I was on the computer last night, surfing, when the S.O. ran into tell me the news was on with pictures of Boston. That it was all horrific-goes without saying.
All I could think about was two things-one, how truly awful it must have been with flying metal all around and very little places to go. And two, how soon would it be before someone linked it to some Arab or Islamic group somewhere. As I told the S.O. at the time-this will get really ugly.
And of course, true to form, we have the first folks already doing exactly that. Even though-as far as I know-there is no definitive proof. All speculation about who did this is premature and pointless. We would do well to remember, that the last US bombing of a sports event came from a right wing extremist.
However people who stand on their pedestals and point out that "We are at war, there will be more bombings, and not just by Islamic terrorists." are both correct-and naive in the extreme. We are not at war-except in the places we chose to execute military action. However, we are always fighting criminal elements. Regardless of who set yesterday's bombs-they are nothing but criminals and will be hunted down and treated as such. If there is one lesson we should have learned from the past 11 years-is not overreact. We did that in the early years of the decade, and where did it get us? Nowhere, except older, poorer, and more behind the rest of the world.
Criminals are always with us-and I can't help but wonder if the criminal who did this was "home grown" vice being imported from abroad. We don't-really-know.
But as the Atlantic points out these types of incidents are not the rule:
Remember after 9/11 when people predicted we'd see these sorts of attacks every few months? That never happened, and it wasn't because the TSAconfiscated knives and snow globes at airports. Give the FBI credit for rolling up terrorist networks and interdicting terrorist funding, but we also exaggerated the threat. We get our ideas about how easy it is to blow things up from television and the movies. It turns out that terrorism is much harder than most people think. It's hard to find willing terrorists, it's hard to put a plot together, it's hard to get materials, and it's hard to execute a workable plan. As a collective group, terrorists are dumb, and they make dumb mistakes; criminal masterminds are another myth from movies and comic books.
Even the 9/11 terrorists got lucky.
If it's hard for us to keep this in perspective, it will be even harder for our leaders. They'll be afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism — or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity — they will be branded as "soft on terror." And they'll be afraid that Americans might vote them out of office. Perhaps they're right, but where are the leaders who aren't afraid? What has happened to "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?
Terrorism, even the terrorism of radical Islamists and right-wing extremists and lone actors all put together, is not an "existential threat" against our nation. Even the events of 9/11, as horrific as they were, didn't do existential damage to our nation. Our society is more robust than it might seem from watching the news. We need to start acting that way.