1. Waco
The Waco Standoff.
1 .
The Waco Standoff is a sad reminder of how one man can cause so much destruction. The mission was supposed to go over smoothly without any problems. Instead, it turned into a fifty- two day ordeal with no compromise. This ordeal ended with the deaths of many innocent men, women, and children.
Vernon Wayne Howell was brought into the world in nineteen fifty-nine as an illegitimate child. He grew up near the suburbs of Dallas. Vernon was raised in the Adventist Church where his grandmother took him, which may explain why his strongest subject was religion. He would spend hours reading the Bible. His high school classmates complained that Vernon lectured too much about the Bible (Reavis 23-24).
In nineteen eighty-one the Seventh-day Adventist banished Vernon from the church. He left for Waco where he began preaching sermons to the Branch Davidians cult. He claimed he was the seventh angel of the Book of Revelation in the Bible. The cult members accepted him and proclaimed him as the leader of the church (Streissguth139-14). George Roden, the son of Benjamin and Lois Roden, became Vernon's main rival and kept him from becoming the leader of the Branch Davidians. Venon was again banished from this church. Forty of the members stayed loyal to him (Reavis 24).
In nineteen eighty - seven, Vernon Howell and his followers created a plan to gather up guns and ammunition to take the compound back. On the morning of November third, Roden and Howell tried to settle the argument with bullets. Forty-five minutes later they put down their weapons and Howell was arrested for attempted murder. Seven days later he was released on bail, and the charges were dropped later. Roden on the other hand was sentenced to a state mental hospital (Reavis 32-33).
Howell became the leader of the Branch Davidians again. He saw himself as King David, the ruler of the Israelites.
Waco Branch Davidian Disaster On April 19, 1993, the fifty-one day standoff between the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and U.S. government law enforcement agencies ended in a tragic fire, leaving David Koresh and eighty of his followers dead (PBS). ... Instead, in 1981, he went to Waco, Texas where he joined the Branch Davidians, a religious cult that in 1935 had settled 10 miles outside of Waco. ... Waco brought attention to the uncheckability of the bureaucracy. ... They had isolated themselves in a compound outside the city of Waco, Texas, to further their religious devotion (Big Eye). ...
In his thesis, Thomas Barnett notes that the world's countries can be classified between high and low levels of globalization. He notes that the potential of a country to ensure U.S. military response is inversely related to its globalization connectivity and that the enemy is not our religious diff...