In FrontPage today is my take on the Boston Marathon jihad massacre verdict:
The guilty verdict came as no surprise to anyone, least of all Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense attorney, Judy Clarke, who told the court last month, “It was him.” Tsarnaev could now face the death penalty, and it would be richly deserved, given the fact that he and his brother deliberately placed a bomb filled with nails behind a row of children, hoping to maximize the number of people they murdered, and subjected eight-year-old Martin Richard to a gruesome and excruciatingly painful death.
Whether or not he is executed, however, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a vivid illustration of the abject failure and catastrophic wrongheadedness of the Obama administration’s approach to the jihad threat. For if the mainstream and dominant analysis of the jihad terror threat is true, then Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should have been the last young Muslim in the U.S. to become a jihad terrorist: he had everything that mainstream analysts claim Muslims turn to terrorism because they don’t have.
Terrorism, we are often told, is a reaction to political instability. Young Muslims growing up under repressive dictatorships strike out for justice in the only way that is available to them: by joining jihad terror groups. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, however, didn’t grow up amid any political unrest: his family was granted political asylum in the United States when he was eight years old.
Dzhokhar was no deprived and marginalized immigrant. He attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and received a $2,500 scholarship from the City of Cambridge when he graduated in 2011. Then he went to the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, where to all appearances he was a completely Westernized moderate Muslim with an outlook that was little different from that of his fellow students.
John Kerry, if he is paying attention to the Tsarnaev case at all, should be nonplussed. Here is a young man who was saved from political tumult in his homeland (Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan but spent most of his early life in Chechnya) by the United States of America, open as always to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. Once here, he enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence, attending fine schools in the Boston area – in part due to the generosity of the City of Cambridge. He showed no signs of cultural alienation, having a wide circle of friends and appearing to them to be a fully American youth.
So what went wrong? If it wasn’t poverty, lack of opportunity, and alienation, then what drove young Dzhokhar to jihad, Mr. Kerry? Dzhokhar’s defense team and the mainstream media have tried to portray him as completely under the spell of his older brother Tamerlan, who was supposedly a jihadist Svengali leading his bedazzled and impressionable younger brother down the path to mass murder for Islam.
If that were true, it is nonetheless obvious that Dzhokhar was an apt and willing pupil. While hiding out in a pleasure boat just before his arrest, Dzhokhar wrote that he did it for the umma, the worldwide Muslim community: “the bombings were in retribution for the U.S. crimes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan that the victims of the Boston bombing were collateral damage, in the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world. Summing up, that when you attack one Muslim you attack all Muslims.” He didn’t think that he shouldn’t exact this “revenge” in light of the fact that America had been very, very good to him.
There also emerged during his trial a photograph of Dzhokhar sitting underneath the black flag of jihad and raising his right index finger in the gesture of adherence to Islamic monotheism that has become the symbol of loyalty to the Islamic State. Clearly the younger brother was as convinced and dedicated an Islamic jihadist as the elder – it is hard to imagine that if he weren’t, he would have gone along with Tamerlan’s mass murder plot, no matter how much he adored him.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should never have become a jihadist, if the mainstream view of what creates jihadists were remotely true: he was not poor, he was not uneducated, he was not deprived of opportunities. In fact, he had it all. And what do you get for the young jihadi who has everything? Apparently, a pressure cooker bomb packed with nails.
Jay Airahs says
Chechen Muslims sided with the Nazis in WWII
Chechen Muslims were involved in murdering 200 school children in Beslan
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stood for 45 seconds behind an eight year old child then set the bomb beside him and slithered away, behaving just like the dishonorable Muhammad.
Walter Sieruk says
It needs to be reiterated from yesterday. Which is that those two Muslim brothers,in their jihad, were following instruction of the Koran when they engage in the evil works of planting those bombs on that street of Boston which had killed and maimed all those innocent people. For example the Koran teaches in Sura 47:4.”Whenever you encounter the unbelievers strike off their heads until you make a great slaughter among them…” Nevertheless, in spite of all the facts, there are still some people who are in strong denial and yet have the gall to claim Islam is a “peaceful religion.” Such people ,very much, need to have a reality check and wake up to the truth and acknowledge that Islam is a religion of violence and killing.
Jay Airahs says
True, The news media relentlessly hunts for the — “Other than Islam”
He is not a confused “MONSTER”
He is not a helpless puppet of his brother.
He is not a soft focused Rolling Stone angel gone astray.
Then what could have possibly motivated him? Is it something we did?
No, He is a true Muslim. A selfish ungrateful Muslim. A follower of Muhammad.
Michael Copeland says
“Violence is the heart of Islam” – Ayatollah Yazdi, Iran.
Westman says
” …when protecting Islam and the Muslim `Ummah depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but even is an obligation..” — Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi:(Iranian)
Walter Sieruk says
It ,very much should be restated . That there are some people who might understandably ask “Just how could those religious brothers, in their jihad, be so vicious ,brutal cruel and murderous to plant those two bombs on that street of Boston that killed and maimed those people ?” The answer to that question ids found in the Bible. For the Bible teaches that there are some people who are so callous, heartless, malicious an and dangerous because they have had “their conscience seared with a hot iron.” First Timothy 4:2. [K.J.V.] The “hot iron” in this case is Islam.
Lia Wissing says
The other answer is also in the Bible: John 16: 2.
Walter Sieruk says
When the “holy book” of Islam, the Koran teaches that to Muslim should engage in such violence and killing of non-Muslims to such an extent as to make “a great slaughter among them…” 47:4. What those jhadist brothers did in the planting of the bombs that had indeed inflected a greater “slaughter among them then a sword can. The bring the mind what Thomas Paine wrote in his book THE AGE OF REASON. which had a good and valid point. For it reads that “Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.”
Scott says
Robert, “there you go again”…..telling the truth as usual….
But Robert….no one (most especially John Kerry) is listening. Certainly no one currently in power.
Our “Dear Leader” and his sycophants do not seem to have the American people’s backs, just their progressive leftist idealism.
How can we get the word out good sir?
Please keep up your great works and website!….
PatnTrucks says
What I do is go to my Senator and Congressman’s FACEBOOK pages and post my displeasure with our President and his ‘it is my job as President to protect islam” and such drivel he spouts on us. I also put on links to jihadwatch.com, acts17apologetics.com and Pamela Geller’s site, and http://www.politicalislam.com. I do this periodically and then go and LIKE when OTHERS also post. We have to continue to do this – put our pressure on the politicos – and don’t let up either!
Peter says
Obama’s “counter-terrorism” strategy, implemented in this case by the Federal Bureau of Incompetence, was directly responsible for the Jihadist attack on the Boston Marathon.
Jerry says
The Obamination:
An unindicted co-conspirator.
sheik yer'mami says
And who is leading the investigations over the gruesome murders of the three naive Jews whom they murdered a year before they set off the bombs?
Ayatrollah says
It was the jew’s fault for this one. The state of Israel and Palestine is what drove this pious brother to act.
Jacksonl03 says
The Boston incident illustrates vividly the power of indoctrination at an early age. Brought up as Muslims these boys came to believe, among other Islamic ideas, in the afterlife of paradise earned by literally following the dictates of the Koran. The paradise part is guaranteed, even improved if the adherent murders non-believers.
In my opinion the majority of true Muslims believe in this way just as the majority of Christians, Jews, et. al believe in their doctrines. The difference, of course, is that unlike Islam most religions don’t call for murder today.
So, you ask, why aren’t most Muslims committing atrocities? The answer is the afterlife belief isn’t foremost in the mind day to day. As long as life is going along more or less satisfactorly thoughts of death and afterlife aren’t part of everyday consciousness. It takes a mental trigger of some sort to bring it up and then to act on it: At some point for some personal reason death and the perfect afterlife becomes more attractive than life as expected in the future.
Westman says
I wonder if an Imam can be the trigger? These kids are conditioned by repetitious reciting. Is it the heavily indoctrinated Muslims that respond?
Have there been any Jihadists who never went to the Mosque?
BW022 says
Well… let’s just assume that poverty causes jihadis (despite all the proof that it doesn’t). So what? Why would one’s response to terrorism be some sort of ‘spread the wealth’?
First, can you spread the wealth? Has given huge amounts of aid to any country ever gotten it out of poverty? Are third world countries poor because they don’t get aid? Ill treatment? Colonialism? No… the reasons for poor countries is well known — their form of governance. Democracy, personal property, freedom of the press, women’s rights, etc. works every time. Anything else… failed all the time. There is no way you are going to remove poverty from Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, etc. any more than African countries will ever get out of poverty based on foreign ‘help’. And Iraq has shown you can’t force a democratic system on a country of Muslims. As long as the dictators (whether presidents-for-life, communists, or theocracies) control those countries… they will be poor no matter what the west does.
Second, the US (and west) are bankrupt. There is no Marshal plan anymore — even if people wanted to.
Third, can you wait that long? It took Europe and Japan 25+ years to recover from WWII. China and Russia stagnated for sixty plus years (after WWII) before invoking the necessary changes. Other countries took nearly as long and we still don’t know if they’ll make it. Muslim countries seem darn resistant to any form of government known to solve economic problems. If you told me the reason my neighbor was shooting at my children was because he is out of work…I’m not waiting years for him to find a job. I want him arrested, jailed, etc. now.
Forth, even if you buy the ’cause and effect’ argument — poverty makes good people terrorists… it doesn’t follow that the reserve is true — economic opportunity makes terrorists good people. Ok… so we have billions of poor people. (Ignoring the obvious that not all poor people are terrorists and most terrorists aren’t poor)… Then they are lost. They are all terrorists and we have no reason to believe that giving them money or opportunity will suddenly make them give up terrorism. And if not all poor people are terrorists, then poverty + (something else) makes terrorists and why don’t we identify that (something else) and see if it might be easier to arrest than poverty.
Fifth, what defines poverty? Nearly every nation on the planet is vastly wealthier ran 20+ years ago, yet poverty is up. You mean every country needs to be at western levels? Is that even possible given resources and populations? Exactly how wealthy does Syria, Jordan, Ethiopia, Yemen, etc. have to be before they stop sending out the suicide bombers?
So… even if poverty was the problem… wouldn’t your response be “Gee… it doesn’t seem realistic that we can solve poverty right now. It could take decades. etc. What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” How does ending immigration, securing western borders, not getting involved with certain overseas civil wars, not supporting Islamists, preventing Iran from getting the bomb, letting Israel deal with its own issues, etc. prevent dealing with poverty?
Mahendra Singh says
Every time I see this creep the face of that boy Richard Martin (Age 8)
flashes before my eyes. Even death penalty would be just a whitewash.
Prinz Eugen says
Sultan Barry’s policy on islamic terror is that there is no islamic terror, therefore, no policy to deal with it!. Barry has been the “protector of islam” from day one of his subversive presidency. His is not only aiming to elevate iran to be the leader of the worldwide islamic caliphate, but is now doing his best to elevate and honor the Castro boys — people forgot the executions which followed the bloody dictator’s rise to power! The Dem Hate-Amerika Coailtion is now not only pro-communist, but pro-beheaders, too! Any group wishing to destroy the US and Israel is welcomed by the America haters!
GOP is still bumbling, uncertain what to do! New laws will not deter the sultan Barry, he will just ignore them as is his custom. Impeachment is necessary … now!
citycat says
Obama has nailed it.
On bbc today-
“when you do something for fifty years and it doesn’t work it’s time to try something else”
How about then if it hasn’t worked for fourteen hundred years?
How about then if it hasn’t worked for two thousand and fifteen years?
How about if it hasn’t worked ever?
When has ever it worked?
And then dilapidated to this?
And the desperate face of civilization is cracking at the plastic smiles and will the truth seep through?
Probably not.
Plenty more smiles where that came from.
Asian Crusader says
Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan but spent most of his early life in Chechnya
While not crucial to the story, this may not be factually correct. Janet Reitman’s article in Rolling Stone mentions that other Chechens did not recognize the Tsarnaevs as fellow Chechens because they had NEVER lived in Chechnya at all. Moreover, Zubeidat Tsarnaev(a) is an Avar from neighboring Dagestan rather than Chechen. It appears that the family language was and is exclusively Russian.
There were some reports that Tsarnaev père had been the target of a blood feud in his native Chechnya, thus forcing the family to live in far-away (but Muslim) Kyrgyzstan. Tsarnaev senior is divorced from Zubeidat and has been keeping a low profile.
This may be important to understand a point often made by Robert Spencer (and others) in connection with the phenomenon of Muslim terrorists raised in Western societies. Contrary to MSM narratives, many Western jihadis come from families who had enthusiastically embraced Western ways for two generations. The “radicalized” youngsters are adopting a Wahhabi-inspired Muslim “culture” that had NEVER been their family’s “own culture” in the old country.