Looking Back on Monday

For John, BLUF:  Too soon to tell about Boston Bombing.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

I am sure many readers of this blog (all two of you) have seen the item in Salon, by Reporter David Sirota, hoping the Boston Marathoner was just another middle aged angry whitecaucasian guy.♠  I see his reasoning, but I reject it, for reasons I will explain below.

Even at this remove, the key point is to express our sympathy for those who were injured in body or mind and the relatives of same.  One can only imagine the long term costs of this for the living, and for the relatives and friends of those killed by this event.

That said, Monday, the 15th of April saw a number of bombings and shootings around the world.  The one that stands out in my mind is Mogadishu, Somalia, with 30 dead from a set of coordinated bombings and shootings.  Then there is the Central African Republic, with 17 dead.  Bombings in Iraq, with 75 dead, already has its own Wikipedia page.  This tells us we live in a violent world, and also tells us that we here in the United States are very lucky.  Rarely does such mass violence touch us.  A man in Mississippi sends a Senator and the President letters with ricin in it, but the letters are intercepted and the man is arrested.  He will not be tortured to give a confession.  In fact, he might end up getting mental health help.

In an item titled "Mostly Quiet on the Western Front"♥, Mr David H Schanzer, Wednesday addressed the question "Why isn’t terrorism in the United States a whole lot more frequent?".

Adding to the confusion about the Monday bombing in Boston is this item from Mr Joseph Fitsanakis of Intel NewsAnalysis:  Five dangerous myths about the Boston Marathon bombings.  This was countered by Mr Larry Grant:

May I disagree?

1-They were intended to terrorize (multiple devices, shrapnel loads, event selection)—this is a terrorist act by definition.

2-If not an intelligence failure (and they were not discovered by organizations formed for precisely this purpose, which sounds a lot like failure or inadequacy), they certainly demonstrate the limits of intelligence. That is, there will always be leakers of this sort.

3-They were minor only in their immediate effects, assuming that a few dead, low hundreds injured, is minor.  But their full extent cannot yet be determined, since the ultimate ramifications also depend on the actions various agitators, bureaucrats, and politicians are moved to take using this bombing as an excuse, motivation, or crisis that cannot be wasted. For reference, see Sandy Hook and gun control.

4-Finally, preferring al-Qaeda as a perpetrator probably voices a desire that this be an act that would, at least in the short term, unite Americans rather than divide them.  A domestic terrorist might increase partisanship if he were found to be motivated (or made to seem so) by some identifiable left-right ideology.  Who knows?  These were easy devices—might be anybody.

Mr Grant ends by stating:

Rather than wish for an external enemy, I would prefer that Americans have the backbone to live up to Benjamin Franklin's Tweet from about 240 years ago:  "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I suspect, on the contrary, we will soon be living with many more security cameras and routine bag searches.

Which brings us back to Mr Sirota, of Salon, who has a lot of anger bottled up inside him.♦  Mr Sirota wants it to be some member of the largest male group in the US so that this bombing doesn't derail legislation currently under consideration.  He tacitly acknowledges that a Bill Ayers or a Timothy McVeigh are aberrations, and thus can quickly fade into the background.  Yes, there will be no drone strikes on their home towns.  They will be seen as acting alone or as part of a small group, but that they will not be seen as including their brothers and their cousins.  The sad part of Mr Sirota's article is that on Tuesday, 16 April, the Boston Marathon bombing had already regressed to politics as usual.♣  As per Mr Larry Grant, above, I think that Mr Sirota hopes the perpetrator(s) will be someone who can be identified with the "right", so that opposition in Congress to the Progressive Agenda can be marginalized.

NEWS UPDATE:  "Mogadishu - A suspected al-Shabaab militant was killed on Thursday trying to plant a bomb in a busy district of the Somali capital, a police official said, after the Islamist group threatened more attacks following two deadly assaults this week."

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  I am sure some think it is cute or symmetrical or something to refer to caucasians as "white", but I don't.  I think it is disrespectful.
♥  A play on the book out of World War I, the 1929 All Quiet on the Western Front, by Herr Erich Maria Remarque, a man who spent exactly one day in the trenches, in his case on Germany's Western Front.
♦  So much it makes you wonder if he is the bomber.
♣  And, the bombing in Boston has precious little to do with the issues of gun control vs the Second Amendment or immigration reform or balancing the budget and when.