Bombs and terrorism in Boston

So there have been some bombings again in the US. Boston. And some attempted bombings in Canada.

Firstly, I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to all those affected.

The US, until recently, lived in a kind of splendid geographic isolation. Untouched at home by war for a century or more.

Then came al Qaeda.

This was not the first brush the US had with terrorism. Timothy McVeigh and the UnaBommer would by any sensible definition be called terrorists.

Yesterday I saw a woman from Boston speaking on the TV, she mentioned someone has pointed out to her that in Northern Ireland and in Iraq people have lived with this for years.

Irish terrorism was often funded by a US organisation called NORAID. Boston and the Kennedys were also strongly associated with Irish Republicanism. Karma.

Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were also closely associated with the US and its allies during the fight to free Afghanistan from Soviet domination. Some say that still Afghanistan has not got the high proportion of girls in school that the communists managed to achieve. Karma.

Even today the US offers some level of tacit support to the rebels in Syria. Will more karma come?

The deaths of many Iranian nuclear scientists in bombings, strange accidents etc are variously blamed on Israel and the US. Another dose of Karma?

Conspiracy theories aside (some people claim the 'deep state' has organised this to take away gun rights, and there is some suggestion that the FBI used the elder brother as an informer at some point) in security circles they call this sort of karma 'blowback'. The people responsible for implementing policies that help cause terrorism know that it does happen. That is why they have a word for it.

Again, I do not support terrorism. I do not wish for innocent Americans to suffer and die any more than I would wish it for citizens of any other country. But US policy DOES support terrorists. It has done consistently, it has done so against its closest allies. It has done so right across the world.

It continues to do so today, and will do for the forseeable future.

After 911 and George W Bush's ridiculous and undignified speech at ground zero America learnt the wrong lessons. America did not learn that pain staking data trawling, screen reading, security checking, the boring, repetitive acttivities that could have stopped that attack, and the Boston one too, was the new priority.

Instead America learnt to curtail the rights of the accused. To ignore the rights of citizens of other countries to live in peace. America threw its weight around like a humiliated bully.

It spent money on muscled men in uniform with more firepower than sense. It needed bespectacled geeky librarian types crouched in front of screens. The men in uniform help cause the problem. They do not provide any sort of solution.

So strangely I find myself in some sympathy with the gun lobby. The right to bear arms is not one which is dear to me, but curtailing the rights of the citizenry in response to this sort of Karma/Blowback, caused in part by the actions of an overbearing state, seems just plain wrong.

Putting the city in lockdown. What for? Far better the FBI learnt to spell. (What I mean by that is, while one of the Boston bombers had been interviewed by the FBI, they had not noted his return to Dagestan, a radicalised Russian republic, because the name on the passenger list was spelt differently. But as Chechen names are not in general written in the Latin, or Western, alphabet, there can be equally valid alternative spellings)

If the US wants to put an end to terrorism, it needs to withdraw from Afghanistan. Stop messing with Itran and Syria. Get rid of a whole load of special forces. Get a good portion of its drone operators checking data.

I do not think they have learnt at all. These men committed the act of murder. For murder they should be tried before a jury. All rights of those accused of criminal offences should be respected. They are not soldiers or enemy combatants, they are common criminals.

They used pressure cookers and emptied shorgun cartridges. While cruelly effective, these are not weapons of mass destruction. They killed less people than have been killed in some of the school shootings that happen from time to time. Are semi automatic rifles to be designated weapons of mass destruction?

The surviving suspect has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. It seems like this is an attempt to get the man executed. It is crude and silly. He should be charged with murder. Possibly multiple counts, and treated like any other criminal. When the US manipulates the law for vengeful or political purposes it undermines the rule of law. That presents a greater victory to terrorism than any amount of bombs.