Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 9 COMMONWEAL Correspondence Editorials 3 Editor's notebook: Patrick...
...and that more than or recent...
...It included knocking holes in the outer walls of the compound's buildings with a tank and spraying tear gas into the interiors...
...Sudan's leader, General Omar Al Bashir, during a brief stopover in Khartoum...
...In the Senate, Senators Simon, imists in the south, where they constitute a majority, has be- Kassenhaum...
...Minorities within a country," the pope told the AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK general...
...She mentions caring for an old man whose face was Branch Davidians as a breakaway group of the Seventh-day "lopsided with one sightless eye deeply sunken into an irreguAdventists, were very much of Koresh's own devising...
...She has taken and according to Senator Paul Simon an as-yet-unfull responsibility for the operation and its disastrous outcome...
...Sudanese style...
...So were telephones...
...Portland, Me...
...Jeffords, and Feingold have sponsored Senate come more complicated and more deadly...
...compound now largely cut off from contact with the outside world...
...But So far, the voices raised in behalf of Sudan in the West have what is surely to remain a puzzle is how two government agen- been too few and too faint...
...But a more skeptical scrutiny of the Sudan are severely malnourished...
...There may well be some exculpating reasons for the 4,000 children at one center alone were likely to die...
...The deliveries to one of the most desperate areas...
...Many justif ications for the FBI's gion was dealt a further blow last month when fighting between final decision are likely to emerge in the weeks ahead...
...have the right to exist, with their own language, culture, and traditions, and the state is morally obliged to leave room for their identity and self-expression.A DEADLY SILENCE In the United States, however, the churches have proven to FAINT VOICES ON SUDAN be entirely too soft-spoken...
...Reno...
...Commonweal, 15 Dutch St New York, N Y. 10038...
...PosTbissres: Send address changes to assault on the walls of the compound spilled fuel from kerosene lamps...
...CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 9 COMMONWEAL Correspondence Editorials 3 Editor's notebook: Patrick Jordan 4 Pray for it: Edivard McGlvnn Gaffnev, Jr...
...The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and The Spirit of Community: Firearms, a unit of the Treasury Department, mounted the opWilliam M. Sullivan 22 eration on the grounds that members of the Branch Davidians possessed illegal firearms Dakota: Elizabeth Barteltne 23 and explosives and committed physical and sexual abuse, especially against chilThe Gulf Conflict 1990-91: John Langan 27 dren...
...Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels After this fiasco, in which perhaps a half-dozen cult members also died and sevManaging Editor: Patrick Jordan eral federal agents were wounded, the ATF was quickly replaced by the FBI, whose Associate Editor: Paul Baumann professionalism promised a cool resolution of the conflict and a calm lifting of the Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell siege...
...It calls on President Bill Clinton to appoint a 4: 7 May 1993 Commonweal...
...There followed a twenty-four-hour psychological ofStage: Gerald Weales fensive of blaring noise along with the glare from high-powered lamps that kept the Poetry: Rosemary Deen compound lit all night...
...ernment in the north---bent on imposing Islamic For his part, Wolf has gone on a fast to alert his colleagues law on the country--and the Christians and an- and constituents about Sudan...
...Was the threat of cult violence so immediate, the evidence of child STAFF abuse so strong, that armed attack was the only way to go...
...Some of the Branch Davidians left the compound...
...Relieved sighs all around seemed in order...
...In February, thirteen African carcies lost all sense of proportion and took on themselves the crazed dinals made an impassioned appeal for human rights in Sudan...
...publicized U.S...
...Water and electricity were Screen: Richard Alleva cut off...
...Lee Miller has sent moving dispatches from the scene for the Lutheran, as have Maryknoll missionaries to the Catholic press...
...Koresh and his followers did not budge...
...Perhaps...
...told Mary McGrory of The news that reaches the West from war-tom Sudan the Washington Post last month, while church people flooded is scant but horrifying...
...Ultimately, Design: Emil Antonucci however, the talks broke down and were finally ended...
...His preachings and biblical exegesis were treated in the media as a species of crazed and Commonweal 7 May 1993: three-way split among the rebels has turned them on one another with a vengeance, while the Khartoum government has pursued its relentless drive in the south, restricting press reports from the area in an attempt to cover up its misdeeds...
...The noise bomStaff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, bardment included Buddhist monks chanting, a dental drill, rabbits being killed, Nancy Pamela Quatse Sinatra, and Christmas carols...
...Why an Margaret O'Brien Steinfels 26 assault to serve arrest warrants...
...That, of course, is not and waiting, was a graphic reminder of ethnic cleansing, among the FBI's responsibilities...
...What occasional reports do slip out of Sudan are numbing...
...5 Health care for all: J. Bryan Hehir 7 Goodfellows: Abigail McCarthy 9 It isn't Weimar all over again: Rand Richards Cooper I I The catechism-four responses: Dennis M. Dovle, Dennis O'Brien, Luke Timothy Johnson, Sara Butler 14 Agents of apocalypse Stage: Gerald Weales 19 Screen: Richard Alleva 20 hat was badly begun has been badly ended...
...Looks like the research hors really came up with A Catholic missionary in the south writes us that conditions something this tune " have deteriorated seriously in the last five months: hunger is rampant, rebel infighting is fierce, and the government reguapocalyptic Christianity...
...But, as Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va...
...The ten-year-long civil his office on Latin America and other issues, on Sudan "I hear war between the Islamic "fundamentalist" gov- silence...
...Display advertising the compound went up in flames...
...In February, four Poetry: Kit Thompson 21 federal agents were killed in an ill-conceived and badly executed assault on the compound of the Branch Davidians, a cult BOOKS group near Waco, Texas...
...Why weren't David Koresh and other leaders arThe Top 500 Poems: Suzanne Keen 26 rested earlier on their frequent trips outside the compound...
...They the government and rebel groups forced the UN to suspend food should be stronger than those first offered by Ms...
...and Bread for the World has proven itself again a plain-spoken and reliable watchman...
...But the cult's beliefs and codes, while larly detains, tortures, and disappears black Sudanese and rooted in the esoterica of the Book of Revelation and in the Christians...
...But surviving Branch Davidians have said the fires started when the 4387, classified advertising correspondence to 1 5 Dutch St...
...But the UN has documented some of those brutal misdeeds, and the General Assembly not only condemned them but in March the UN established a special human rights commission to monitor the country...
...Centers for Disease Control report says that as Perhaps she did her best in approving what now appears to have many as 80 percent of the children in some areas of Southern been a senseless assault...
...Instead, Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y 10038 Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...But too many questions remain unanswered...
...Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Business Manager: Richard Haas Negotiations began...
...To be sure, the FBI Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is has not described this as an assault, but as closing the periphery and increasing the published biweekly except Christmas/New Year's: pressure on cult members to surrender...
...Is being a cult, Lawrence S. Cunningham 28 however bizarre, sufficient justification for the government to mount a virtual military attack...
...Food distribution to the reFBI plan was clearly called for...
...No on the scene told the New York Times (April 18) that it "was one seems to he saying that the reports of child abuse were solid the biggest misery you could ever imagine...
...Some eighty-six cult members reportedly were correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, burned in a conflagration that the FBI says was started by cult members...
...In the last year, a Resolution 94...
...In particular, the FBI hoped that the women and monthly July and August, by Commonweal would pack it in and leave with their children-an attack of maternal instinct...
...That must change...
...Inquiries and investigations have been promised by Attorney An estimated 4 million people are at risk of starvation in Sudan...
...Mass suiI I Graffam Rd., So...
...specific decision to storm the walls and spray the tear gas...
...Koresh, calls one of the government's "better known punishments...
...A relief worker fatigue of the FBI team members seems a feeble excuse...
...General Janet Reno at the Department of Justice...
...Kevin in as spectacular an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy as Carter's haunting photograph (Time, April 5) of a small girl we are ever likely to see, has now had his apocalypse deliv- collapsed on her way to a feeding station, a vulture crouched ered to him not by God but by the FBI...
...Their goal was to arrest David Koresh, the leader of the cult, and presumably Martyrs' Day: to seize the group's weapons...
...Former larly shaped orbit" as a result of beatings while in government cult members have spoken of Koresh's mesmerizing powers detention, and tells of other victims, their skin scarred with chemand many of them may have been among those "lost souls" ical burns, their right hands severed as the result of what she that seek the security and certainty of such cult leaders...
...and apocalyptic behaviors that they found so alarming in their and Pope John Paul if, at his courageous best, spoke bluntly to adversaries in the Branch Davidians...
...04106 (207) 799- cide...
...David Koresh had messianic pretensions and may have been a psychopath...
...This was intended to weaken the resolve of those inside the Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor On April 19, the FBI, in what appears to be a wildly ill-conceived decision, began Publisher: Edward S. Skillin another assault...
...Why did the assault proReligious booknotes: ceed when ATF officials knew the element of surprise had been lost...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
