Matt writes:
Sorry, this just doesn’t apply to the Boston bombings at all. The U.S. gave these thugs the best it had to offer, and they bit the hand that fed them. Not to mention the fact that the U.S. had *nothing* to do with the situation in Chechnya.
The Boston Bombings were in fact blowblack. The older brother said he was very angry about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the very least. According to these jihadis, they are only fighting back.
They say that we are killing Muslims in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan (not really in Iraq anymore). This is true. We are killing Muslims with drones in the first three places and with guns on the ground in the last. Supposedly they are all part of Al Qaeda (except in Afghanistan), but this is not really true. At least in Pakistan, we are mostly just killing Pakistani Islamists.
The drone war is only allowed by Congress to kill “members of Al Qaeda actively planning immanent attacks against the US homeland.” Obviously most drone attacks are not even sanctioned under US law, and are hence illegal even by our own laws. Not that any American even cares.
Perhaps we should be running around the world zapping Al Qaeda types from the skies. But Congress has not sanctioned us to do that, and that’s a problem.
And as long as we are running around the world hitting Al Qaeda and other Islamist types with drones and with real guns on the ground in Afghanistan, Salafists and Al Qaeda type jihadists say they are going to attack us back anywhere they can hit us, even on our own soil.
War is like a battle between preschoolers. It’s always, “He started it! He hit me back!”
In war, everyone is always “fighting back.” Even Hitler claimed his conquests as defensive. Most of the world’s offensive armies are paradoxically called “defense forces.”
