“We believe this to be a terrorist,” said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. “We believe this to be a man who has come here to kill people. We need to get him in custody.”
Reuters, Scott Monroe and Tim McLaughlin
In all due respect, sir: No. This was not a terrorist. This was a murderer. And his brother, who’s still at large as I write this, is a murderer, a car thief, and a kidnapper.
In a word, they’re both thugs.
We need to stop honoring thugs with a term that suggests they’re some sort of heroes for some sort of cause. The word “terrorist” describes a person who commits violence as a form of political speech. To call every madman and every nitwit who decides to commit a violent crime upon the public a “terrorist” is to lionize criminals.
It’s time to quit that. Way past time.
People who kill innocent civilians are murderers. They are murderers of women and children. They are murderers of men who have presented no threat to them. People who commit carjackings are thieves. People who make off with the owners of the cars they steal are kidnappers. They are not heroes of some cause. They are criminals.
Each time we call some misguided madman a “terrorist,” we elevate him or her to the level of a minor hero for some political cause. And when we create laws specific to “terrorism,” we institutionalize that honoring. In doing so, we do not discourage such behavior: we encourage it.
Let’s get real. We already have laws against murder. We have laws against theft. We have laws against kidnapping. We have laws against building bombs and placing them in public places. People who violate those laws are criminals, not some sort of romanticized (in their own eyes) low-level heroes.
We need to get rid of the “terrorism” laws and prosecute these jerks for what they are: criminals, under the perfectly effective laws that existed long before the waves of panic generated by the 9/11 attacks.
Khalid al-Mihdhar was a criminal.
Mohamed Atta was a criminal.
Marwan al-Shehhi was a criminal.
Ziad Jarrah was a criminal.
Hani Hanjour was a criminal.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, if he proves to be guilty, was a criminal.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, if he proves to be guilty, is a criminal.
Timothy McVeigh was a criminal.
Jared Lee Loughner is a criminal.
James Holmes is a criminal.
Adam Lanza was a criminal.
The sooner we identify such people as what they are — thugs, not some sort of marginal heroes for some sort of imagined or fanatic cause — the better off we as a people will be. The less scared we will be and the more effective we will be.
Let us call them what they are, and let us prosecute them for what they are: murderers, thieves, kidnappers, bombers, shooters. And let us dispense with the politically loaded term “terrorist.”
It gives these people way too much credit.
You’ve made the most sense of anyone I have read in I don’t know how long.
Well said….The Uncle of these men lives not to far from me and has been quoted as calling his nephews “losers” and encouraged them to…”surrender and ask forgiveness”. How can one set of immigrants assimilate into the US and do so well….and someone in the same family go off course and go so wrong? This whole thing makes no sense to me….what was to be gained by inflicting such pain on innocent people?
Yes, we heard those remarks even out here in the hinterlands. Imagine having someone in your family pull something like this! How would you ever live it down?
It sounds like the older brother was generally violent and unstable — he apparently jumped off the deep end. But how on earth he persuaded the 19-year-old to go along with him is a mystery.
I totally agree with you! I do not always agree with you, but I do today.
I sometimes wonder if the intent is to make and keep us scared, people are so much more willing to give up freedoms when they think it will keep them safe.
I liked the comments from Jill and jestjack and your reply also.
Thank you for clarifying my thoughts about this so well.
Thanks! It’s surprising how many things people of good will can agree on, even when they’re on opposite sides of the proverbial aisle.
Lest there be any question that the two latest creeps come under the heading of “psychotic criminals,” CNN reports that the 19-year-old, after killing and wounding a large number of people in cold blood, calmly went back to classes and parties — business as usual! http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/20/us/boston-younger-brother/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
And, if you believe CNN, he apparently ran his brother down and killed him. http://bit.ly/14EYjNs
Sounds like the kid brother was every bit as bat-sh!t as the older one.
I wonder why the need to constantly make them “terrorists” and not the criminals and murderers they are.
And I, unhappily, can imagine this to be family member. I have actual vivid nightmares that my already awful Sibling will snap and go that one extra step to doing something terrible. Maybe not on this scale because he doesn’t have his own money etc but still. People determined to hurt people find a way. And I don’t know that he will, I’m just worried that he might, so there’s nothing we can do to make him a safer person to have around.
Poor man.
The best comfort, I think, is that in general chances are greater that a person with a serious mental illness will harm him- or herself than someone else. Cold comfort, indeed: the risk of suicide is fairly high…and it’s hard to blame the person, since severe depression, schizophrenia, and similar disorders must be extremely painful.
I hate to say it but if he only hurt himself that would be a relief. He harbors a lot of misplaced and vehement resentment toward my dad for existing, and has always been highly self aggrandizing so he’d never hold himself responsible for anything bad. When I had severe depression, it was hugely enlightening how it deepens whatever sense of responsibility you have. In his case, it’s almost sociopathically lacking. He’s even lately blamed the DOG for his behaviors, says the DOG should know better!! I can’t even ….
So many things about him make me certain he’s far far more likely to hurt someone else than himself. And it’d be my dad or the dog, but until he does something, we have literally no recourse.
I really don’t think calling someone a terrorist is an honor. More a mark of shame. Criminals, while breaking the law, are generally doing so for a reason – for example mugging gone wrong, killing the parents for the money, etc. Terrorists purposefully kill the innocent in an attempt to bully the rest of us. That isn’t an honor, and we aren’t honoring them by remarking that their crimes are worse than those of the standard “criminal”. That they might take that as encouragement is a sign of their derangement. I’m not stopping telling the truth because of a terrorists deranged mind.
Well, you understand, in their minds they see themselves as soldiers. This is true, too, within the cultures that incubate these monsters: behavior that we see as psychotic is not seen as aberrant in those cultures. Instead, the terrorist is seen as a soldier fighting for a cause, and in every culture I know of soldiers are regarded as honorable. In some, people who die blowing themselves up so they can kill everyone around them are promised a place in heaven.
Call them “murderers” and “thugs,” and you defuse the impulse to regard this behavior as a form of political heroism.