Explosion at Boston Marathon II

What was the motive:

Rich Lowry:

 

Thank goodness we now have Rich Lowry's unpredictable take.

Can't wait until Time magazine contracts him to write another Obama concern trolling piece. Those are the best.

 

Any point to pointing out the older brother embraced radical Islam? The MSM must be covering all this up.

 

At this very moment, Chris Jansing, of MSNBC, is interviewing Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, of the American Islamic Fourum for Democracy.

While talking about Tamerlan, who she paints as having some kind of difficult life (he didn't have "a single American friend", he had quit boxing, he couldn't "go out for" our Olympic team because he wasn't a "full" citizen, his father had moved away, etc.) she asks:

"How do you go from there... to becoming a terrorist?"

Really? Are you paying attention Chris?

The answer is radical Islam.

 

So, why do so many folks, like the Governor of Massachusetts and Chris Jansing, have such a difficult time putting their finger on what his motive was?

Why, as with the Times Square bomber, and the Ft. Hood shooter, are they looking for some other cause?

It's not "disaffection". It's radical Islam.

 

You're parsing way too much. The question is short hand for, "Why is radical Islam attractive?" And, "How and why do people get sucked into it?" Radical Islam is a step along the way to terrorism. Everyone realizes that by now.

It's fair to ask why people become radicalized.

The answer isn't, "Islam. Full stop."

 

Also, he didn't give up boxing because he wasn't a "full" citizen, and therefore wasn't eligible for our Olympic boxing team.

There's no evidence that, at 26-years-old, he was anywhere close to being good enough to be on our Olympic team. He boxed in regional Golden Gloves tournaments -- and got beat:

http://bit.ly/ZODzu0

He was never going to be good enough to be an Olympic boxer.

He gave up boxing because he embraced Islam.

Also Chris, you're either a citizen or you're not. There's not some level of citizenship below "full citizenship".

 

In fairness, this is news people trying to talk about sports. Every third-string high school athlete who ever died in a car accident was sitting on offers from Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Oregon, holding out the possibility of a year at each, in fact.

 

No. It really isn't.

The question wasn't in regards to the attractiveness of radical Islam.

In the part I left out, she said something like, "a lot of 27-year-olds haven't found themselves."

She's trying to figure out why this 27-year-old failure in life decided to bomb a marathon while other 27-year-old losers don't.

The difference, at least in this guy's case, is radical Islam.

 

Right. But there are a lot of Muslims who have things go wrong in their life who don't turn to radical Islam. There are a lot of angry Christians who never bomb an abortion clinic. There are angry people in general who subscribe to wack-a-doodle ideologies who do nothing more than spout off in all caps on message boards.

"Radical Islam" isn't something that grabs people in the dead of night and makes them start bombing, and, yeah, generally speaking, as a terroristic threat it ranks higher than other religions these days. Then again, what makes a previously, presumably nonthreatening person grab a gun and shoot up a school or a mall? (Or, as of this morning, an apartment: http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/377071/3/WLDS-5-dead-in-Manchester-Illinois-shooting)

The unsatisfying answer is that we can never pin down exactly who is a wack-a-doodle that will watch a jihadist video and merely say "go team," and someone who is inspired to make bombs. We can never pin down exactly who seems a little scary but doesn't really do anything about it but yell, and someone who buys an arsenal and plots a mass killing.

 

I'm sure many of YF's clients are happy he thinks they are potential terrorists.

 

Another place another time of youth upset with a war:

"We will build a revolutionary youth movement capable of actively engaging in the war against the imperialists. We will escalate our attacks until imperialism is defeated in Vietnam."
William Ayers, June 23, 1969