Category: Marathon Bombing

A Bostonian’s Perspective

A reader writes:

A salient fact: I lived on Comm Ave between Gloucester and Hereford, a few blocks from both explosions, so I feel like I have “skin” in this story.

Boston calmWhy did they shut the city down? One answer: MBTA. If they had gotten on the the MBTA they could’ve been in Providence in a matter of minutes (less than 2 horus), or in a car poised at far flung T station and into the the NH or VT wilderness. The particular problem of Watertown and Cambridge is the variety of transport options available to the bombers to slink through police lines. Shutting down these options was the quickest way to limit their escape routes, same with forcing taxis off the streets.

Was this hugely inconvenient, yes. Hugely expensive, no doubt. But those that wrote that at worse they might have detained/hurt/killed no more than a few dozen innocents are misguided. What if the bombers intention was to hijack a plane? Or detonate a bomb on an Amtrak train? Also, I ask them: if this was YOUR town or city, what would you want?

I can’t imagine a better outcome of a horribly nightmarish situation for the people of Boston and surroundings. As a dyed-in-the-wool lib I can’t believe I’m going to write this, but: thank you to the local, state, and federal authorities for containing this situation before it got much worse.

The President’s Perspective

Fertilizer Plant Explosion In West, Texas

He gave a very balanced statement and emphasized two core things: that we still do not know the precise motives of the Tsarnaev brothers and should strenuously resist any inferences from shards of information that could cast aspersions on any groups of people. He insisted, as he often does, on portraying the cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of America as a real strength rather than in any way a weakness.

I agree. At the same time, understanding the motives for such an act and their potential connection to religious fanaticism is important – and no one should apologize for noticing Jihadist sentiments in some aspects of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Internet trail. But it should be weighed alongside possible personal and psychological struggles, which may explain more. We should, in other words, close off nothing. But I certainly don’t get the sense from the authorities as of now that this could be part of some wider and serious terror plot. We’ll see, of course. But the relief on the official faces in Boston tonight seemed genuine to me.

The second point the president made was about West, Texas. And it was an extremely important point to make.

The devastation in that little town is hard to describe – the trauma still reverberating. The death toll is more than double Boston’s. Both matter, and purposeful, criminal murder is not to be taken in any way lightly. But terrorism is not the only form of tragedy; and retaining some perspective is essential to facing terrorism down and defeating its psychic leverage over us.

In the end, after the lockdown of an entire city, a massive, mechanized robot and helicopter army came face to face with a bleeding nineteen-year-old hiding in a shrink-wrapped boat. That almost Freudian disparity is worth keeping in mind in the days ahead. So is the pain in Texas, where an entire community was almost just wiped off the map.

(Photo: Residents attend a candelight vigil and prayer honoring the victims of West Fertilizer Company explosion at St. Mary’s Assumption Catholic Church April 18, 2013 in West, Texas. A fiery explosion that damaged or destroyed buildings within a half-mile radius ripped through the facility Wednesday night, injuring more than 160 people and killing an unknown number of others. By Kevork Djansezian/Getty.)

Dissent Of The Day III

A reader quotes me:

“I’d say our reaction is less about narcissism than a collective form of PTSD stemming from 9/11.” Any “collective form of PTSD” from 9/11 is, itself, a symptom of the narcissism Perlstein is describing.  There are people for whom PTSD from that event is perfectly reasonable and to be expected.  But in a country of 300 million, they are a tiny, tiny fraction. For the overwhelming majority of Americans who say things like “9/11 changed everything,” Perlstein is absolutely right.

Even with the loss of 2500 lives and the spectacular nature of the attack itself, 9/11 was an extremely small, extremely localized event for a country as large (in every sense) and powerful as the U.S.  There’s absolutely no reason it should have caused anything resembling “a collective form of PTSD.”  There’s absolutely no reason it should have “changed everything.”

In fact, it didn’t.  We “changed everything,” and we did it because too many of us overdramatized our own experience of an event that, had we not heard about it on the news, would not have caused so much as a ripple in 95% of Americans’ lives.

I don’t mean to be harsh.  Once somebody has worked themselves into a panic over something, the panic is real and so are the feelings that flow from it.  But it is the case that we worked ourselves into that panic.  And our panic is what enabled the ongoing Bush-Cheney disaster – the “everything” that changed.

(Video: The National Anthem at the first Boston Bruins game following Monday’s tragedy)

One Hell Of A Week

Fertilizer Plant Explosion In West, Texas

The Onion says it best:

“Maybe next time we have a week, they can try not to pack it completely to the fucking brim with explosions, mutilations, death, manhunts, lies, weeping, and the utter uselessness of our political system,” said basically every person in America who isn’t comatose or a complete sociopath. “You know, maybe try to spread some of that total misery across the other 51 weeks in the year. Just a thought.”

(Photo: A Valley Mills Fire Department personnel walks among the remains of an apartment complex next to the fertilizer plant that exploded yesterday afternoon on April 18, 2013 in West, Texas. According to West Mayor Tommy Muska, around 14 people, including 10 first responders, were killed and more than 150 people were injured when the fertilizer company caught fire and exploded, leaving damaged buildings for blocks in every direction. By Erich Schlegel/Getty Images.)

Good News, Everyone!

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?

“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.