The two men sought by the FBI in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing led police on a wild shooting, robbing, bomb-throwng chase through downtown Boston and Watertown last night beginning around 11PM local time. After a fierce firefight with police one suspect is dead, at least one police officer seriously wounded, and last I saw one suspect remains at large. Another police officer died from multiple gunshot wounds received in what is believed to be the initial confrontation with the two suspects earlier. So who are these guys?
NBC News — One is a scholarship winner described by his father as an angel. The other was a boxer who once said: “I like the USA.” The suspects in the attack on the Boston Marathon — one killed, one on the loose — are brothers with a background in the separatist Russian republic of Chechnya, at least one a legal permanent resident of the United States, law enforcement officials told NBC News.
While authorities were not sure of a motive, NBC News learned that counterterrorism officials were examining possible links between the Boston bombers and the Islamic Jihad Union of central Asia. Chechnya is predominantly Muslim.
One thing seems likely, these two are not going to end up fitting in a predetermined ideological box. Despite that fact I’ve already seen near glee from some right right-wing sources, a move easy to forgive after the serial screw ups in the traditional media this week, but it brings up a fair question: why do some members of the right appear to want Islamic terrorist attacks?
I’m sure the answers are complex, but my guess would be, first and foremost, grass-roots conservatives don’t want the nation attacked anymore than you do, maybe they do remember a sense of unity after 9-11 and, being human, they might remember that bitter-sweet like everyone else. Second, there probably are scattered but influential elements in the right who mistook that sense of national unity for national approval of various wingnut policies and they believe, falsely, if another attack comes they can ram through more conservative ledge. Lastly, there are the ugliest actors who lick their chops at any possibility of a tragedy they can blame on Obama or a rival religion or whoever and whatever they want to demonize.
Whatever the reason, it’s undeniable that some wignnuts are inexorably drawn to the idea of another 9-11. You’ll know them soon enough by their rants and columns to come.
Pure speculation but I would entertain the notion that this is a “false flag” operation. It is very hard to see what Chechens would gain by angering the United States. On the other hand, it is very apparent what Russia would gain by making Chechnya and Chenchens unpopular in the United States.
johnbrown:
I doubt it. To my knowledge Russia has not suffered any opprobrium of significance for its work in Chechnya (aided and abetted by the spectacular violence of Cechen paramilitaries/guerillas operating in Chechnya & Russia during the last decade), and such condemnation as has occured has not, as far as I know, constrained Russian policy viz. Chechnya.
At least as far as I can see the US is apathetic towards the Chechnya situation, which would suit Russia just fine. Why rock that boat?
johnbrown: Good grief, what nonsense. They’re a couple of less-than-bright brothers who appear to have gotten caught up in an extremely stupid stunt.
It’s simple.
Because there are a lot of right wing and xian terrorist attacks. According to the FBI, 2/3’s of all terrorist attacks since 9/11 have involved those two groups.
They are thankful that it is those other terrorists, not their terrorists.
There have been two terrorist attacks near me in the last decade. In one, xian terrorists fire bombed the local mosque. In the other, some guy got in a shootout with the police while on his way to bomb an environmental group.
It occurs that the more rabid of the Right wing are actually breathing a sigh of relief that they or rather anyone associated with them actually had seemingly nothing to do with the bombing or the subsequent shenanigans on the streets of Boston.
They are fighting rearguard on the guns issue in society anyway, and are well aware that a significant proportion of the populace find the NRA shill’s in government are so far below contemptible and by association the politics associated with that vote.
Another bit of accusatory press outlining a proven ideologically driven right wing murder would not settle well with the moderates and they know that.
Of course their satisfaction and relief at not actually being the the frame will be revealed to be nothing but the exciter to their surely to come avalanche of toxic and bitter tirades against Muslims and Islam in particular, and by extension a renewed crusade on immigration in general is sure to follow.
I expect Obama will get pilloried by Fox for being some sort of vague Muslim appeaser.
Whatever…what price now to be a Muslim in America let alone Boston?
Because it will not matter one iota if the ‘reasoning’ behind these attacks happens to have nothing to do with religion or American foreign policy or whatever, although admittedly it is hard to fathom what other gripe these bozo’s had if not to do with some weird twisted and extreme view of reality.
perhaps 4 days of pundits speculation might have something to do with it ?
“while investigators labor valiantly amid uncertainty,
omniscient liberals already have concluded who unleashed this carnage: the far Right.
“We really don’t know who did this,” Obama strategist David Axelrod told MSNBC. “It was Tax Day.” Presumably, the bombs were meant to hammer high tax rates rather than pressure the much-maligned 1 percent to pay “their fair share.”
CNN’s Peter Bergen explained that if the bombs contained conventional explosives — instead of al-Qaeda’s favorite, hydrogen peroxide — the attackers “might be some other kind of right-wing extremists.” According to CNN’s Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank, “a senior U.S. counterterrorism investigator told CNN that pressure cooker bombs have also been a signature of extreme right-wing individuals in the United States who he said tend to revel in building homemade bombs.”
The Huffington Post’s Nida Kahn commented, “We don’t know anything yet of course, but it is tax day & my first thought was all these anti-gov groups.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared, “Normally, domestic terrorists, people tend to be on the far right.”
Really?”
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also … 2/3rd’s ? I call complete BS x Shaninigans on that web created non fact.
Advice to johnbrown: Stop listening to Alex Jones.
Religion makes people stupid to the point that if breathing and heartbeat weren’t on automatic these 2 would have fallen over dead a long time ago. Any spineless twit can drop a bomb and walk away but to do that to the Russian embassy would take brains and monster balls. Islam is way past it’s use-by-date and if this is what we can look forward to in the future than islam must die. It is a truly fucked-up culture of hate , violence and stupidity. That would put christianity next to go the way of being flushed down the toilet. All religions suck the big one.
“Pure speculation but I would entertain the notion that this is a “false flag” operation”
Naaw, pure idiocy. .
@3. Kevin :
Stunt? No. A stunt is something like doing a world record BMX jump or getting publicity by going onstage in a meat dress or having yourself sealed in a glass box for a week suspended over the Thames river or suchlike.
This was an act of barbaric, murderous, cold-blooded terrorism.
This was bombing a world famous marathon, a soft non-political civilian target.
Extremely stupid? Extremely evil and cruel and cowardly actually.
What the Chechen Islamist brothers did was an act that cut short three lives, that maimed so many others, that horrified and disgusted and affected so many of us.
Don’t minimise or downplay it.
@1. johnbrown
You never heard of Occam’s razor I take it?
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
What would the Chechens get from this act of terrorism?
Publicity. Attention,. A new focus and awareness of their cause. (Not just among Westerners but also a higher profile among their own Jihadist & anti-Western community I suggest.)
The Chechen scumbags seek much the same as other terrorist scumbags do. Same thing as the Palestinian terrorists and Al Quaida terrorists and Shining Path Marxist terrorists seek. Creating fear and terror in their supposed enemies and other nations in an attempt they think to help their nasty causes politically by intimidating, threatening and harming civilians elsewhere.
Kevin:
From the NBC story: “People who know the younger Tsarnaev described him as bright, studious and quiet, with ambitions in medicine.”
Oh for fucks sake. This is about narcissism and self esteem. The brothers who happened to be Chechens couldn’t pull it together. Failed semesters in college, a mediocre boxing career, $900 shoes, arrests for domestic battery, denied citizenship, an unplanned pregnancy… you know, the grind that life is made of. And radical islam was there validate their hurt feelings and give the “direction”. If they had been 2nd or 3rd generation they probably would have joined the army.
Remarkable how everyone here “knows” everything about this. Amusing how what everyone “knows” is wildly contradictory.
FWIW: Their uncle said that while they were ethnically Chechen they spent very little time there. I gathered that both have spent most of their lives in the US and the rest in Kyrgyzstan. While it’s quite possible that their connection with Chechnya may have influenced their points of view, for us to make assumptions about this in the absence of more information is to weave a tapestry from one piece of straw.