New info on Boston bombers' motive: retaliation for US wars

[Craig234]

Recently it was released that the surviving bomber wrote a note in the boat he was hiding in to say why they had done the bombings.

The reasons it gave concentrated on being retaliation for US wars against Muslim nations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It referred to the innocent bombinb victims as 'collateral damage', which seems to me to be an expression of their anger at that term being used to describe and justify many Muslim civilian casualties.

Clearly, it's not a close analogy - especially the differences between their being a 'primary mission' versus civilians being the target - but when people feel the whole war with its military missions are wrong, then it becomes closer to view both civilian casualties as being more similar.

Now, a couple opinions - I don't think much of the level of understanding of the rights and wrongs by these two young people. They're prone to questionable opinions.

So I'm not expecting any justification that makes a lot of sense. Second, 'two wrongs don't make a right'. Killing a civilian in retaliation for killing a civilian isn't terribly defensible.

But it's only fair to note that a lot of Americans are guilty of not holding up that standard that well - that revenge for 9/11 was highly demanded, and if that included civilians, tough crap for them, and if our aim didn't quite hit a country actually involved, it was close enough. I've seen many soldiers say 9/11 motivated them to serve in Iraq.

Anyway, this is news, as far as apparently clarifying why they did it.

Interestingly, this is exactly a main reason why Osama bin Laden did 9/11 - wanting to provoke an American invasion of a Muslim country, which he incorrectly expected to unite the Muslim world against the US, which would include a massive increase of Muslim support for Al Queda. That didn't happen - but this bomber's reaction was just what Osama wanted on a far smaller scale.

I think this issue raises some interesting questions about what can be expected in response to wars many people feel are unjustifed, in terms of 'blowback' violence over here.

A question is that even if Americans 'come to the opinion a war is wrong', how much satisfaction is that opinion change to the families of people killed in that war?

But because of some tension concerns here, I'm not going to get into those questions now - just post the news of the letter and invite whatever discussion people have in response.

Maybe many people don't want to say much - it's just a bit of information to have.

Like I said, we don't need to give too much weight to two young people's views on this - they don't deserve a big platform as a reward for killing - but it's good info to have.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/16-4

 

[shadow9d9]

As it was, 9/11 was retaliation of sorts for our constant meddling in the ME, including propping up dictators that are in our best oil interests, which at the same time treated their people poorly and taught them to hate us...

 

[nehalem256]

I think this would be more understandable if they had say been from Afghanistan or Iraq.

But to say that the US was involved with a war in a country that happens to share the same religion as you is absurd.

EDIT: And in effect if you accept the logic presented the US should want to keep out all Muslims since they could never be trusted to be Americans since they will always put Islam first.

 

[Craig234]

As it was, 9/11 was retaliation of sorts for our constant meddling in the ME, including propping up dictators that are in our best oil interests, which at the same time treated their people poorly and taught them to hate us...

As I understand the history, Osama bin Laden's turning to terrorism was largely triggered when Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was viewed as a threat to Islam's holy land of Saudi Arabia, and Osama asked the Saudis to let him lead a force to drive Saddam out (so much for that Osama-Saddam buddy claim). Saudi Arabia - we can speculate why, with their close military, political and financial ties to the US - told Osama no, the US will do it.

That infuriated Osama as a Muslim, to have infidels come into sacred Saudi Arabia (we build bases) and get in the middle of a Muslim issue, attacking Muslims.

He viewed Saudi Arabia's leadership as deeply corrupt and westernized as a result.

Next, he found that he just could not get Muslims to support him. He had very small - under 5% - support in opinion polls of Muslims, and it was going down. What to do?

Having decided that attacks on the US were justifed to drive them out of Saudi Arabia if not the Middle East, he attacked our embasssies and the US Cole and whatever else.

It had no real effect either on the US presence nor on Muslims having the reaction he'd like of responding to the attacks by joining his cause.

So that's why 9/11 was so attractive to him. He had two goals.

One was to create great financial disruption, since wealth was the source of the US strength allowing to fund such a global military domination. The second was to provoke the US into attacking a Muslim country, which would both cost it as well as Osama hoping it would rally all Muslims to his cause to fight the invaders. It wasn't an unreasonable theory, groups often do rally that way. He didn't have many other ideas, either.

IMO, that's the story of why he did 9/11.

You could ask how good a Muslim he was trying to get a lot of Muslims killed, but it was that sort of 'greater good'. Sort of like some rebels before our revolutionary war were pretty thrilled about the Boston Massacre that killed four colonists, because they knew it would rally support for rebellion.

 

[Jaskalas]

I think this would be more understandable if they had say been from Afghanistan or Iraq.

Ideas do not have borders. The concept of identity is no longer simply defined in nationality, or by those you personally know. Location is far less meaningful today with the internet to connect the globe.

Remember Neda? (NSFW). I do not have to be Iranian to sympathize and feel the loss of her. To remorse and feel anger, to become hateful of the Iranian regime for her death.

On this planet today we are moved by ideas and people who we do not know IRL.

 

[Craig234]

Ideas do not have borders. The concept of identity is no longer simply defined in nationality, or by those you personally know. Location is far less meaningful today with the internet to connect the globe.

Remember Neda? (NSFW). I do not have to be Iranian to sympathize and feel the loss of her. To remorse and feel anger, to become hateful of the Iranian regime for her death.

On this planet today we are moved by ideas and people who we do not know IRL.

Think about how much alliance we feel for attacks on Britain or Israel.

(Canada we couldn't care less, but they bother us less if they have a false sense of security).

But many Muslims do have a global identity with other Muslims - even as some Christians here seem to champion some sort of global religious conflict.

 

[shadow9d9]

I think this would be more understandable if they had say been from Afghanistan or Iraq.

But to say that the US was involved with a war in a country that happens to share the same religion as you is absurd.

EDIT: And in effect if you accept the logic presented the US should want to keep out all Muslims since they could never be trusted to be Americans since they will always put Islam first.

We would respond the same way if they attacked any of the other first world countries... Hell, we randomly picked a ME country to attack because of 9/11!

 

[nehalem256]

We would respond the same way if they attacked any of the other first world countries... Hell, we randomly picked a ME country to attack because of 9/11!

So imagine if some American decided to go an firebomb a Mosque because of the Boston bombings.

Would you be saying he had justification and his actions were "understandable"? Or would you be saying he was a xenophobe?

 

[shadow9d9]

So imagine if some American decided to go an firebomb a Mosque because of the Boston bombings.

Would you be saying he had justification and his actions were "understandable"? Or would you be saying he was a xenophobe?

No one attacked a church so I don't understand the comparison...

 

[Craig234]

No one attacked a church so I don't understand the comparison...

Retaliating for a nation's many billion dollar expansion and vioence in a region for decades, keeping regimes viewed as corrupt in power, isn't that comparable to 'two young guys'.

But to be fair, the reaction can be for many people, who will view one or two people doing something as something a billion people are to blame for.

This is where the 'cycle of violence' phrase partly is from, they did X, so we'll do Y! They did Y, so we'll do... (It has other meanings also).

 

[smackababy]

While I highly disagree with how the Boston Bomber acted, his ideas about a war on Islam are founded. The amount of media demonizing the culture and religion is astounding. They, meaning "backwards" Islamic ruled nations, are evil and bad (just like communists!) and the people who were born there, raised there, and lived their entire lives being taught these things, are wrong and must be "freed". It is laughable how much people preach tolerance and then show they have very little, unless dealing with white, Christian societies.

And as far as no one attacked a church? Remember that guy that shot up the Sikh temple because he thought they were Muslim? Happened in Wisconsin in 2012.

 

[Mxylplyx]

We have all seen the pictures of the mangled victims on the street in Boston in the minutes after the blast, and for most of us it is a very disturbing image that certainly elicits feelings of anger and resentment. However, lets keep in mind though that there have been hundreds of similar scenes in the aftermath of US bombings that we have not seen pictures of, but many Muslims certainly have. Women and children blown to bits that know nothing of this war on terror we claim to be perpetuating. We can keep telling ourselves that we as a nation are blameless, but it's a bunch of baloney. Our proud proclamations of a nobler cause are meaningless to the hundreds of thousands of people in the ME that have lost sons/daughters/wives/husbands/brothers/sisters to direct or indirect US actions, many of them trying to live normal lives in an unfortunate place. The only way to stop it is to unilaterally disengage, and let middle east anger subside and turn inwards to focus on their own problems. In today's information age, our old ways of controlling the destinies of entire nations through gifts of money and weapons to favored factions and dictators is exposed for all to see. We cannot keep fooling ourselves into believing the anger this fuels is completely unjustified. It's time to simply stop and let these people determine their own futures. The recent domestic oil boom presents the perfect opportunity to do that.

 

[cwjerome]

Their motive may have some significance in a legal sense in relation to their crime, but for me it has no bearing on the larger issues of US policy.

 

[smackababy]

Their motive may have some significance in a legal sense in relation to their crime, but for me it has no bearing on the larger issues of US policy.

Of course not. We don't change because someone attacks us. We'd have changed long ago after the first attack on the WTC. We'd have reviewed policies on domestic handling of issues after OKC bombing. We'd have done something drastic after 9/11. You think a couple of guys killing 4 people are going to effect how we do business? Of course not.

Sadly, all this guy has done is damage the already bad reputation of Islam in America. "I am upset that people hate Muslims and view us all as terrorists, I am going to go bomb some stuff to show them how angry I am!" That just doesn't work.

 

[Craig234]

Their motive may have some significance in a legal sense in relation to their crime, but for me it has no bearing on the larger issues of US policy.

Why is that?

Where do you drawn the line when you start caring? What if we were brutal colonists?

 

[Craig234]

Of course not. We don't change because someone attacks us. We'd have changed long ago after the first attack on the WTC. We'd have reviewed policies on domestic handling of issues after OKC bombing. We'd have done something drastic after 9/11. You think a couple of guys killing 4 people are going to effect how we do business? Of course not.

Sadly, all this guy has done is damage the already bad reputation of Islam in America. "I am upset that people hate Muslims and view us all as terrorists, I am going to go bomb some stuff to show them how angry I am!" That just doesn't work.

Well, it wasn't that he's upset people hate Muslims so he'll set off a bomb - that would be highly ironic and futile, not that what he did wan't futile.

His position was more, for years you're killing civilians and continuing to do so and not caring a bit about it really just calling it collateral damage, so we'll give you a taste.

Just clarifying what is tounds like his motive was.

By the way, funny things.

After our Marines were bombed in Lebanon and Reagan said we would not be deterred, he pulled them all out.

One of Osama's main demands was the removal of US bases from Saudi Arabia, and not that longer after 9/11 we removed those bases.

I'm not saying we did it because of the attack - more, I'm saying I'm glad that we didn't NOT do it because of the attack if it was the right thing to do.

It's a bit like how Kennedy ordered the removal of obsolete missiles from Turkey that hadn't been done yet - but after the Cuban Missile Crisis started and Soviets demanded their removal, it became all about 'face saving' how he couldn't possibly remove them then, it would reward bad behavior (Kennedy with good sense made a secret agreement to remove them).

 

[cwjerome]

Why is that?

Where do you drawn the line when you start caring? What if we were brutal colonists?

I begin to care when reasonable people have legitimate concerns and engage in constructive dialogue. The motives behind the murdering by a couple Jahidi fanatics doesn't interest me much.

 

[smackababy]

Well, it wasn't that he's upset people hate Muslims so he'll set off a bomb - that would be highly ironic and futile, not that what he did wan't futile.

His position was more, for years you're killing civilians and continuing to do so and not caring a bit about it really just calling it collateral damage, so we'll give you a taste.

Just clarifying what is tounds like his motive was.

By the way, funny things.

After our Marines were bombed in Lebanon and Reagan said we would not be deterred, he pulled them all out.

One of Osama's main demands was the removal of US bases from Saudi Arabia, and not that longer after 9/11 we removed those bases.

I'm not saying we did it because of the attack - more, I'm saying I'm glad that we didn't NOT do it because of the attack if it was the right thing to do.

It's a bit like how Kennedy ordered the removal of obsolete missiles from Turkey that hadn't been done yet - but after the Cuban Missile Crisis started and Soviets demanded their removal, it became all about 'face saving' how he couldn't possibly remove them then, it would reward bad behavior (Kennedy with good sense made a secret agreement to remove them).

A lot of the Saudi evacuation was left over from the Khobar Towers incident. They were in the process of shutting down that base, and after the French left, all operations moved to Qatar.

 

[Craig234]

I begin to care when reasonable people have legitimate concerns and engage in constructive dialogue. The motives behind the murdering by a couple Jahidi fanatics doesn't interest me much.

What constructive dialogues did you have with people in the Middle East for years of this? I didn't have any. If there was more, maybe that'd help reduce tensions.

It does seem like most of us here are not very concerned violence our country does over there, but it matters a lot to them.

Actually it does interest me that for as much as we have places like Iran in our policy discussions, we seem to almost never from anyone there with their views.

Wouldn't it be nice to turn on these talk show panel shows and have two of the guests be from Iran to discuss Iran?

 

[chucky2]

We would respond the same way if they attacked any of the other first world countries... Hell, we randomly picked a ME country to attack because of 9/11!

There was nothing random about picking Iraq. And No I don't believ we would respond the same way. There is a large difference in attacking a target of military value and having civilian collateral damage than there is just directly picking civilians only to kill and maim.

 

[nehalem256]

No one attacked a church so I don't understand the comparison...

It was a hypothetical comparison.

In one case we have a Muslim being "justified" in attacking American civilians, because America previously attacked some Muslims.

In the hypothetical we have an American being "justified" in attacking Muslim civilians, because Muslims previously attacked some Americans.

Do you think that the reaction would be the same in the hypothetical case?

 

[Craig234]

There was nothing random about picking Iraq. And No I don't believ we would respond the same way. There is a large difference in attacking a target of military value and having civilian collateral damage than there is just directly picking civilians only to kill and maim.

I think by random, he meant unrelated to 9/11. It wasn't random at all.

 

[cwjerome]

What constructive dialogues did you have with people in the Middle East for years of this? I didn't have any. If there was more, maybe that'd help reduce tensions.

It does seem like most of us here are not very concerned violence our country does over there, but it matters a lot to them.

Actually it does interest me that for as much as we have places like Iran in our policy discussions, we seem to almost never from anyone there with their views.

Wouldn't it be nice to turn on these talk show panel shows and have two of the guests be from Iran to discuss Iran?

Yes, legitimate concerns from reasonable people who engage in constructive dialogue is quite rare from a certain segment of people. Nonetheless, nutty people do stupid things for dumb reasons all the time, and I don't have the time or interest to pay much attention to the desperate flailings of bad people.

 

[Craig234]

Yes, legitimate concerns from reasonable people who engage in constructive dialogue is quite rare from a certain segment of people. Nonetheless, nutty people do stupid things for dumb reasons all the time, and I don't have the time or interest to pay much attention to the desperate flailings of bad people.

I have some sympathy for that - if it was just these two, I'd be more sympathetic.

But your response could read the same way if were discussing slave revolts in 1850 - just dismiss the people who are violent and ignore the reason they are.

I think there's a lot more to the issue than just to ignore these guys. Having sais that, as I said, don't expect much from two young guys. They're just a start for the discussion.

 

[woolfe9998]

Islamic terrorists need to stop a) engaging in terrorism, or b) failing that, concealing themselves among civilian populations to evade retaliation. This is a pattern with Islamic terrorists everywhere from the West Bank to Afghanistan to Pakistan. I'm frankly tired of these terrorists killing civilians then purposefully situating themselves near other civilians so that even more are killed in the retaliation. And I have little patience for apologia that blames the US, Israel or other western countries for this state of affairs.

I'm not saying the US is blameless. Certainly the entire war in Iraq was a complete fiasco and should never have happened. But it wouldn't have happened had these jihadis not killed 3000 innocent people on 9/11. These jahadis provided the excuse these neo-cons needed.

The Muslims in these communities being hit by US drone strikes should be hauling the AQ and Taliban out in the street for public lynchings because they show no regard for the welfare of their fellow Muslims. They are psychopaths engaged in what they view as a religious war to exterminate the infidel. Their "demands" are irrelevant. Any acquiescence to said demands will only encourage more attacks. Attacks like in Boston not only kill Americans, but also increase the chance of more dead Muslims, and give a bad name to Muslims world wide.

I agree with cwjerome. Muslims with grievances against the US or the west can open up a reasonable dialogue. In that dialogue, they can offer to help us oppose the Jihadis and end the terrorism then make an earnest effort to do so. I think they'll be surprised at how little interest we have in military strikes and occupations in their countries once the attacks stop.