Boston Bombers: Liberal Hopes Dashed

[_bcspace]

The question was asked:

"How many Boston Libs spent the night wishing they had an AR-15 with a high capacity magazine?"

The answer:

"All of them."

[_moksha]

So liberals wanted this to be the act of some of our home grown right-wing terrorists?

[_palerobber]

What Would Hitchens Say?

[_bcspace]

So liberals wanted this to be the act of some of our home grown right-wing terrorists?

Good 'ol moksha. Always playing the ignorant hick.

Ya know, the younger one's classmates describe him as a 'pothead'. I thought the wacky weed was supposed to calm you down man.

[_Kevin Graham]

Yes, I'm sure those were your exact sentiments when Sarah Palin was trotting out her Downs Syndrome baby during her pitch for VP, or George Bush's use of 2,700 American deaths to justify the Iraq war, or his photos with "snowflake children" during his veto of stem cell research, etc. Funny how none of you thought these examples constituted "props" at all.

These kinds of remarks really show the difference between Democrats and Republicans nowadays. You have conditioned yourselves to start laughing and ridiculing those affected most in the wake of the most tragic events, all for the purpose of scoring political points. Comparing Giffords to bcspace's remarks is case in point. The remark about AR-15s wanted by Liberals in Boston was idiotic and insensitive, but that is precisely the kind of thing we've come to expect from Republicans. While Democrats in my family and neighborhood are monitoring the news hourly with teary eyes and genuine concern for those in Boston, Republicans on Facebook and the forums are coming up with jokes and trying to spin this to their political advantage. Brazilians visiting us who have no political stake either way, observe this and ask me, "are these people even human"?

This BS psychoanalysis on the Right about what the "Left" hopes and wants is just piss poor political commentary designed to energize an bigoted base. It is the kind of fodder ignorant bloggers love to use to attract more racists and bigots to their cause. But ultimately, you cannot win arguments on substance, so you have to invoke emotional favor from the like minded ignorant. Hence, the sloganeering and pithy, insensitive jabs that would make people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh proud.

Obviously, as Erick Erickson admitted, what the Republicans were hoping to get out of this tragedy was an Al Qaeda operation so they could then say "AH HA! Obama hasn't protected us from them after all!" But the best you could get out of it was someone saying these kids were in some sense "Muslims." Well, that's got to be news to anyone who actually knew them. Everything I've heard so far from interviews with people who knew and grew up with them say they were typical American kids, nonreligious, who did stupid crap and smoked pot. Hardly indicative of your typical Muslim radical. So far there is no connection to any Muslim terrorist organizations or any ideological basis in Jihad or whatever. These kids also came to America under George Bush's watch and assimilated to American culture quite well, but I don't expect any of these facts to stand in the way of Republicans who will undoubtedly start gloating about how a terrorist attack took place under Obama, therefore he is to blame, as he is for everything else under the sun.

And I suspect there will be no appreciation for the impressive manner in which Obama kept his promise less than a week later, when he said the culprits would be identified, found and brought to justice. To be perfectly honest I was very skeptical of this, but the way in which the FBI and the Boston Police initiated and completed this manhunt was nothing short of impressive. To say the least, it was totally different from the "Tora Bora" clusterfuq that took place under Bush's incompetent leadership.

[_ajax18]

So liberals wanted this to be the act of some of our home grown right-wing terrorists?

Isn't that what the link subgenius provided states?

"Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American"

[_Kevin Graham]

Isn't that what the link subgenius provided states?

No, apparently you didn't read it. And this is just one person's view, not the collective view of "liberals." But his reasons for "hoping" this aren't what bcspace was thinking.

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There is a double standard: White terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves, Islamists are existential threats

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.

This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.

To know that’s true is to simply consider how America reacts to different kinds of terrorism.

Though FBI data show fewer terrorist plots involving Muslims than terrorist plots involving non-Muslims, America has mobilized a full-on war effort exclusively against the prospect of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the moniker “War on Terrorism” has come to specifically mean “War on Islamic Terrorism,” involving everything from new laws like the Patriot Act, to a new torture regime, to new federal agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to mass surveillance of Muslim communities.

By contrast, even though America has seen a consistent barrage of attacks from domestic non-Islamic terrorists, the privilege and double standards baked into our national security ideologies means those attacks have resulted in no systemic action of the scope marshaled against foreign terrorists. In fact, it has been quite the opposite — according to Darryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, the conservative movement backlash to merely reporting the rising threat of such domestic terrorism resulted in DHS seriously curtailing its initiatives against that particular threat. (Irony alert: When it comes specifically to fighting white non-Muslim domestic terrorists, the right seems to now support the very doctrine it criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for articulating — the doctrine that sees fighting terrorism as primarily “an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort” and not something more systemic.)

Enter the Boston bombing. Coming at the very moment the U.S. government is planning to withdraw from Afghanistan, considering cuts to the Pentagon budget, discussing civil liberties principles and debating landmark immigration legislation, the attack could easily become the fulcrum of all of those contentious policy debates — that is, depending on the demographic profile of the assailant.

If recent history is any guide, if the bomber ends up being a white anti-government extremist, white privilege will likely mean the attack is portrayed as just an isolated incident — one that has no bearing on any larger policy debates. Put another way, white privilege will work to not only insulate whites from collective blame, but also to insulate the political debate from any fallout from the attack.

It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world. As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted. At that point, it’s easy to imagine conservatives citing Boston as a reason to block immigration reform defense spending cuts and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.

If that sounds hard to believe, just look at yesterday’s comments by right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, whose talking points often become Republican Party doctrine. Though authorities haven’t even identified a suspect in the Boston attack, she (like other conservatives) seems to already assume the assailant is foreign, and is consequently citing the attack as rationale to slam the immigration reform bill.

The same Laura Ingraham, of course, was one of the leading voices criticizing the Department of Homeland Security for daring to even report on right-wing domestic terrorism. In that sense, she perfectly embodies the double standard that, more than anything, will determine the long-term political impact of the Boston bombing.

[_ajax18]

But his reasons for "hoping" this aren't what bcspace was thinking.

And exactly what was BCSpace thinking the liberal author's reasons for hoping this were?

It seems to me that whenever anything bad happens in this country, there's a concerted effort amongst liberals to find a way to blame it on white men. They do this to the point that they call people white men who are not, like George Zimmerman. He wasn't even culturally white. His first language was Spanish. But if you listened to MSNBC, you'd think he was an Anglo Saxon member of the KKK.

Barry Obama proclaims, "Hold on now, just because they turned out to be Islamic terrorists, doesn't necessarily mean they were Islamic terrorists. All cultures are equal so even if it's true, we can't report it that way, lest it contradict that liberal narrative. We can only report it if we find something bad done by a white man and give it equal or more time. It's affirmative action in the criminal justice system. I think I understand it now.

I'm sorry this latest terrorist attack didn't turn out to be a white man like you wanted. Maybe next time you'll get you're wish and you and Beastie can rant and yammer about the evils of conservative white Americans to your heart's content.

And by the way, what do Timothy McVeigh, the guy that mailed Ricin to Senator Wicker and President Obama, the Aurora shooter, and the Virginia tech shooter all have in common? They were all registered democrats.

[_MeDotOrg]

Eyes on the prize, everyone.

If someone had told you a week ago:

1. That terrorists planted two IEDs packed with nails and ball bearings at the Boston Marathon finish line
2. The devices blew up within seconds of each other.
3. The terrorists had two subsequent battles with police. In the first, one terrorist died after throwing bombs as well as automatic weapons fire. The second was captured a day later after another gun shootout.

How many people would you say were killed?

Four is a blessedly low number. I'm not belittling anyone's suffering, I'm saying the suffering could have been much, much worse.

As far as I can tell, these guys didn't give a crap if they blew up liberals or conservatives. Can't we just be thankful that the fatalities were as low as they were and be proud and grateful that the situation was resolved quickly?

[_ludwigm]

Khm...

Twitter mistakes Czech Republic for Chechnya in Boston bombings

Americans please take note, Czech Republic is a once-troubled yet entirely peaceful ally tucked into the heart of Central Europe.

Chechnya is a restive Russian region that survived its most recent spate of bloody violence just a decade ago.

It remains a simmering section of the Caucasuses, itself a swirling mix of ethnicities, cultures and language.

Please don’t confuse them, you’re really annoying the Czechs.

As a side note, Twitter users, please verify your information before hitting “tweet.” You have no idea how fast your missives – no matter how well intentioned – can spread misinformation.

To this we offer several tweets lamenting the fact two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings are from Czech Republic.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan were born in Chechnya.

The confusion caught fire in Czech Republic, with at least one newspaper suggesting intensified geography lessons for American students.

The Czech ambassador to the United States decided that the accussations had become so intense it was time to issue a statement.

Ambassador Petr Gandalovic said:

As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/gl ... n-bombings


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History repeats itself...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cey35bBWXls