Ageism, intelligence and terrorism
I've been seeing a lot of comments about the age of the two terrorists. I'm surprised that so many seem to know so little about something that has dominated our national conversation for over a decade. Terrorists can be any age, many who martyr themselves are actually younger. The older terrorists like them young, 'cause they're more impressionable and tend to be more angst-y. These 2 are exactly the right age to be terrorists. Most of the terrorists in Beslan were 20-35. Ask any soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq and they'll tell you about little kids placing IEDs to kill American soldiers.
As far as intelligence goes, you just have to be able to follow directions and solder to make a bomb. If the younger of the two was indeed a med student (or pre-med), then he is plenty intelligent enough to make a bomb. Just because they are devolving at this point, knowing they are moments away from capture, doesn't mean they couldn't have planned this themselves. They certainly could have had help, but they could be on their own too. If I had to guess, the older brother, now dead, decided to bring jihad to the US and convinced his little brother to help and now the little brother is flailing because he doesn't have the influence of the "ringmaster," so to speak.
However, if they don't take someone alive, we may never know what the heck provoked these guys to go jihadist on Boston.
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