Police officers used overwhelming force, from the ground and the air, to kill a fleeing man who didn't even face any legal charges. The cops and the big-business media justify the killing by dehumanizing the person, gratuitously showing more compassion for the wounded police dogs. The police were in fact prepared to launch a Waco-style assault on the trailer where members of the rightist group were holed up for seven days, after the hostages they held were released.

The operation was reminiscent, on a smaller scale, of the attack by federal agents on the housing complex of the Branch Davidians - a religious sect - in Waco, Texas, in 1993, ordered by Attorney General Janet Reno and approved by President William Clinton. That assault, complete with tanks, resulted in an inferno that took the lives of 86 men, women, and children. In the Fort Davis case, the cops and the government are taking advantage of the unpopularity of the right-wing group to undermine democratic rights. The goal is similar to what the rulers tried to accomplish through the lethal 1992 siege by the FBI of a rightist militia at Ruby Ridge in Idaho.

Ultraright groups, the Republic of Texas included, are a deadly threat to working people. But the government and its repressive agencies are not forces workers and farmers should rely on in fighting fascist and antilabor outfits. Working people can only depend on themselves and their class allies - and their organizations like the trade unions - to accomplish this goal. It is the capitalist system in decay that breeds these rightist groups. The bosses and their government in Washington will turn to fascist organizations to salvage their system when working-class resistance to capitalist austerity explodes.

The rulers will use precedents like the killing in the Davis Mountains of Texas to unleash their cops and courts on working-class militants and other fighters.

The true and brutal face of the U.S. government can be seen in its stance toward the massacre of the Peruvian rebels who held hostages in the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima. In that case, the Clinton administration laid down the line from the beginning - no concessions - and the regime of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori carried it out to its bloody conclusion, killing all of the rebels, along with one of the hostages. Washington not only applauded the butchery, but was involved in the whole thing from beginning to end.

It is important never to forget that Washington and its allies are the greatest perpetrators of terror around the world - from Waco on its home territory to Vietnam, Iraq, Nicaragua, and countless other parts of the world just in recent decades.

Working people must oppose efforts by the government to utilize the recent police assault in Texas to further restrict democratic rights and rationalize its own responsibility for the oppression and violence inflicted on working people day in and day out the world over.  
 
 
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