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April 23rd, 2013 
Peter Nolan
by Glenn Greenwald
The
Guardian
Two very disparate
commentators, Ali Abunimah and Alan Dershowitz, both raised serious
questions over the weekend about a claim that has been made over
and over about the bombing of the Boston Marathon: namely, that
this was an act of terrorism. Dershowitz was on
BBC Radio on Saturday and, citing the lack of knowledge about
motive, said (at the 3:15 mark): “It’s not even clear under the
federal terrorist statutes that it qualifies as an act of terrorism.”
Abunimah wrote a
superb analysis of whether the bombing fits the US government’s
definition of “terrorism”, noting that “absolutely no evidence has
emerged that the Boston bombing suspects acted ‘in furtherance of
political or social objectives'” or that their alleged act was ‘intended
to influence or instigate a course of action that furthers a political
or social goal.'” Even a former CIA Deputy Director, Phillip Mudd,
said
on Fox News on Sunday that at this point the bombing seems more
like a common crime than an act of terrorism.
Over the last
two years, the US has witnessed at least three other episodes of
mass, indiscriminate violence that killed more people than the Boston
bombings did: the Tucson shooting by Jared Loughner in which 19
people (including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) were shot, six of whom
died; the Aurora movie theater shooting by James Holmes in which
70 people were shot, 12 of whom died; and the Sandy Hook elementary
school shooting by Adam Lanza in which 26 people (20 of whom were
children) were shot and killed. The word “terrorism” was almost
never used to describe that indiscriminate slaughter of innocent
people, and none of the perpetrators of those attacks was charged
with terrorism-related crimes. A decade earlier, two high school
seniors in Colorado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, used guns and
bombs to murder 12 students and a teacher, and almost nobody called
that “terrorism” either.
In the Boston
case, however, exactly the opposite dynamic prevails. Particularly
since the identity of the suspects was revealed, the word “terrorism”
is being used by virtually everyone to describe what happened. After
initially (and commendably) refraining from using the word, President
Obama has since said that “we will investigate any associations
that these terrorists may have had” and then said that
“on Monday an act of terror wounded dozens and killed three people
at the Boston Marathon”. But as Abunimah notes, there is zero evidence
that either of the two suspects had any connection to or involvement
with any designated terrorist organization.
More significantly,
there is no known evidence, at least not publicly available, about
their alleged motives. Indeed, Obama himself – in the
statement he made to the nation after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was
captured on Friday night – said that “tonight there are still many
unanswered questions” and included this “among” those “unanswered
questions”:
“Why did
young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities
and our country, resort to such violence?”
The overarching
principle here should be that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is entitled to a
presumption of innocence until he is actually proven guilty. As
so many cases have proven – from accused (but exonerated) anthrax
attacker Stephen Hatfill to accused (but exonerated) Atlanta
Olympic bomber Richard Jewell to dozens
if not hundreds of Guantanamo detainees accused of being the
“worst of the worst” but who were guilty of nothing – people who
appear to be guilty based on government accusations and trials-by-media
are often completely innocent. Media-presented evidence is no substitute
for due process and an adversarial trial.
April
23, 2013
Copyright
© 2013 The
Guardian
Source Article from http://lewrockwell.com/spl5/why-is-boston-terrorism.html
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