There’s no excuse for the bombing in Boston: A response to Richard Silverstein
Blogger Richard Silverstein, who has come to gain quite a following in leftist circles, responded to the Boston Marathon bombing on Twitter earlier today.
Though no1 knows author of Boston Marathon attack,if it was Islamists did we think we could kill Muslims w impunity w/o a response?
I retweeted an amended version of his tweet with some commentary.
You sick, sick person... RT @richards1052: Did we think we could kill Muslims w impunity w/o a response?
He replied, absurdly telling me I did not care about Muslim civillians killed by Americans.
@ArnoRosenfeld JTA's reporter thinks it's "sick" for Muslims 2 kill Americans but peachy for Americans to kill Muslims.
The reality
What happened at the Boston Marathon was an act of pure terrorism. Timed to go off when the most runners would be near the bomb, it was meant to kill and maim as many people as possible.
It’s true that civillians in parts of the Muslim world—Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere—are subjected to such horror on a somewhat regular basis, often at the hands of their own countrymen. It’s true that Karachi market bombings and misfired drone strikes receive less press. It’s true that the “War on Terror” has bred resentment of America in the Muslim world.
But Silverstein and others who take tragedies like today’s attack as opportunities to point out flaws in American policy entirely miss the point.
A major terror attack bombing in a stable Western country will always be bigger news than deaths of civillians in a war zone. War is tragic, indeed because it causes so many innocent people to die. But that is what happens in war. It is not what happens at American marathons. In absolute terms, the life of an Afghani or Pakistani is worth no less than that of an American or Canadian. But the shock of such deaths is exponentially greater and is rightfully treated as such. In fact that’s the entire point of such attacks: to generate massive amounts of publicity and grief, entirely different from America’s actions in the Middle East.
Secondly, if Richard Silverstein wants to talk about the problems with drone strikes, he should talk about the problems with drone strikes. He should advocate for changes to American policy, and mourn the deaths of civillian casualties in the Middle East rather than minimize the tragedy taking place in his own country.
I recently read with disgust the Op-Ed piece by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who appears to be clearly innocent and severely mistreated. It made me sick, and ashamed of my government’s actions. I sought out the charity that was providing al Hasan’s legal aid, and made a donation.
There is no question that mistreating prisoners from Muslim countries can breed extremism. There is no question that drone strikes may radicalize villagers who know no America other than the one blowing up their homes. I realize this, I condemn this, and I hope that American policy changes in this respect.
But at no point in my outrage at reading al Hassan’s Op-Ed did I think, “I know what will change American foreign policy: murdering and horribly maiming some possibly American runners at a marathon.”
Maybe Silverstein can explain how the the eight year-old killed in the Boston bombing is responsible for the illegal detentions of suspected terrorists by the CIA. Maybe he can prove that the blood on the hands of those at the marathon came not from the zippers and nails packed into the homemade bombs but from Pakistani villagers killed by American drone strikes. Maybe he can tell us why Boston, located in famously progressive Massachusetts, is to blame for the invasion of Iraq ten years ago.
He, obviously, cannot.
What’s more is that the terrorists who wish America harm are not walking out of the mountains of Afghanistan and into Copley Square with bombs in their backpack. Those who strike us are not even representative of those who have been wronged by the American military. This vicious attack did not free any prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, halt any drone strikes or scale back the war on terror. It simply added to our world’s shameful quantity of tragic carnage, shook our faith in humanity and took the lives, and limbs, of too many.
The demagogues may exploit this moment of human tragedy to score points in the gutters of extremism. No true freedom fighter will do anything other than condemn the events that took place in Boston today.
