Tim Dunkin
Some lessons from Boston
By Tim Dunkin
A little over a week ago, people all across this country were horrified at the news coming out of the Boston Marathon that two bombs had exploded among the crowds gathered to watch the race, killing three and maiming hundreds more. Yet as the dust settled, the chain of events that were set into motion in the days that followed showed Americans some very interesting things. Indeed, this whole matter has been a very "teachable moment," though the lessons may not be what many on the Left intend for us to learn. As America recovers its balance after being knocked for a loop by this terrible crime, what should the "take home messages" be for our people?
First, the obvious lesson learned is that Islamic terrorism is still alive and well in the United States of America. Further, it seems to be "morphing" insidiously – this latest bombing was not part of some grand scheme, planned out for months or years by Al-Qaeda or some other "professional" Islamic terrorist organization infiltrating bombers into our nation. It was the result of a pair of freelance Muslim immigrants who were, in fact, radicalized after they had been living here in our country for over a decade. One of them was even a naturalized citizen. Exposure to our society and way of life for years did nothing to prevent them from falling under the spell of radical preachers at a terrorist-supporting mosque, nor did it keep them from being open to foreign influences, even from as far away as their Chechen homeland. As a result, we should seriously consider, as a society, whether we should allow the immigration of Muslims into our nation. If they can be here for years and still be turned into ticking time bombs by radical imams, even while seeming like they are Americanized, then what trust level can we really have for them? If nothing else, the Boston bombing ought to make it abundantly clear to us that some serious immigration reform is needed, and that these reforms ought to include more selectivity with respect to those coming from majority Muslim nations.
Relatedly, the revelations we are seeing after the bombing in Boston are making it abundantly clear that the Obama administration and its law enforcement organs, including the FBI and the DHS, do not take Islamic terrorism seriously, and this is already contributing to the death and dismemberment of Americans on American soil. So while the DHS was busy ramping up surveillance of pro-gun activists, pro-lifers, and Tea Partiers, and while the Army Reserve and police agencies all across the country were being instructed that Evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews are extremist groups who could potentially contribute to terrorism, real terrorists – Islamic terrorists – were busy plotting yet another terrorist attack on our nation, like all the previous Islamic terrorist attacks on America. Further, we have now found out, specifically relating to the Tsarnaev brothers, that the Russians had been warning American law enforcement and anti-terrorism personnel repeatedly about the brothers. The FBI checked on them back in 2011, but never followed up. I find this level of insouciance on the part of those who are supposedly "protecting" us to be disconcerting, to say the least. Unfortunately, because the Obama administration actually cut the budget for domestic bombing prevention by 45%, another horror like the one that took place in Boston is all the more likely to happen again.
Speaking of those who don't take Islamic terrorism seriously, we also saw once again that the mainstream news media are still more interested in trying to generate and support the left-wing inspired meme of the "Great White Terrorist" than they are in actually sticking to facts and letting their viewers decide. Within less than a day after the bombing, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, and a host of other lesser media personalities were speculating – on national television, to millions of impressionable viewers – that the bombing was probably done by a gun rights activist, tax protestor, or a Tea Partier, without a shred of evidence to back up their assertions (that they're trying to disguise as simple "suggestions.") David Sirota, who writes for Salon.com, opined his desire that the Boston bomber would turn out to be a white American, because that's what the Left needs to finally give its narrative credibility, of course. Yet, it was not to be, as just about anybody with any sense knew would be the case. Instead, the bombers turned out to be...Muslim immigrants from (near) the Middle East. Nor did the bombers turn out to be "right wingers" – just like pretty much every shooter or bomber since the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah federal building in 1995 hasn't been. While that one was done by a white guy with militia connections (yet who was also an agnostic and pointedly rejected Christianity), since then, the shooters and bombers have pretty much been either Muslims or left-wingers. No wonder the news media want to try to draw attention away from the facts. If nothing else, we also got to see firsthand why 60% of us don't trust the media.
Americans also had the opportunity to see how police agencies would respond in the event of a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction. What we observed wasn't pretty. As the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev intensified, a wholly militarized police force took to the streets to enforce martial law. The entire city of Boston and its surrounding environs were brought to a standstill as police required everyone to stay in their homes and forced businesses to remain closed. The neighborhood of Watertown was "locked down," a term usually reserved for the immobilization of inmates in prisons. Police armed with fully automatic weapons and tactical assault vehicles flooded the streets, and completely disregarded the Constitution by going door to door and forcing residents out of their homes at gunpoint to search their residences without warrants or probable cause of any kind. Using terrorism as an excuse, we saw police in an American city transform into a modern analog of the Gestapo. Frankly, this response itself is as bad as terrorism, because it strikes at the very heart of American freedom, the freedom to be secure in the privacy of your own home – and not even terrorism was a legitimate reason for it. People always say that the Islamic terrorists hate us, in part, for our freedom – and this is true. But when the police are the ones marching people out of their homes with sniper rifles trained on their heads, the police become accomplices to terrorism every bit as guilty as any terrorist.
What's even worse is that all of this – the martial law, the guns pointed at peoples' heads, the illegal searches, the tactical assault vehicles ominously parked in front of civilian homes in a major American city – didn't even work. This hullabaloo was not responsible for the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Instead, one man stepping out of his house to have a cigarette and checking on his boat after the police had searched his neighborhood and cleared everyone to go outside again was what led to the terrorist's capture. The police had searched the area – and presumably this man's property and house – and did not find the fugitive. The automatic weapons, the up-armored hummers – none of it did the job of "protecting" the citizens of Boston. Instead, one alert man found the fugitive and was able to tell the police where they needed to go to finish the deal.
This suggests that in the conflict of ideas as to how Americans should maintain their security – whether by giving up our rights and turning our security over to a heavy-handed, militarized police apparatus that isn't constrained by petty qualms about the "Constitution," or by armed and alert Americans being able to provide for their own security against potential future terrorists (as well as common, everyday criminals) – the answer ought to be the latter. How many residents of Watertown would have liked to have had a firearm with them while a dangerous terrorist was on the loose? After all, he carjacked one automobile, what would have kept Tsarnaev, armed and dangerous, from invading a home, perhaps holding the family hostage or killing them to keep them quiet? If they're like other Americans, then 69% of them would have wanted access to a gun to protect themselves in such a case. One alert citizen did more than hundreds of roving jackbooted police officers were able to do in finding the fugitive bomber. What would happen if Americans made a general habit out of being alert and protecting their own homes, neighborhoods, and towns from criminals and worse, by armed force when necessary? Two and a half million crimes a year are stopped by armed citizens, acting mostly reactively. What if, instead of passively allowing the police to impose martial law and further erode our liberties every time an "incident" happens, we as Americans pursued the spirit of the idea that the people of the nation as a body are the militia, and are to be armed for our own defense?
Americans need to choose – are we going to take responsibility for our own safety, or are we going to resign ourselves to a future of black-clad special ops troopers pulling us out of our homes and pointing guns at our kids' heads while they rummage through our homes looking for fugitives that they have no real reason to think are actually there? Do we really want a future where you have to go through a nudie scanner just to get into a ball game? Where you can be stopped and searched at random checkpoints for "safety" purposes? Is that what we want?
But back to what actually happened in Boston. One thing that the heavy-handed police response did accomplish was to alert any future terrorists to the fact that any time you want to shut down a major American city and send a billion dollar shockwave into the local and national economies, all you have to do is let off a pipebomb or something similar, and the police will "lock down" the city. If you're an Islamic terrorist who already hates American culture and prosperity, few more cost-effective ways of crippling the American economy could be found. A city that is living under martial law is one in which pretty much every facet of everyday life is going to be disrupted. If you can get the American police to start imposing martial law hither and yon, you'll do more damage to America than even 9-11 did.
So yes, there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from the Boston bombing – many of them lessons that the Obama administration and its police state lackeys at the local level probably didn't intend. It's time for the American people to step up and take responsibility for our own security, as well as pushing for and implementing things like immigration reform and the repeal of restrictive gun laws, that will make our nation more secure. Boston was an inflection point for the cause of liberty in the United States.
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
A little over a week ago, people all across this country were horrified at the news coming out of the Boston Marathon that two bombs had exploded among the crowds gathered to watch the race, killing three and maiming hundreds more. Yet as the dust settled, the chain of events that were set into motion in the days that followed showed Americans some very interesting things. Indeed, this whole matter has been a very "teachable moment," though the lessons may not be what many on the Left intend for us to learn. As America recovers its balance after being knocked for a loop by this terrible crime, what should the "take home messages" be for our people?
First, the obvious lesson learned is that Islamic terrorism is still alive and well in the United States of America. Further, it seems to be "morphing" insidiously – this latest bombing was not part of some grand scheme, planned out for months or years by Al-Qaeda or some other "professional" Islamic terrorist organization infiltrating bombers into our nation. It was the result of a pair of freelance Muslim immigrants who were, in fact, radicalized after they had been living here in our country for over a decade. One of them was even a naturalized citizen. Exposure to our society and way of life for years did nothing to prevent them from falling under the spell of radical preachers at a terrorist-supporting mosque, nor did it keep them from being open to foreign influences, even from as far away as their Chechen homeland. As a result, we should seriously consider, as a society, whether we should allow the immigration of Muslims into our nation. If they can be here for years and still be turned into ticking time bombs by radical imams, even while seeming like they are Americanized, then what trust level can we really have for them? If nothing else, the Boston bombing ought to make it abundantly clear to us that some serious immigration reform is needed, and that these reforms ought to include more selectivity with respect to those coming from majority Muslim nations.
Relatedly, the revelations we are seeing after the bombing in Boston are making it abundantly clear that the Obama administration and its law enforcement organs, including the FBI and the DHS, do not take Islamic terrorism seriously, and this is already contributing to the death and dismemberment of Americans on American soil. So while the DHS was busy ramping up surveillance of pro-gun activists, pro-lifers, and Tea Partiers, and while the Army Reserve and police agencies all across the country were being instructed that Evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews are extremist groups who could potentially contribute to terrorism, real terrorists – Islamic terrorists – were busy plotting yet another terrorist attack on our nation, like all the previous Islamic terrorist attacks on America. Further, we have now found out, specifically relating to the Tsarnaev brothers, that the Russians had been warning American law enforcement and anti-terrorism personnel repeatedly about the brothers. The FBI checked on them back in 2011, but never followed up. I find this level of insouciance on the part of those who are supposedly "protecting" us to be disconcerting, to say the least. Unfortunately, because the Obama administration actually cut the budget for domestic bombing prevention by 45%, another horror like the one that took place in Boston is all the more likely to happen again.
Speaking of those who don't take Islamic terrorism seriously, we also saw once again that the mainstream news media are still more interested in trying to generate and support the left-wing inspired meme of the "Great White Terrorist" than they are in actually sticking to facts and letting their viewers decide. Within less than a day after the bombing, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, and a host of other lesser media personalities were speculating – on national television, to millions of impressionable viewers – that the bombing was probably done by a gun rights activist, tax protestor, or a Tea Partier, without a shred of evidence to back up their assertions (that they're trying to disguise as simple "suggestions.") David Sirota, who writes for Salon.com, opined his desire that the Boston bomber would turn out to be a white American, because that's what the Left needs to finally give its narrative credibility, of course. Yet, it was not to be, as just about anybody with any sense knew would be the case. Instead, the bombers turned out to be...Muslim immigrants from (near) the Middle East. Nor did the bombers turn out to be "right wingers" – just like pretty much every shooter or bomber since the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah federal building in 1995 hasn't been. While that one was done by a white guy with militia connections (yet who was also an agnostic and pointedly rejected Christianity), since then, the shooters and bombers have pretty much been either Muslims or left-wingers. No wonder the news media want to try to draw attention away from the facts. If nothing else, we also got to see firsthand why 60% of us don't trust the media.
Americans also had the opportunity to see how police agencies would respond in the event of a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction. What we observed wasn't pretty. As the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev intensified, a wholly militarized police force took to the streets to enforce martial law. The entire city of Boston and its surrounding environs were brought to a standstill as police required everyone to stay in their homes and forced businesses to remain closed. The neighborhood of Watertown was "locked down," a term usually reserved for the immobilization of inmates in prisons. Police armed with fully automatic weapons and tactical assault vehicles flooded the streets, and completely disregarded the Constitution by going door to door and forcing residents out of their homes at gunpoint to search their residences without warrants or probable cause of any kind. Using terrorism as an excuse, we saw police in an American city transform into a modern analog of the Gestapo. Frankly, this response itself is as bad as terrorism, because it strikes at the very heart of American freedom, the freedom to be secure in the privacy of your own home – and not even terrorism was a legitimate reason for it. People always say that the Islamic terrorists hate us, in part, for our freedom – and this is true. But when the police are the ones marching people out of their homes with sniper rifles trained on their heads, the police become accomplices to terrorism every bit as guilty as any terrorist.
What's even worse is that all of this – the martial law, the guns pointed at peoples' heads, the illegal searches, the tactical assault vehicles ominously parked in front of civilian homes in a major American city – didn't even work. This hullabaloo was not responsible for the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Instead, one man stepping out of his house to have a cigarette and checking on his boat after the police had searched his neighborhood and cleared everyone to go outside again was what led to the terrorist's capture. The police had searched the area – and presumably this man's property and house – and did not find the fugitive. The automatic weapons, the up-armored hummers – none of it did the job of "protecting" the citizens of Boston. Instead, one alert man found the fugitive and was able to tell the police where they needed to go to finish the deal.
This suggests that in the conflict of ideas as to how Americans should maintain their security – whether by giving up our rights and turning our security over to a heavy-handed, militarized police apparatus that isn't constrained by petty qualms about the "Constitution," or by armed and alert Americans being able to provide for their own security against potential future terrorists (as well as common, everyday criminals) – the answer ought to be the latter. How many residents of Watertown would have liked to have had a firearm with them while a dangerous terrorist was on the loose? After all, he carjacked one automobile, what would have kept Tsarnaev, armed and dangerous, from invading a home, perhaps holding the family hostage or killing them to keep them quiet? If they're like other Americans, then 69% of them would have wanted access to a gun to protect themselves in such a case. One alert citizen did more than hundreds of roving jackbooted police officers were able to do in finding the fugitive bomber. What would happen if Americans made a general habit out of being alert and protecting their own homes, neighborhoods, and towns from criminals and worse, by armed force when necessary? Two and a half million crimes a year are stopped by armed citizens, acting mostly reactively. What if, instead of passively allowing the police to impose martial law and further erode our liberties every time an "incident" happens, we as Americans pursued the spirit of the idea that the people of the nation as a body are the militia, and are to be armed for our own defense?
Americans need to choose – are we going to take responsibility for our own safety, or are we going to resign ourselves to a future of black-clad special ops troopers pulling us out of our homes and pointing guns at our kids' heads while they rummage through our homes looking for fugitives that they have no real reason to think are actually there? Do we really want a future where you have to go through a nudie scanner just to get into a ball game? Where you can be stopped and searched at random checkpoints for "safety" purposes? Is that what we want?
But back to what actually happened in Boston. One thing that the heavy-handed police response did accomplish was to alert any future terrorists to the fact that any time you want to shut down a major American city and send a billion dollar shockwave into the local and national economies, all you have to do is let off a pipebomb or something similar, and the police will "lock down" the city. If you're an Islamic terrorist who already hates American culture and prosperity, few more cost-effective ways of crippling the American economy could be found. A city that is living under martial law is one in which pretty much every facet of everyday life is going to be disrupted. If you can get the American police to start imposing martial law hither and yon, you'll do more damage to America than even 9-11 did.
So yes, there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from the Boston bombing – many of them lessons that the Obama administration and its police state lackeys at the local level probably didn't intend. It's time for the American people to step up and take responsibility for our own security, as well as pushing for and implementing things like immigration reform and the repeal of restrictive gun laws, that will make our nation more secure. Boston was an inflection point for the cause of liberty in the United States.
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
