What is your "take-away" from the events in Boston?

We have to get serious about the root causes of Islamist terrorism. We need to face an inconvenient truth. All the information I have point to a planned terrorist activity. The older brother seems to have believed in the holy jihad, see my reply here

www.fluther.com/158304/is-anyone-else-watching-the-situation-going-down-in-boston-live/#quip2702407

Boston is actually a safer place right now. Terrorists choose places and times no one is expecting.

We should keep going to large public places. We should not change our way of life. We should learn how to calculate risk. Driving a car after 911 was more dangerous than taking a plane after 911. In fact an additional 1500 people died in car accidents.

Access to weaponry should be restricted as much as possible.

Both young men seem to have been well educated, and were successful. One was in medical school. One won a boxing title in 2010. Their friends describe them as popular. They have been living in the US for 10 years.
Beating terrorism will be harder than I thought if exposure to the American Dream didn’t sway these two.

The family where the boy was killed, his sister lost a leg & the mother/wife underwent surgery on her brain as a result of her injuries. You know what though…most of all i’ll take the spirit of humanity, the determination to fight off & overcome terrorists & their twisted agenda.
In the end, when the dust settles, it’s this defiance in the face of evil that wins through, good on ya Boston.

Two guys with unsophisticated means can completely captivate the attention of the entire population and its leadership, bring a major city to a standstill and inflict $1 billiion in economic damages. That’s the takeaway that I’m sure isn’t lost on thousands of others with ideological grudges.

@mattbrowne, we do need to get serious about the root causes with Islamist terrorism (not to mention gun control, the economy, immigration, and countless etceteras). We seem to be better at killing our enemies than working to keep them from becoming enemies. I worry, though, that our government and our citizenry are unable to agree and work together on anything. And it’s getting steadily worse. I fear that In the end, our divisiveness is what going to kill us.

@filmfann – Allegedly, the FBI was warned about the older brother already two years ago about jihadist connections.

I like @mattbrowne ‘s logic here, “lightning never strikes twice in the same place”. As for @janbb ‘s question I think what we get out of this tragedy is that life is (more or less) unpredictable. Terrorism can happen anywhere, just like an earthquake or an epidemic. It is one of life’s many risks, and the sooner we accept this, the less power these kinds of events will have over our lives.

@ucme, I hope you’re not right. I fear that you are.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room – This is about a battle of the minds.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room No…you’ve lost me there.

@fremen_warrior – I strongly disagree. Terrorism is not the same as earthquakes. We can change the minds of people. Cannibalism is not the same as earthquakes. We can change what people eat.

@mattbrowne it is the same in the respect that anyone can be a potential terrorist. A policeman, a professor, your mailman, etc. Ask any expert and they will tell you this. You cannot predict who will turn to terrorism or when they will do it. All you can do is reduce the chances of something happening (ok in this way you are right, we cannot influence natural disasters in such a way yet), or minimise the potential damage dealt, but we cannot prevent terrorism, nor can we accurately predict where it will occur.

Sorry, @ucme, my comment was meant for @thorninmud. I was trying to say that while I wish his takeaway wasn’t right, I’m afraid that it is.

@fremen_warrior – I don’t accept the idea that terrorism is something that humanity can’t get rid of. I know that it might take more than a few decades, but if we do something about it, we can make it less likely over time. We can prevent terrorism and we need a two-pronged approach: increased security measures and eliminating the root causes. In this case mainstream Muslims need to change their attitude. In this case mainstream Muslims need to listen to people like Irshad Manji. It’s mainstream Muslims who remain inactive about non-militant Islamists. And it’s non-militant Islamists who create a small number of militant Islamists able to inflict a lot of pain and misery.

Yeah I thought as much @Pachyderm_In_The_Room , I mean, my post is very positive in it’s outlook.

@mattbrowne I understand your point, though you seem to look at the problem from a very narrow perspective. What about other types of terrorism (think Theodore Kaczynski)?

Sorry, @mattbrowne, but I can’t agree that it’s pssible to rid humanity of terrorism. It’s a noblle quest and I’m for doing anything to advance the cause, but I fear the drive to kill others in the name of both guided and misguided causes is far too widely embraced and deeply engrained (not unlike prejudice against others whom we perceive as “different” from ourselves).

@ucme, yes, I thought your comment was indeed positive. Good on you!

@fremen_warrior – A good example is neo-Nazism. A vast majority of people in the West show zero tolerance for it and say so openly. Neo-Nazis are being ostracized. Another example is left-wing terrorism which we had in Germany. Groups like the RAF no longer exist.

@mattbrowne all good examples, however I believe they point to a larger pattern. Terrorism has been in existence since ancient times. The ideologies and motives change, the means change, but it never really goes away. You put a lid on one extremism, and then you see someone else using the same tactics, as a means to achieving another goal. You are an idealist in a reality far from perfect.

To eradicate terrorism from civilization we would need a shift in perception so profound as to rid our species of all violent tendencies. You would need an enlightened population made up entirely out of ‘monks’ to achieve what you propose. I am not saying it is not a worthy goal, quite the contrary! I just believe that it is unattainable within the next millennium or two.

Ideally, we would pause here and take a more sanguine look at how we respond to events like this.

A good first step would be to reassess what constitutes a “victory” in the context of terrorist acts. Victory is not capturing or killing the perpetrators. That’s got to be done of course, but the nature of this kind of conflict is such that the terrorists can be the victors even though dead. The terrorists understand this, but it’s a lesson we’re slow to learn.

I’m not sure that we “won” this round, despite our “USA!” cheers. I think we’ve only confirmed our key vulnerability: we massively overreact. Now, if the most important thing is to capture or kill the perps, then yes, “nothing succeeds like excess”, as Shaw put it. But it’s important to understand that our excess is, in this case, our vulnerability.

From the perspective of terrorists, it must now appear ridiculously easy to throw this country into turmoil. Our population is so insistent on seeing our leaders take measures designed to make us feel secure (even if they’re really only for show) that the leaders dare not pull out all the stops. Then there’s the media frenzy feeding into the obsession. In a way, it’s the media, not the bomb, that is the terrorist’s main weapon in this conflict.

I don’t really know what to do about this. I’d love to see us develop more of a “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON” spirit, but maybe that’s not possible. Hell, we can’t even seem to do that with internet trolls, much less terrorists.

The thought that we could suddenly die anywhere, absolutely any time, is one that we should have already.

Also, I’ve been thinking about how many people have been blown up by terrorists in Iraq ahead of provincial elections. Barely a word about it in the U.S. because we don’t want to know what happens after we bestowed freedom and democracy upon them. I fear that the American population is so whipped up right now that we could be led by the nose into another war, if it would serve state interests.

I think all the time about how my tax money pays for drone strikes that inevitably kill fucking children in Pakistan and other places. Collateral damage.

I’ve been thinking about how scared I was to realize that some people essentially would love to see all Muslims/Ayrabs removed from the face of the earth.

@bookish1 my point exactly.

I was surprised. Surprised that they would do something, surprised at the media reaction, surprised at, how in just a couple of days, the bombers were picked out of a sea of faces. Surprised that the city went into lockdown, and how readily people complied. Surprised that the DHS wasn’t visible (insofar as I was watching the proceedings), since this is supposedly their bailiwick. Surprised at how the chase (more than the tragedy) stayed at the top of people’s minds – towards the end, yesterday evening, I could ask my co-workers, “Did they get the guy?” and they would know who I was talking about.
And I’m surprised that @mattbrowne is neglecting the homemade nature of these explosives. You can make gunpowder, at home, very easily.

In this troubled world there will always be evil cowards willing to blow up innocent women and babies to promote some fickle cause.

I’ve completed the Boston marathon 7 times including last year’s race. I’ll do it 7 more times if I’m physically able.

No one is ever completely safe. As long as people believe might makes right we will be at risk.

However, the greatest risk to people in the U. S. today is heart disease, followed by cancer and automobiles not terrorists. In the world, the greatest risk is probably starvation.

edited after submission.

After the relief of learning that White Hat was alive and in custody, I just felt a sense of profound sadness. So many people who know this young man have been interviewed, all saying that he’s intelligent, popular, good-hearted, and likeable. How does a young life, with such promise, become so unthinkably twisted? Now, that life is wasted forever.

Honestly, I’m not very affected by it. I refuse to be terrorized. I refuse to be scared out of my routine or to stay away from places I want to be.

Terrorists will never conquer me.

@thorninmud: “I’m not sure that we “won” this round, despite our “USA!” cheers. I think we’ve only confirmed our key vulnerability: we massively overreact.”

^^ This. Thank you.

It is a lose lose situation. Had the authorities not reacted as they did, they would have been criticized for not capturing the bomber. So they put up the net, caught the guy, now it is said they overreacted. They caught the guy alive, and didn’t read him his miranda rights so are being criticized for that. But if they had and another bomb went off while they were reading, they would have been criticized for that. It is impossible to please all of the people all of the time. All in all, I think the situation was handled satisfactorily.

The ultimate irony will be if the little terrorist, excuse me, nice normal popular child, escapes restitution on such a technicality.

The whole thing was a bit of a mess. How did the younger kid get away the first time they had them in a gun fight? How did the kid end up in a boat that had already been searched? Seems we have some holes in our law enforcement.

Nonetheless, I’m glad we got them and I don’t think the effort was overdone. I can’t help but believe that if they had not been caught, we’d be looking at another incident from them. And I suspect the next one would have been more spectacular. A couple of days to track them down doesn’t seem like too high a price to get them off the street.

To answer the question, my takeaway is that exercise can be hazardous to your healh.

@Jaxk Just about anything that we do or don’t do can be hazardous to your health.

@fremen_warrior – I’m not saying that we can eliminate crime. I’m saying that we can eliminate terrorism. I’m also saying that we can eliminate war. Just because some human phenomenon has existed for thousands of years doesn’t mean it will continue to exist for thousands of years.

@Nullo – Here’s the difference. When people get drunk, alcohol lowers their inhibitions. This might concern sexual behavior or how they drive a vehicle. In some cases it can make people more violent, especially during an intense argument. Easy access to guns makes it easier for people to kill. You can’t make gunpowder on the spot. And even if you got it prepared, it’s difficult to use during an argument.

Just because we can’t prevent the making of gunpowder to be used during a terrorist act, this doesn’t mean we can’t restrict the purchase of firearms.

@mattbrowne I’m not saying that we can eliminate crime Where did I write that?

I’m saying that we can eliminate terrorism. And I say it cannot be done.

Just because some human phenomenon has existed for thousands of years doesn’t mean it will continue to exist for thousands of years. It also doesn’t mean it cannot continue to.

Religion has been around for a very long time – you might have expected it to go away by now, but for some reason it keeps holding on. Same goes for violence – you’d think after so many wars and infighting humanity would have gotten over such impulses by now, but it just isn’t so.

You cannot expect to declare “Terrorism is bad, mmkay?” and expect it to disappear. As long as there are different ideologies, and disparities between people’s living standards, there will be violence, and there will be terrorism.

@mattbrowne My point is that Boston got a bombing, not a mass shooting. There was a shooting match with police, but that was afterwards. Drugs and alcohol are similarly unrelated.