Year: 2013

Never Shoot A Shooting

Lt. Col. Robert Bateman warns against ever trying to film a gunfight with your smartphone, as some residents of Watertown did last night:

In the real world, even when a bullet does hit something, unless it is at nearly a right angle, THAT BULLET CAN STILL KILL YOU. It is called a ricochet. Ever played pool? Same idea. Remember that. Even the bullets not aimed at, or anywhere near you, can ruin your whole day. …

[Also, if] the other guy is firing anything with greater hitting power than, say, a .32 (Google .32 caliber, .45 caliber, 5.56mm and 7.62mm…I can’t do it ALL for you) it will go through things. Metals, woods, sheet-rock? No problem. Your front door will not protect you, at all. Nor will the walls of a normal suburban house, nor the three Sheet-rock walls beyond that. In a car, the only thing that really stops most bullets would be the engine block itself. All the rest of the body of a car, well, basically tin-foil. All those cop movies you remember from the 70s, when they hid behind the opened door of their patrol car and shot at the bad guy? Yea, no. Do not think that works.

His advice? Get into your basement or as far away from the firing as you possibly can.

Two Quotes

Here are two that struck me this afternoon. The first is from the Tsarnaevs’ father, via the NYT:

Q: Did he want to be an American citizen?

A. He wanted to, of course. Why not?

Q. But it didn’t work out, right?

A. Because with his girlfriend, there was a scandal. He hit her lightly. He was locked up for half an hour. There was jealousy there. He paid $250, that was it, he went home. Because of that — in America you can’t touch a woman, they wouldn’t give him citizenship.

A. Because of that they didn’t give him citizenship?

Q. He had gone through the interview, that was it. But they said, he said, they will check the federal authorities, when they check me they will give it. He would have been granted it, he passed the interview. Now we have a new system where they check young people. Because he is a Muslim, I think, and a Chechen, too.

Is this some kind of clue? Some shred of personal resentment that might have been Jihadized? Then this statement of the obvious:

“They didn’t practice tradecraft,” said one official, a veteran counterterrorism investigator who has been briefed on the case. “Listen, I just don’t understand how anybody could do something like that and basically go home and expect that they wouldn’t get caught.”

Another official pointed to one obvious flaw in their operational strategy. “They apparently didn’t have a plan to escape,” the official said.

This was not professional terrorism. And the response seems to me – with the benefit of hindsight and information no one probably had last night – way out of proportion to the actual threat. But – if we are allowed any light relief at this moment – this quote from the father is priceless:

Yes, he was in Makhachkala. Makhachkala, he was never out my sight. He used to sleep till lunchtime, then we visited relatives. We went to Chechnya to visit relatives. He only communicated with me and his cousins. There was nobody (else). People know. I would ask him, did you come here to sleep or what?

That sounds more like a loser than a pro.

The Final Standoff?

Covering A Manhunt

https://twitter.com/vogeCST/status/325277239170179073

Brian Stelter describes [NYT] the difficulties involved:

The authorities simultaneously thanked members of the news media for spreading the word that Bostonians should take shelter and remain alert — and cautioned them against repeating secondhand or thinly sourced information. The Massachusetts State Police asked local and national television networks to refrain from showing any live video of police movements, and for a time the Federal Aviation Administration restricted news helicopters from hovering above the area where one of the suspects in the bombing of the marathon Monday was believed to be hiding.

Madrigal highlights Reddit’s erroneous identification of Sunil Tripathi:

A few things are for sure: the scanner chatter never mentioned the two false suspects together. The scanner chatter never mentioned them as suspects, either. The scanner chatter recordings contain no record of any mention. And no one has been able to produce any recording of the scanner mentioning Tripathi.

[M]aybe people heard Tripathi’s name, even though police never said it. Many of the people who thought they heard Tripathi’s name already knew about the Reddit-centered suspicions about the student. Police had also said another name earlier in the evening and spelled it out. Perhaps they were primed to hear the name and among the static and unreliable connections to these scanners, they heard what they wanted to hear.

Maybe that’s what I want to believe. Because otherwise, I just don’t understand what happened last night. A piece of evidence that fit a narrative some people really wanted to believe was conjured into existence and there was no stopping its spread.

Previous Dish on the media coverage of today’s events here and here.

“Paranoids Can Have Real Enemies”

Ben Smith provides some of the context behind the conspiracy claims from the suspects’ parents and aunt:

The Tsarnaevs may sound like the craziest figures of the American fringe. But they come by their paranoia honestly: Russia’s cynical and brutal governments have, for centuries, murdered their citizens in general, and their Chechen citizens and subjects in particular, under any number of pretexts. … And you don’t have to be crazy to believe Chechen allegations of baroque and brutal government conspiracies — at least, not when they’re directed at the Russian government.

… “They are ascribing to America things that are familiar to them at home,” [former Washington Post reporter David] Satter told BuzzFeed Friday, of the sort of incident that fringe lunatics in the United States claim as “false flag” attacks, and that Russians call “provocations.” “It’s not surprising that people have reacted that way,” he said.

“He Was Screaming ‘Fuck You Muslims! You Are Terrorists!'”

Those are the words of a Palestinian woman who was punched while walking with her infant child in Malden, MA, just north of Boston on Wednesday. Julianne Hing worries it will only get worse:

Many Arabs, Middle Easterners, Muslims, South Asians, and those confused for any of the above have been bracing themselves for the discriminatory response since the bombing happened. palestinian-womanIndeed, immediately after the race police questioned a Saudi student who was at the race. He’d been hospitalized with injuries he sustained during the attack, but very quickly, media set upon the student, announcing him as “the Saudi suspect.” Boston police later confirmed that the student was only a witness, not a suspect, but only after they searched his apartment for five hours and carted out bags of his belongings. On Tuesday, an airplane leaving Boston’s Logan Airport was grounded this week after passengers reported that two men were speaking Arabic on the plane, Boston’s Fox 25 reported.

We have been here before. Fueled by a hysterical demagoguery which has saturated the political climate, Islamophobic hate crimes have been a defining feature of life for South Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim communities since Sept. 11.

(Photo of the assaulted Palestinian woman with family via Chris Caesar)

While All Eyes Are On Boston …

Amanda Marcotte spots a ray of light in an otherwise miserable week:

The Boy Scouts of America has called for an end to its unpopular ban on gay members, though sadly the paranoid policy of banning gay scout leaders will continue. The resolution states “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone,” and will be put up to a vote by its council members on May 20th. The decision comes after a long period of research and polling of leaders and parents with questions such as asking if it’s okay for straight and gay scouts to share a tent.

… Now they just need to lift the ban on gay adults, and stop promoting the ugly and untrue stereotype that out gay adults present a threat to the safety of boys and teenagers.

Evil Is Unpredictable

Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev Boxing Pictures

Toobin believes “we will never be able to identify in advance the people who wreak this type of evil”:

Consider Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh was a politically motivated sociopath; his accomplice, Terry Nichols, was a banal loser. The Columbine killers followed a similar pattern. Eric Harris was almost purely evil; Dylan Klebold was a more complex character. (Dave Cullen’s “Columbine” is the definitive account.) The early indications suggest that the Tsarnaev brothers may have had a parallel relationship. Tamerlan, the deceased older brother, seems to have been deeply alienated from American society; Dzhokhar, a recent graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, gave few hints of what was to come. As yet, there is no indication that mental illness—which seems to have been a major factor in the mass murders in Newtown, Tucson, and Aurora—was a decisive factor here.

The melancholy conclusion from these events is that they are not predictable—and thus not preventable. Evil and illness will always be with us. Gun control (even if it had been in place) would not have prevented Oklahoma City or, apparently, the marathon bombing. Fertilizer and pressure cookers will always be available. Longer times between attacks; smaller weapons; fewer casualties—those may be the best results we can expect.

(Photo: Tamerlan Tsamaev (R) and Lamar Fenner (L) stand during a decision in the 201-pound division boxing match during the 2009 Golden Gloves National Tournament of Champions on May 4, 2009 in Salt Lake City, Utah. After a car chase and shoot out with police, Tsarnaev, 26, was shot and killed by police early morning on April 19, and a manhunt is underway for his brother and second suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. By Glenn DePriest/Getty Images)

The Shutting Down Of Boston, Ctd

Tomasky wonders if it was necessary:

If the argument is that it’s for people’s safety, well…okay, but how many people could this guy really kill? On the day that he set out to kill dozens, he fell well short of that. And what are the odds that any particular individual would cross paths with this guy? When did telling people to use caution and venture only where necessary stop being enough?

And how long is this going to go on? Through the weekend? Seriously? What if the guy is long gone? What if he killed himself somewhere and his body isn’t found for days?

Paul Campos adds:

While I appreciate that police work is made easier by completely immobilizing the population of a major metropolitan area, this sort of massive over-reaction to the failure to apprehend one 19-year-old amateur terrorist (I doubt Al Qaeda types and the like would consider knocking off a 7-11, shooting a security guard, and carjacking an SUV to be the smart play a few hours after having their faces spread all over the internet) is what gives the performers of what are essentially bloody publicity stunts ever-more motivation to engage in their crimes.

Update from a reader:

I know this sounds like hearsay, but my brother is a Boston Cop and there is more going on than is being reported. BPD is worried about bombs planted all over the city. They could be false threats, but they’re taking them seriously and worried these guys have confederates.

Brad Plumer calculates what the Boston shutdown will cost:

We can do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy metropolitan area had a GDP of some $326 billion in 2011. That’s an economy bigger than Ireland’s or Finland’s or Greece’s or Portugal’s.

So a complete shutdown would cost nearly $1 billion per day, though analysts tell Yuval Rosenberg at the Fiscal Times that the actual effects will likely be smaller, and similar to that of a major blizzard. Some economic activity will simply get pushed to a later date. And salaried workers will still get paid. Hourly wage workers, however could take a hit — particularly low-wage workers.

Why’d They Do It?

bomber-portraits

Waldman argues that “as of yet we know absolutely nothing about what motivated” the suspects. He doesn’t want us to confuse identity with motivation:

[I]t can be so hard to understand other people’s motivations. For instance, I get how someone could become enraged over the death and suffering that have been the collateral consequences of all America’s various foreign adventures. But I can’t understand how a person could decide that blowing up a bunch of innocent people could possibly be a morally defensible or even practically effective response. Does the attacker in these kinds of cases say to themselves, “This is really going to make a difference”? It’s hard to get inside their head in a way that makes any sense.

So it’s easier to say, “They did it because that’s just how those people are.” It’s an answer that means you don’t have to ask any more questions.

Charles King compares talk of the suspects’ Chechen background to “wondering about Timothy McVeigh’s Scotch-Irishness”:

[T]he focus now should be on the Tsarnaevs as homegrown terrorists, not on the ethnic or regional origins of their family. Journalists’ initial conversations with family members in Dagestan amplify that point: a sense of shock that two nice boys who had gone to America for their education could have been involved in such a brutal act. Dzhokhar, for example, was reportedly a successful student and championship wrestler in Cambridge, Massachusetts—hardly the typical foreign jihadist.