Whatever your opinion of US foreign policy, this was not a war zone and the victims are not military personnel. My thoughts and prayers are with those who suffer from acts of horrific aggression and violence whether they were with their family watching a sports event in Boston or in somewhere like Syria returning from a wedding celebration. Strength to all those poor people in the days ahead. I hope no one here has friends or family affected.
No. But I would not automatically reject an assertion that someone is brave under those conditions. Such people are well protected, and at least if they are the enactors of policies that someone finds threatening, the act may at least be justifiable from SOME reasonable point of view. Consider if the leader were a despot committing acts of genocide, for example. Of course it does, especially when combined with the low risk to the perpetrator. Selecting a target on the sole basis of that target being easy to kill or maim with little risk to oneself is cowardice. These are not targets who are killed for their actions, only on the basis of being tightly packed in an exposed location. It is not only despicable. It is cowardice of the lowest kind.
^ While I do agree that it is cowardice, I don't see how bravery is relevant at all to the perpetrator's motivations. In warfare, it could be considered pragmatic to target weaknesses. I'm not saying it's agreeable or justified.
Let's just call the kind of intelligence terrorists show "cunning" and have done with it. As for "bravery", I second Cog. If there is no risk of counter attack/defence, how are they being brave? They often disregard their own lives or safety to the point of being suicidal, I'll grant you, but that's not the same thing.
An interesting concept. Is it brave if you don't fear the outcome? Perhaps not in the suicide bomber phenomena, especially not if they truly believe they are trading their miserable Earth lives for a paradise fantasy. But if one faces death in a battle for some cause and would prefer to survive, that would still be brave.
Bravery is irrelevant. If you got into a fight with a bigger guy on the street, would you rather fight fairly and risk getting your head caved in, or fight dirty and go for groin kicks and throat jabs?
I don't agree with this. Usually I see nothing to indicate that a terrorist was cunning (although it's certainly not impossible). A crude bomb placed in a crowd doesn't really show any sort of cleverness or imagination or even particularly practiced deception. No. There's no bravery if you're not scared. That is my suspicion as well. Whether it's someone here sympathetic to Al Queda or some anti-government nut, or something else, it strikes me as a fairly unsophisticated attack. And it's also possible it's not even terrorism. It could be some demented individual who simply enjoys creating mayhem and death. I do hope we find out.
The images suggest foreign because there are possibly three or four dark skinned (not black) guys involved. I think ones of the four guys is not like the others. He might be being mistaken for being involved. I'm not confirming those are the images the news is reporting the police are using, but there are images of one of the guys entering the area of the first bomb and putting his black backpack on the ground. And sadly the boy who was killed was in some of the images.
It's amazing to me how they're able to zero in on this level of detail. But I don't understand how the images suggest they were foreign. There are a lot of dark-skinned Americans who are not black.
I totally agree. And if you have a lone guy, skin color matters less, motives run the continuum. But when you have a group of 3-4 men, all of the same appearance and given the current times, the odds this is not a Middle East group get very small. Not zero, mind you, just less probable.
Non-suicidal bombers--whether they actually built the bomb or merely planted it--are more about the "I show'd you" than proving how brave they are. They are all about their own cleverness; and proving that they really are vibrant and potent and vital, and not at all the ineffectual piss-ants that they actually are.
Looking at those pictures I'm still thinking it was domestic, especially because of the Ricin letters sent to politicians, including Obama. They don't all look foreign ( especially the weird guy with the bag hanging from his arm). And yeah, these could be totally unrelated pictures to the investigation.
From what I heard on the news just a few minutes ago, the ricin letters are unrelated to the bombings.
I'm trying to tell everyone that this was a domestic and planned bombing. Nobody is listening to me they think i'm crazy. It's so frustrating! Obama's lack of eye contact was a big clue along with the three men on the top of the tower....
People often have friends who are of similar ethnicity. One of the guys looked pretty white to me. But in any event, the men in the photos don't look conclusively Middle Eastern -- they could be, but they could be one or a mixture of numerous other ethnicities, too. Even if they do have some Arab or Persian ancestry, they could still very well be American. I don't see how we can make any conclusion as far as nationality, based on the photos. I don't see the connection. They never caught the people responsible for the anthrax attacks in 2001, and most of the suspects in those attacks were Americans, and didn't appear to be connected to Al Qaeda, if I recall correctly. The ricin attacks were likely opportunistic, and there is some speculation it was tied to positions on pending gun control legislation, although this is not at all confirmed. Ummm... what? You seriously think Obama was somehow involved in this bombing? I'm not surprised you're not finding a large receptive audience.
Whatever. Name a group with a domestic cause that fits the bill here? Tea Party? Anti-abortionists? PETA? ELF? I stated my reasoning. If you want to imagine anyone who concludes the evidence of multiple actors, who fit the bill, are more likely than not are going to be Middle Eastern, makes the person looking at that evidence a bigot, well that's very PC of you but it ignores the facts. Earlier I suggested it was more likely going to be a lone actor with a domestic cause. Now there is more evidence and based on the evidence, not based on some ignorant bigotry you'd like to paint me having, I see a more likely scenario. If the evidence changes (and it might) I'll adjust my assessment to fit it. But go ahead be all PC about it. I got no issues with your choices except they aren't mine. This country has every nationality and a whole lot of them were born here. It makes for a great country. But when you see two or more together who could be Middle Eastern and they are seen leaving their heavy looking black backpack right where the bomb went off, it's not going to be a couple disgruntled Tea Partiers.
My heart goes out to all the innocent victims of violence, perpetrated by cowards who hide behind anonymous bombs in rucksacks or bombs in planes at 10 000 metres, falling on foreign lands and producing "collateral damage" in which thousands of children die every year. No difference. My heart weeps for all innocent lives lost to fanatical beliefs, regardless of the "god" in whose name the violence is carried out. However, this awful attack bears hallmarks of a one person act, it is more likely to be an Unabomber-type than a terrorist. But one thing is disgustingly clear - if the attacker turns out to be white, it will not lead the authorities or the society to scrutinise every white person for the next god knows how many years, a courteousy not afforded to people with non-Caucasian ethnicity. Be as it may, it's all so sad and horrible that the world has to be this way.
I was so shocked to hear about this. The reaction was actually like, "not again", it's like one mass murder follows another on a weekly basis, and you feel like screaming because there's so little you can do to help those that have suffered. My friend told me about some restaurant nearby the area that offered food and shelter for those in need (especially cos many runners were not local), and that just struck me so... I mean, shit, humans are capable of such horrible terrorism, and then of such kindness. What's wrong with us? And what could be the motivation behind this? It was a freaking marathon! [sarcasm]Some anti-sport radicals?It's like, you go on a holiday, your plane gets hijacked. You go to school or a summer camp, you get shot. You go on a marathon or take a metro to work, you get blown to pieces. You go to the cinema, you get shot again.[/sarcasm]
Incidents like this just remind me that nowadays you shouldn't go anywhere outside of your own home without constant vigilance, if not for your own safety, then for that of your loved ones (and I bet they wouldn't want to lose you either so...). Paranoia saves lives (and even then you simply can't avoid all evil acts such as this one). Such incidents also make me envy the hell out of the Americans and their 2nd amendment/shall issue laws because cops aren't there to protect us: they just arrive to the scene and try to figure out what happened so that they can catch the bad guys after the fact, after the innocents are already hurt or killed.
