Hapless, Disorganized, and Irrational - What the Boston bombers had in common with most would-be ter

[DonViejo]

Hapless, Disorganized, and Irrational

What the Boston bombers had in common with most would-be terrorists

By John Mueller

Posted Monday, Apr 22, 2013, at 10:39 PM ET

Between Sept. 12, 2001, and last Monday, some 52 cases came to light in which the United States itself has been, or apparently has been, targeted for terrorism by Islamist extremists, whether based in the United States or abroad.

By far the most striking difference between the Boston Marathon killings and these earlier cases is that, for the first time, terrorists actually were able to assemble and detonate bombs. Many previous plotters harbored visions of carrying out bombings, and in 10 of the cases, they were supplied with fantasy-fulfilling, if bogus, bombs by obliging FBI informants. But until Boston, no would-be terrorists had been able to make and set one off on their own. And, except for four bombs detonated on the London transport system in 2005, nor has any terrorist in the United Kingdom. This is surprising in part because in the 1970s there were hundreds of terrorist incidents on U.S. soil, most of them bombings, killing 72 people.

In many other respects, however, the Boston Marathon bombing is quite similar to the other 52 cases. For example, the Boston perpetrators were clearly not suicidal, which is the standard in American cases. In only six of the earlier plots were the perpetrators clearly willing to die in their terrorist effort.
And except for their ability to fabricate and detonate bombs, the Boston terrorists do not seem to have been any more competent than most of their predecessors. The Department of Homeland Security, in assessing what it ominously calls ...

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[DonCoquixote]

1. in other words

Terrorists are often LOSERS.

Like a kid named Osama who was a drug addict, who blew his kidneys from all the Heroin he did, all because his family hated him as a concubine's son, from a father who was too busy making money to be a dad.

Like a former Confederate general named Nathan Bedford Forest that was so dejected after the North kicked Dixie's ass in the Civil war, that he and his fraternity buddies would dress in ghost sheets and beat up black people, calling themselves the "kyklos clan" later to me mispronounced as "ku Klux."

Like a rich kid named George W. Bush that wanted to prove he was not the stupid brother of Jeb, and in the process of becoming president, enabled and empowered the same bastards that wanted to hang his pa just because the elder Bush realized taxes had to be raised. Who lied his country into war so that he could avenge his Daddy, even though Daddy turns out to have advised him against it.

The list can go on, an Austrian art school reject named Adolph Hitler, a failed novelist named Josef Stalin, all people who, to quote Eric Hoffer, seek to write in blood the literature they know they do not have the talent to write in words. We can now add a boxer that beat his wife and blew his citizenship named Tamerlane, and Dzofar, his submissive little brother, whose one and only contribution will be that he illustrated that terrorists are just another criminal, to be arrest by cops, put into court, and then thrown into a regular old jail, where they can spend the rest of their days making license plates.

[jessie04]

3. The older brother used him and sent Dzofer's life to hell now.

Tamerlane was evil on so many levels.

[jessie04]

2. No...not to competant...thankfully.

There were few sucessful but most werent. Only a partial list...

WTC1
WTC2
SHOE BOMBER
Padilla
Lackawanna Six
Brooklyn Bridge attempt
Columbus Ohio Mall plot
New York Stock Exchange attempt
New York Subway attempt
Sears Tower Plot
The London 10- Flight plot
Fort Hood Attack
Quantico Va plot
Zazi Subway plot
Underwear Bomber
Times Square Bomber

And now the Boston Marathon Attack

[treestar]

4. The people at the mosque don't seem to me to have had much to tell authorities about

Ranting against Thanksgiving or MLK doesn't mean the person will do something violent. No one can predict this sort of thing. No one knows exactly who is going to do it - there may be many such young men and most of them are just full of hot air.

Same with the parents. They may be shitty parents as described, but how could they know their own kids would do such a thing. Tamerlan was "a jerk," but there are a lot of jerks out there.