Prior
Boston = OWS
Well, seeing everyone
else wants to jump to conclusions why not me. I'll put my bet on OWS (Occupy Wall Street), Boston chapter. Said it privately from day one and the combination of the just released photos and lack of any chest thumping from our Islamic friends points to domestic terrorism. And "right wing" extremists have a history of targeting federal facilities and abortion clinics so this does not fit their profile at all. Apologies to OWS in advance if I am wrong.
My guess is this is silent retribution for what was done by the DA/FBI to Aaron Swartz, the MIT student who killed himself last month. You can look up that sad story yourself. I should add that Anonymous is an outside possibility too but as many in that group were supporters/participants in the OWS movement, it is difficult to separate them.
[4/20/13] Updated
Well this is all turning out quite interesting to say the least. Still no known motive but they do have the younger brother alive so hopefully that will be established. Listening to the interviews of people who knew them, in particular the younger brother, it really is hard to figure this out. Even supposing his older brother was somehow "radicalized", there were no signs he would follow in that path - if anything, quite the opposite. A lot of people are pointing to twitter this, youtube that but one needs to be cautious in looking at social media websites claiming to be from anyone. It is incredibly easy to spoof a page and unfortunately, there is a subclass of people on the net who seem to do this after every tragic event - create a page, populate it with comments or content and then post about it all over the net "Look what I found!" Even so, taking some of the videos at face value, none seem to be about going on jihad but instead seem to relate to prayer and details around that.
Even the older brother is difficult to pin down. A jihadi that was a regional golden glove winner? Who wanted to go to the Olympics to box? And if some of the purported photos of him with his girlfriend/wife are in fact real, he certainly did not press her very hard on dress code. Finally, while there have been instances of displaced Chechen fighters (or terrorists/militants if you are Russian) becoming mercenary and joining up with Arabs and others in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq and Syria, there is no history of any independent actions against any state other than Russia. In effect, what happens in Chechnya stays in Chechnya (or Moscow).
It is really critical to now find out the motives of these two and of course any other outside connections they may have had. There is one report that the FBI interviewed the older brother after a foreign service said they thought he was involved with terrorists (hmm... Russia?) The FBI is reported to have investigated and found no connections, including a personal interview with the suspect. In this day and age one has to believe the FBI/'DHS would scour the world fairly well before giving a clean bill of health - after all, look how hard it is to get off the no-fly list even if you are a white bread American. So, was this a "lone wolf" operation? If so, what was the trigger? Are any actions by the US likely to trigger more such attacks, if so, is that risk acceptable? If this was an externally directed operation, by whom? Is this some new group or off-shoot of Al Qaeda? After all, the usual jihadi groups have been strangely silent.
Finally (perhaps offensive to some), the actions of the media, police, federal law enforcement and White House has been idiotic. The circus that they made Boston into has served only to
increase the chances of similar such attacks in the future. To every wannabe jihadi sitting at home watching their first thoughts must be "look at the chaos I can cause just by killing a handful of people," "look at the millions of dollars they spent," "look at how they shut everything down out of
fear of a teen-ager," "look how they even get paranoid in other citiies!"
Why did they shut down the hockey and baseball games? Did they really think the last brother was going to come screaming down the street in a stolen car, Mad Max like, and crash into the building? Or that he might get even remotely close to the event before somebody recognized him (not to mention he was likely to have been wounded)? In the end, it was somebody who
finally went outside of their house that found the suspect -
NOT the police. Yet Bostonians were sent to cower in their homes until it was "safe" to come outside.
Hopefully, after this event, people will start to question the bill of goods they were sold by local and federal officials about "security" and how giving them "x,y and z" was necessary to protect them. Yes, just like thousands of public cameras stopped this attack. Yes, just like "facial recognition" stopped this attack. Yes, just like warrantless actions by FBI, CIA and NSA stopped this attack. Perhaps they needed a fleet of drones overhead (I'm sure somebody will be stupid enough to suggest that). The bottom line is America has wasted countless billions upon security theater and is no safer but citizens
have given up significant civil liberties and protections under the constitution. For what? Nothing. Americans need to stop being pussies and stand up not only to the terrorists but to their own government too.
Ok, off the soap box.
