisdiction to which we may pledge allegiance. So today’s a day for flag-waving, not just tax-paying, and one for rededicating ourselves to engagement in the civic and political processes, not seceding to some imaginary Republic of our own devising.

Of course he's referring to the Nevada morons, about whom I agree wholeheartedly with Juanita Jean:

Why the hell are they supporting a law breaker?  This Cliven Bundy crazy old fart says he doesn’t recognize the federal government.  Well hell, it’s on your money and your flag and your national weather service and your Bureau of Damn Ranch Management.

Get your damn cattle off my land, you crazy old fart.

The Real Reason Cliven Bundy Isn't In Prison and We're Not All Chowing Down On His Cattle Right Now

From Zandar:

Can you imagine what the reaction of America would be to a black cattle rancher grazing cattle on federal land, without paying the feds, for 20 years? Think about how that would be reported.  Cliven Bundy is considered a patriot and hero for resisting the awful mean ol' federal government, despite breaking the law for two decades plus.  If he was black, the calls from the same exact people now hailing him as a hero would be far, far different.

Furthermore,look who showed up to help Bundy.  What do you think FOX News's reaction of an armed group of black men showing up to defend that cattle rancher from the feds?  You'd be hearing about race wars and all kinds of crazy shit.  Worse, the white militia guys showing up now to defend Bundy would absolutely be on the scene hunting down the black ranchers.

It would be chaos.  And it sure wouldn't have ended peacefully, that's for damn sure.

ABC News calls Bundy a "defiant cattleman".  If he was black, he would be a "militant thug."

And then he'd be dead.

 Steve M. makes similar points about the Kansas City KKK spree murderer here and here.

And Juanita Jean, who has an idea:

I’m a yellow dog Democrat and I believe in a sane immigration policy. Since taking office, the Obama Administration has deported over 2,000,000 people in an aggressive policy.

What if a bunch of Hispanics were to arm themselves and stand at the detention facility demanding the release of people “not following the rules.”  Do you think INS would quietly back down and release them to keep the peace?

I don’t think so.

If they were backed up and protected by a few gun-totin' liberal red-staters I happen to know personally, it might be worth a try.

QOTD

Alex Ruthrauff, at Wonkette, re the Nevada asshole who thinks he's entitled to steal forage from government land:

The unhouseled spirits of Native Americans and African slaves, robbed and murdered by the uncountable millions, could not be reached for comment.

On This, Homeland Security Was Right

The right wing is a clear and present danger to the nation.

 

David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars: 

 

It's emblematic of just how cowed our federal authorities have been by the right-wing blowback against calling right-wing domestic terrorists what they actually are that the prosecutors in Georgia who recently charged a group of far-right militiamen with plotting carry out a series of attacks in Washington state and to assassinate President Obama took to calling them, in their press announcements, "anarchists" -- which meant, of course, that the media promptly followed suit.

Let's be perfectly clear: The only thing in the profiles of these men that suggests anything remotely "anarchist" in their politics is the fact that, according to the AP, they "aggressively recruited" other members of the military with a symbol that resembled the classic anarchist symbol, an "A" inside a circle (even though there are a number of far-right symbols that could fit this description as well).

In every other regard, however, these men were indisputably classic right-wing extremists:

-- One of the leaders of the plot, Joseph Aguigui, was a page at the Republican National Convention in 2008.

-- All of the plotters were members of the military and espoused a far-right philosophy, including targeting President Obama for assassination. "I did think that the government needed to change, and I thought that we were the people to be able to change it," one of the plotters told the judge in pleading guilty.

-- The targets of their terrorist acts were generally "liberal" government entities -- poisoning the Washington apple crop, for instance, largely targeted the liberal Seattle consumer market -- although no one can quite figure out why they targeted Savannah's Forsyth Park.

What's most disturbing about this case is that these men were obtaining their arms and combat training from the U.S. military and were aggressively recruiting other members from within their ranks.

As it happens, this sort of thing -- as well as last month's murderous rampage by an ex-soldier/white supremacist at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin -- is exactly what that Department of Homeland Security bulletin on right-wing domestic terrorism of 2009 warned about:

U//FOUO) Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

Of course, the DHS wasn't alone in sounding this warning. The year before, in 2008, the FBI issued a similar warning:

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But then, we remember what happened next: right-wing hysterics took to the airwaves and the blogosphere to denounce the report as somehow a kind of "smear" of mainstream conservatives, which really was only a kind of unconscious self-indictment. Nonetheless, the Beltway media played along willingly, the result being that the DHS ultimately apologized for the report, and then proceeded to completely gut its unit devoted to monitoring right-wing extremist terrorism.

We've been paying for it ever since, most notably with the lives of law-enforcement officers killed by these nutcases. We've also been paying for it in the form of a sharp increase in right-wing domestic terrorism across the country (I'll have a lot more on that soon, I hope).

I am comforted by the fact that the attempted assassins in Georgia were caught before they could execute their plan at the same time I am terrified by the thought of too many others who may succeed.

The attacks on the Twin Towers were a historical anomaly; all the other terrorist attacks on American soil have been perpetrated by Americans - usually right-wingers - against other Americans.

Against the real threat we face, airport rapescans are useless, and Guantanamo is worse than useless. Reinstate the domestic terrorism monitors, and make funding and supporting them a matter of patriotism.   

The Tim McVeighs Next Door

The Kentucky State Police claim to be monitoring them, and see no rise in criminal activity connected with militias, but that is dangerously disingenuous. The first sign of criminal activity is likely to be dead bodies.

From the Courier-Journal:

Bob Resnick didn't believe all the right-wing militia conspiracy theories — the FEMA internment camps or the government coffins stockpiled for the day the feds declare martial law and round up dissenters. But they made him wonder.

Then America's economy tumbled and the nation elected Barack Obama, and the resulting chatter about socialist incursion, rampant gun control and a government takeover of health care made him fear where the nation was heading.

So the 43-year-old disabled Louisvillian searched the Internet for local militia groups that seemed to echo his misgivings.

“The way everything's going nowadays, if the economy tanks and they do declare martial law, and they do like California with all the riots and stuff, I'd like to know I've got a group I can be with so I'm not on my own,” he said.

After nearly a decade of decline, militia groups are seeing a resurgence in Kentucky and across the nation, fueled partly — according to militia leaders and watchdog groups — by the bad economy and Obama's election.

Resnick found his niche just a few weeks after beginning his search.

On a rainy October afternoon, he drove into a gun range in a secluded Bullitt County hollow to join 15 fatigue-clad members of the Ohio Valley Freedom Fighters, a Louisville-based militia that was holding a training session on assault weapons.

Read the whole terrifying thing.

Read the Southern Poverty Law Center's report report “The Second Wave: Return of the Militias” here.