Clinton Post #5.5 (Making up for a 1 paragraph post from earlier)

Just months after taking office, Clinton was confronted with a crisis in Waco, Texas. The FBI had been camped outside the compound of a group of members of a religious cult for almost two months. Clinton recieved a distressing report saying that the leader might be planning a mass suicide and the FBI wanted to storm the building but needed Clinton's okay first. Clinton, drawing from a similar experience he'd had as governor, wanted to try what had worked in Arkansas. His attorney general, Janet Reno, countered "that the standoff was costing the government a million dollars a week and tying up law-enforcement resources needed elsewhere; that the Branch Davidians could hold out longer than the Arkansas people had and that the possibilities of child sexual abuse and mass suicide were real" (498). Faced with these arguements, Clinton gave the go-ahead, even though it went against his instincts. The next day Clinton watched the compound burn on television as his actions killed 80 people. Clinton was infuriated at himself "for agreeing to the raid against my better judgement...Nobody can be right all the time, but it's a lot easier to live with bad decisions you believed in when you made them" (499). He had allowed himself to be talked out of something he thought would have worked and had ended up with fatal consequences. Clinton learned that in order to be an effective leader, he had to make his own choices and not allow himself to be overly influenced by other people's opinions.