It’s definitely on the upside that we won’t be invading anyone these days. One can scarcely imagine the seismic howls, if that isn’t too mixed a metaphor, the Right would be emitting if our latest “bad guys” had been from Iran or Iraq. Yet the fact that an unhappy Muslim youth in the U.S. can take out his hormonal/socio-cultural frustrations on society by killing strangers in the name of Allah is not encouraging, both for the body count and the likelihood that America’s already grotesque enthusiasm for police state measures will not be declining any time soon. Glenn Greenwald and others have frequently pointed out how both the FBI and local police departments, Bloomberg’s finest in particular, create the conspiracies they expose. Since the FBI is going to be blamed for not doing enough in this case, they’re sure to do “more” in the future, which is likely to mean more government intrusion, further expansion of already swollen “intelligence” budgets, and more dumb kids getting thrown in jail for twenty years for the crime of being jerked around by a paid informant. Thanks, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar.
Boston bombing not quite as terrible as it could have been
Two young men with a chip on their shoulders murder four and injure more than a hundred, while significantly reducing the quality of life for 300 million people. It’s wonderful what you can do with a couple of pressure cookers and some black powder.
