Editorials

The Boston Bombings, Cynicism or Speculation?

The victim toll at Boston is known, 3 dead, which may rise from among 17 still in very critical condition. But all are accounted for.

Barack Obama said yesterday that what the world saw in Boston was “heroism, kindness, generosity and love”. None of those things were evident, except love, and quite frankly, love wasn’t necessary. How trite, Mr Obama.

Boston is in shock and Massachusetts is in shock But not because they didn’t expect this event or didn’t train for it. Thank George Bush, they’ve trained for it for years. And their first responders, top to bottom, acted quickly and professionally, no doubt saving many lives, who may have bled to death otherwise.

But they weren’t heroic. There is no heroism in doing what you’re trained to do. Just ask the tens of thousands of soldiers who’ve come and gone from Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. “Heroism” is reserved for something else altogether.

Nor is just being in the wrong place at the wrong time heroic. In Oklahoma City people just came to work, then suddenly, were dead. Nothing heroic in that. Just tragic. If accidently being in the line of fire is heroic then Chicago buries 50 heroes a week, victims of drive-by shootings.

We all know better, except for the It’s-not-my-fault, Excuser-in-Chief.

So, as feel-good and feel-bad stories begin to trickle out from Boston we already know there will be little in the way of heroism to headline those stories. Nor, one day later, will there be anything like the pathos and anguish of 911. I remember on 9/11 I was just numb, but in the days that followed the stories of cops and EMS who rushed into the towers while everyone else rushed out, or of those sad, sad images of people posting pictures of missing loved ones outside Ground Zero, were knee-buckling to me, even now.

All present and accounted for then, our thoughts turn to “whodunnit”?

And the best we can do is rely on the word of the police, the authorities, or often, the media who serves as go between.

Then suddenly we’re hit with a long rush of cynicism. No speculation here, just cynicism. Can we believe a single word any of them say?

Well, actually no. And why we can’t is the same reason we don’t believe anything Bill Clinton says. Or any other person we know to lie regularly. Not being believed is a price liars must necessarily pay.

Even when telling the truth.

All our questions right now go into two different directions: 1) Who did it? or 2) How tight is the White House’s grip on the investigation on the ground..with the FBI, the Boston police, the Massachusetts state police?

While the media has its gaze affixed on #1, who did it, it is not the least bit curious about #2. Still, we all know the story (the meme), just like the video after Benghazi,  that will go forward later in the week will be based entirely on what the White House thinks it can allow to be floated out there, especially as to the (one of three basic speculations) source of the bombings. Were they Muslim/Middle eastern, ultra-right wing Tim McVeigh-type wackos (wryly linked to Tea Parties), or were they just solo wackos? (Alex Jones adds a fourth, which he calls #false flag, namely that the government itself pulled this off, probably so that America won’t notice that no official representative from our government will attend Margaret Thatcher’s funeral tomorrow. I can’t recall why Jones said Bush pulled off 911.)

But Obama faces a real problem here. He called off the war on terror long before the last election. The word “terror” isn’t even allowed. He even ordered the Army to bend over and kiss it’s own behind in order to call the murder of 33 servicemen at Ft Hood by a chanting jihadist Army lieutenant colonel a “workplace incident”. That was 2009.

Obama has to control this story, especially if it turns out that it was Islamist or Middle Eastern in origin. Trust me, he will know a full day before the FBI releases any information and will rearrange those “facts” in whatever way it will best provide cover, for understand, no matter what the Massachusetts congressional delegation, including the semi-pretty Many-Moon-Come-Choctaw Warren, have to say, by weekend, most of Boston, if not Massachusetts, will be blaming Obama for this crime. (Call it the revenge of the Stupids.)

People forget that Obama twice in his first term, was able to rely on the famous secret “BFL Strain” weapon (unused since the Carter Administration, and even unknown to Reagan or Bush) which  accounted for the timely capture of the shoe bomber in Detroit and the New York City bomber. Perhaps Obama had become lax since, but sadly, Obama’s blind frigging luck ran out yesterday in Boston.

So, what can Obama do?

He can create a white-guy bogeyman out of whole cloth. But Eric Rudolph’s in prison. So is Terry Nichols. (Same prison, even). If the perp is a Muslim or Middle Easterner, can Obama just bury this fact? Actually, he can, but it will leak. Or, does he call this a “sportsplace incident”, just like Hassan’s “workplace incident” at Ft Hood, especially if there is only one bomber?

Or if more than one, does he stand before the American people and pound his fist on the podium and declare to all us, as he did after Benghazi, “We’ll track them down to the ends of the earth”? Actually Hilary pounded harder, but no matter, that was six months ago and the killers are still hiding in plain sight in Libya, just as they were the day before the embassy attack. (And the same way, by the way, Serbia’s fugitive mass murderers hid in plain sight under Clinton’s command. Gen Wesley Clark even had his picture taken with them, they were so well camouflaged. For sticktoitiveness, it seems Democrats have the same jutted chin of resolve as OJ did in catching Nicole’s “killer”.)

I’m not really worried that this murder was carried out by what we know as “tea parties”. Hell, they pick up their own litter. Or tax day protesters. I can’t even get most of them to carry rolled up newspapers. Or hat pins. Alex Jones’ claims about #falseflag have better odds of being true.  True, there could be a lone wolf or two out there, but it was the sort of bomb that requires some hands-on training and had been used in a prior AQ failed attempt.

General Michael Hayden (former CIA chief) has already said this may be the new normal, and this I can believe. The day that Jihadists would give up the “big bang” theory of terrorism for small, low-impact hit and run terror tactics (and Boston was “small” in that regard) is a day I’ve feared for many years.

If true, America is in deep kimchi (a little North Korean lingo there), for Obama cannot allow himself to stand before the American public and say that Islamic terrorism has been renewed, let alone admit that it never really went away in the first place, after he’d bragged his way into the last election about how he kicked dey ass all the way back to Timbukto, 2009-2011, and doing the end zone dance on bin Laden’s bones, in Charlotte. Remember?

His lies, and careless laxness, may make America’s ability to deal with what may be coming down the road even more problematic. Like Bill Clinton at the fall of the Soviet Empire, we have the wrong man at the wrong time. We’re in the middle of a losing streak.

A weakling and coward is one thing. A vain, can-do-no-wrong weakling and coward is quite another.

Unless Obama’s secret FBI-team can snatch two innocent Muslims at prayer time down an alleyway in Boston, then shoot them “while resisting arrest”, he’s boxed in.

But his real problem is, even if he comes out and tells the truth, no one will believe him,  not even in Boston.

My vote is for cynicism. Besides, I like to see a cornered liar with his Low Information Voters feeling betrayed.

 

 

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