In retrospect, we can see that things were not going very well for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Their parents had divorced and left the country. The older son had failed to achieve his boxing dreams and was apparently unemployed despite having a wife and a three year-old daughter. The younger son was failing most of his classes at college. That gives a whiff of a motivation for what they did, but little more than that. At this point, we don’t have a whole lot to go on. We can see that perhaps they felt like they didn’t have much of a future, but we can’t see why they responded by bombing innocent civilians.
It’s clear that there was broad concern about Tamerlan. A foreign country, probably Russia, was concerned enough to ask the FBI to look into his possible ties to terrorist organizations. The FBI actually interviewed his parents and sat down with Tamerlan to assess his state of mind. Apparently, they didn’t find anything sufficient to arrest or deport him, but he must have been doing something to arouse suspicion. It’s safe to say that there a lot of people in our country who arouse suspicion and that the FBI monitors, and some of them will fall between the cracks.
Contrary to Paul Waldman’s assertions, I didn’t have a hope for who the bombers would be. I just wanted them apprehended. It’s true that their identity matters and has consequences, but there would be unfortunate political consequences regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or motivation.
I have been somewhat amused by the discussion of their ethnicity. Before we knew that they were literally from the Caucases, and therefore quintessentially caucasian, there was debate about whether they were white or not. This exposed a lot of preconceptions about skin tone and race. For me, the only reason to debate their ethnicity was to assess the probability that they might be Muslim and therefore potentially part of a larger Islamic-based conspiracy against American civilians. Since they didn’t look like northern or western Europeans, it was more likely that they might be Muslim. Others thought they were clearly white, but that missed the point of why people were asking the question in the first place.
Now we know that they were Muslims. We have some reason to believe that their Muslim faith may have been central to their motivation, but we still don’t understand precisely how. We will learn more about their internet habits, their religious leaders, and their associations, and that will help us understand. The point of this should be not only to understand but to see if there are steps we can take to protect ourselves from similar attacks in the future.
One thing we know is that our military operations in Islamic countries produce civilian casualties. That invites reprisals. Under the circumstances, there are bound to be people who think these reprisals are justified in a tit-for-tat manner. We don’t have to agree with them to see that this is an inevitable consequence of our actions and policies. To the degree that we can stop creating civilian casualties in Muslim countries, we should do so. We have left Iraq and we are planning to leave Afghanistan, but we are still operating a drone program in places like Pakistan and Yemen and we are getting more involved in Syria’s civil war. We should consider that possibility that the Boston attacks were basically payback for those policies.
There is a muddled distinction between rewarding terrorism by making the changes in policy the terrorism is intended to force us to make, and realizing that our policies are inciting blowback and can be altered to lessen that threat. We need to be smart about this.
If we are unwilling to consider changes in policy, then our reaction will be wholly based on making it safer for us to continue doing precisely what we have been doing, and that means that all we will do is ramp up surveillance and curtail civil liberties.
I don’t want that to be the legacy of this tragedy.
“We should consider that possibility that the Boston attacks were basically payback for those policies.” We should also consider that these two young men, at least the older brother, were consumed with rage that their (his) lives weren’t working and just lashed out at the community closest to their failure – Boston – using Islam as an excuse.
The younger one is freaking me out though, because of the “going back to school and partying” part. Nothing in the reporting about him indicates a strong religious bent. He had friends, people who liked him that he appeared to like. But maybe he is just a pure psychopath, smart enough to pass as normal but full of hidden malevolence waiting for an opportunity.
Their end game totally escapes me though. Did they really think that no one would have their undisguised pictures at a huge public event like that? Did they plan more attacks, or did they expect to just fade away and never be caught?
You have a young man who was having a hard time (and many young men and young women do have a hard time). He had an older brother who had become quite strong in his religious beliefs. That older brother was the family of the younger brother. That can be a strong influence.
This situation may involve the older one convincing the younger to do the act. That would not surprise me.
I’ve already read accounts stating precisely this. But something was clearly pretty fucked up in junior, too.
That seems right to me. Two directionless young men. The older one feeling more isolated and in need of an identity and a vessel to pour his frustration into. Stoner Jahar got pulled into his anger. For some in the Muslim community there’s a lot of anger towards western culture that is fertile ground for acting badly. From the looks of it, the intersection of these elements caused this week’s violence.
In the kind of acts we label as terrorism, the perps generally make sure we know what cause they were working for, and don’t make much effort to escape. That’s what seems to make this case different. It doesn’t have that fanatical feel, at least not yet.
When we talk of Muslims, we tend to forget that the factions among them are as much at each others’ throats as they are anyone else’s. Does it make sense that jihadists in Chechnya would be so interested in doing damage in Boston? It sounds more like an opportunity for a desperately alienated, isolated loser to finally find an excuse, a way to satisfy his need to “make a mark”. Among the many tragedies he wrought, not least is the likelihood that the older one used family loyalty and mutual dependence to lure the younger from a probable OK life into a death-obsessed hell.
We don’t have a lot to go on, but why let that stop us, haha. It’s difficult to see these two clowns as anything more than a couple vicious chumps, unsophisticated yokels who poisoned their minds with some shit or other, which today’s world offers to great excess. Reading about pressure cooker bombs somewhere, or by attending some “terror” camp and puttin’ it on the Visa card.
As wvng observes, they had no idea of an endgame. Hiding out in a beached backyard dingy in Beantown—I think we can say nothing was “thought through”…perhaps their motive was just as sketchy. Not every terrorist is a bin Ladin, despite what Boss Rushbo and Hanniturd may think.
You know, we didn’t turn the society upside down when domestic rightwing white male terrorists like McVeigh blew up a large gub’mint facility. More security steps were taken to protect federal buildings. But few steps were taken to identify and reign in crazed rightwing males. Indeed, if we even have studies done quantifying the problem, the “conservatives” in Congress reduce the offending agency’s resources. But now we’ll hear about how “more needs to be done!” becuz Islam.
We can see that a terrorist thinking he’s gonna do some bombing of a mass public event and then evade capture and go back to econ classes is a fool. We’re fully willing and able to shut down our largest metropolitan areas to catch a couple murderous Gomers. So this exercise in police state excess may itself help to deter the deterrable.
As for Djoker, if he lives he’ll cough up some feeble story as to his motivation, which will be focused too heavily on, especially by our imbecile Right and its vile media. The story won’t make too much sense, I’ll predict, just like his foolish tweets. As indicated by his blank sociopathic unconcern for all those he killed and maimed, it’s pretty clear that some major screws are loose, for God knows whatever reason–he was a refugee. His supposed “priorities” of “career and money” weren’t gonna be forthcoming. But terror bombing was a major career dead-end, Djoker. Surely even he could see that.
On January 12, 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev flew from New York to Moscow, a regular target of Chechen rage; he didn’t return until seven months later. He spend time with his father Anzor in Dagestan.
…
The digital era allows no asylum from extremism, let alone from the toxic combination of high-minded zealotry and the curdled disappointments of young men. A decade in America already, I want out.
On Jahar’s twitter account there was a message listed from Mufti Ismail Menk. This was his message yesterday – link.
There are maybe 20 million men between the ages of 20-30 who are filled with inchoate rage. 2 decided to pull the trigger and set of bombs. You are not curious as to why?
I think it’s worth trying to understand why rage goes beyond “fuck ’em all” to “kill ’em all”. There’s a big difference.
If you have no future, why quietly lay down and die when you can cause as much pain to the society that screwed you?
As to why go through with it? They were actually born in a much less developed country during crucial early childhood. It’s possible they got a lot of lead as kids. It might be as simple as that, they got more lead so their impulse control was poor and they felt more aggression.
As Kevin Drum has shown (over and over and over) something like half our violent crime decline can be attributed to cleaning up lead.
How dare you to appease the terrorists causing harm to the USofA.
My comment on Tue Apr 16th, 2013 at 02:27:56 PM EST.
Oh sweet Jesus…..Now you went and did it. I’m happy as hell these guys are off the street and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. But the chanting……..
To me this feels like sort of a hybrid of an Islamist attack and a good old fashioned American style shooting rampage. I mean, who do they resemble more–Adam Lanza or Mohamed Atta?
But then how different are these acts anyway?
“the Caucases, and therefore quintessentially caucasian”
That might have been true several thousand years ago, but I don’t think it’s true today. With the massive amount of migration that has occurred, you would have to DNA check these guys to be actually sure of their racial heritage.
But doing so is irrelevant. It only gives people something to bitch about that is as meaningless as saying black people are lazy because they are black.
I wish people would stop saying the U.S. is such a great country. Stop spouting all this crap about how great we are, because too many come here and do not find success, like these boys. If you place all your dreams on making it to this country, thinking that is going to solve all your problems, well, I think anyone who lives here will tell you that is just the start of your struggle. You have to make it happen and no one is going to hand your success to you.
These boys had their parents, whom they have listened to all their lives framing their experiences, filling their heads with lollipops and pudding in the promise land of the United States, and it didn’t happen like they were promised. Life’s a bitch, ya know? Where are their parents now? Not here, they’ve fled back to the mother country.
I’d like to know who’s financed them, they seem to be well taken care of, considering their parents didn’t exactly have the most lucrative careers. I’m sure the FBI will be all over that.
From Wiki:
“The Caucasoid peoples were usually divided in three groups on linguistic grounds, termed Aryan (Indo-European), Semitic (Semitic languages) and Hamitic (Berber-Cushitic-Egyptian).”
NOTE: The classification of humans into Caucasian INCLUDES middle eastern peoples. So this trope about them being “literally Caucasian” is meaningless, and even Waldeman says the same thing. You maybe are seeking the term ARYAN? /FACEPALMS