Now that the euphoria is over (or is it?) regarding the killing/capture of the Boston Marathon bombers, perhaps some conclusions can be drawn, not the least of which is the almost total inattention to the tragedy vis-à-vis the fertilizer-factory explosion in West, Texas, that in terms of lives lost and damage was much worse than in Boston/Watertown, MA. It’s almost as if the town actually wasn’t virtually blown away and 14 first-responders didn’t die.
The first conclusion is the same as the first every time, to wit, that for probably 24+ hours just about everything that was reported by all TV-media establishments was erroneous. This is so predictable that one should pay almost no attention to any of them – even in the midst of briefings by the appropriate officials. One can only wonder how the various stories are taken seriously by responsible reporters, who seem to feel that hearsay is the same as hard news. One remembers the Florida vote-count in 2000 or the various accounts of natural disasters as initially reported and then interminably “cleaned-up” after the fact, if at all.
One can gauge the importance of an event by the rush of the network “super-anchors” to the scene, as if no one else is smart enough to explain what happened. It was interesting to watch the various programs depicting the events given their own names, just like the Evening News that comes along every day…complete with the proper graphics and the over-the-top music and wild animation – the best show in town. This went on for days and nights, a 24/7 thing that the newsies (and commercial-gang) probably thought the public just couldn’t do without.
In the “official briefings,” the usual large amount of time was devoted to a regaling of the public with a list of all the agencies involved, how utterly well they performed and how the public should extol their agents and feel safe. This isn’t to disparage the first responders and all the others but just to mention that none of that stuff is actually important and, indeed, often sounds so boastful that it turns people off. People who do great things often say little or nothing about it. Everyone knows this is a great country and has great responders of every kind.
The most salient fact was that one teenager could hold a million or so people and thousands of businesses and other enterprises hostage for a whole night and day. Everything was ordered closed-down and people ordered to stay inside. Even Harvard was closed. One understands that the situation was fluid and that there could have been possible dangers, but neither New York City nor Washington was closed down on 9/11, and that involved a much worse catastrophe than Boston. Imagine such a protocol in Kabul, Baghdad, Amman or Jerusalem, which would be necessitated every day. People would starve. In fact, Chicago vis-à-vis murder is bad enough.
This fact alone told the Muslim jihad-monsters worldwide that this nation can be cowed to a standstill by nearly anything…the worst sort of message to be sending those cutthroats, an invitation to just pick an event and scare the U.S. to death, while shutting down all services. Egad! This should not happen again, all the bluster about the episode “bringing the people together and showing the world a thing or two” being just so much blowing-smoke. To cap off the euphoria, a Boston baseball player immortalized the day with a vulgar four-letter word spoken to the world. How utterly stupid…but Obama’s FCC chairman thought it was great!
The law-enforcement folks did their usual excellent work but it needs remembering that but for a couple or so well-placed surveillance cameras the bombers could still be in Cambridge, laughing. The airliner shoe-bombers would have been successful if, either through stupidity or cold feet, they hadn’t failed to make their bombs explode. The same can be said for the character who parked an SUV-loaded bomb at Times Square but merely started a small fire instead of igniting his bomb, which could have blown away much of the area. In short, it’s only a matter of time when, not if, something else happens.
The “sleeper cells” are in this country. The Boston bombers most likely didn’t work alone. For instance, no one has indicated any visible means of support for the Tsarnaev brothers or their automobiles. It’s doubtful that one’s being a (failing) student and the other a sometime boxer would cut it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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