A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
I’d like to see the occupation of the Malheur refuge’s headquarters end without bloodshed. Perhaps that can be accomplished by waiting out the occupiers, the tactic that successfully ended the siege of the Montana Freemen in the 1990s. But the Malheur occupation differs from the Freeman siege in one important respect: the Freemen were holed up on private property, but Ammon Bundy’s Doofus Brigade has seized federal property and is doing damage:
Concurrent with these activities, it appears that Bundy’s followers are members of the Sovereign Citizens movement who may be preparing to conduct rump trials of federal officials with whom they disagree. According to the Oregonian, the occupiers have called in a rump judge from Colorado and intend to convene their own grand jury to indict and try federal officials in a people’s court.
This escalation converts the occupation from a public relations soapbox to a low level insurrection that must be put down decisively. Members of the Doofus Brigade must be ushered out in handcuffs, loaded into paddy wagons, driven to prisons, and kept in the slammer until tried. I prefer finding a way to manage that without gunfire, but if necessary the occupiers must be captured by force.
Did federal managers bring this on by being arrogant and unreasonable?
No.
Some federal agents have not been as tactful as was advisable, but the fundamental responsibility for the occupation and the general lawlessness of hard case ranchers in the basin and range country lies with the ranchers themselves. Like Cliven Bundy, they’re anti-government, anti-public lands, excessively independent troublemakers who accept no one’s authority but their own. Some are politically connected. Some are pathologically avaricious. Some believe Divine Providence gave them the land. Some are willing to use violence, even to engage in low level terrorism, to get their way. A few such as the Hammonds earn stays in the hoosegow. Others get away with being orifices through which digested turnips pass. And Cliven Bundy gets away with not paying his grazing fees because the Bureau of Land Management is too pusillanimous to tangle with him.
Can this situation be resolved through Kumbaya Collaboration, through that touchy-feely sit down together and break bread and give a little process that politicians, community leaders, and some environmental advocates praise?
No.
Right now the problem is ranchers disobeying laws they don’t like — and anti-government scofflaws conducting low level terrorism. Negotiating with such people, compromising with them, emboldens them to become more lawless. Forget negotiations. What we need is a vastly larger federal police force to enforce federal law in the west’s low population density areas — a police force with0 the backbone to slap handcuffs on the Cliven Bundys and the doofus, potbellied, self-important, militiamen who roar around in SUVs, clad in camo, brandishing AR-15s, resembling South African mercenaries up to no good in a failing state.
Can we afford a police force that large and well trained? Yes. Easily. Just cancel a couple of F-35 fighter bombers and use the money saved to build a constabulary to protect federal lands and civil servants from private ranchers whose greed and bullying knows no bounds.
Meanwhile, law enforcement should begin isolating the Malheur occupiers. Cut off the mail, stop the replenishment of supplies. Allow no visitors. If an occupier comes to town, arrest him. Don’t let Bundy hold a town meeting. Turn off the electricity and the telephones. Don’t cut a deal for reduced charges for an agreement to surrender. Force them to surrender, then add up the violations and throw the book at them. They’ve had enough time to strut and prattle and pontificate. Now it’s time for them to shut up, be handcuffed, and frog-marched to the quod.