BURNS, Ore. — There’s a lot more to a long armed standoff than guns and standing one’s ground. You need food, water, shelter and it turns out, for a standoff of any size, politics.
Ammon Bundy and his supporters started the current standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge eight days ago. Leading up to the standoff, they feuded with other militias. They have also argued with locals, including law enforcement, that they aren’t just a bunch of out-of-town interlopers, doing more harm then good by pulling the mother of all PR stunts.
“Go home!” is the cry of local anti-Bundy critics. Harney County Sheriff David Ward, pointed out that the two men Bundy came to town to help through protest, ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond, both surrendered themselves to authorities and disavowed the protest.
Bundy had two answers to local critics. He insisted the Hammonds were under tremendous pressure and who could blame them for buckling? The courts had already reinstated 5-year prison sentences against them and could do more if they didn’t play ball. And anyway, he said, other locals want us here calling attention to the federal government’s tyrannical mismanagement of Western lands.
He can no longer make that claim and be believed. Every local the Washington Examiner spoke with in town who expressed an opinion on the subject, regardless of their politics, wanted Bundy and company gone. Moreover, the Harney County Committee of Safety, a shell group that he set up, now want him to stand down and get even further out of town.
Before Bundy even went to Burns to protest the Hammonds’ sentences, he feuded with the founder of Oath Keepers, a militia with much deeper roots in Oregon than Bundy’s ragtag supporters. Oath Keepers don Stewart Rhodes called the Bundy bunch “potheads who want a fight.”
Rhodes was prescient when he warned Bundy shouldn’t go unless he was sure that the Hammonds wanted his help. He went, they didn’t, high-stakes, gun-toting hilarity ensued.
Additional militia, including Oath Keepers, have showed up at the scene in the last few days. Their motives are likely mixed, but the thing they claim they’ve come to do —establish another perimeter to prevent a government ambush — is so unnecessary it’s almost funny.
The Refuge is in a highly defensible location, with high visibility and chokepoints to make a raid costly. And don’t forget Bundy has plenty of voluntary, high-value hostages in the form of journalists who visit during the day and sleep there at night.
No, it’s more likely other militia have come to try and wind things down, to prevent a wider government crackdown on militias in the West. Their presence may give Sheriff Ward the leeway he needs with FBI and Homeland Security agents in county to see that Bundy is escorted safely back to Nevada — a deal that Bundy has already hinted he’d accept.
In that event, the standoff leader could declare a victory of sorts. But he wouldn’t be welcome in this town, or anywhere near it, ever again.
