The latest on the Boston Bombers, They’re Chechen and Brothers

One suspect is dead and the other is on the loose.

HotAir.com is good coverage here, here, here, here and here

Fox News, NBC.COM and CNN are covering as well.

Blogger round up is here

Twitter is blowing up! (sorry, it’s an expression. 😛 )


Daniel Larson at The American Conservative notes the following:

So what to make of this? Based on initial reports, it appears that this was an attack launched by two brothers whose religious and political views were radicalized in part by their experience of fleeing their home because of the Chechen wars and partly through their sympathy with and interest in jihadist propaganda online. According to Haaretz, the younger Tsarnaev’s website expressed his identification with Islam and Chechen independence. Why they would choose the marathon of all things as their target isn’t entirely clear, but presumably it offered them an opportunity to harm as many people at once as possible in a high-profile way. What they hoped to achieve beyond notoriety and mayhem isn’t known, but perhaps that was enough for them.

[….]

When our own law enforcement and intelligence agencies were completely unaware of a plot unfolding here in the U.S., it seems doubtful that Russia would have been able to alert us to these specific attackers when these men have been outside Russia for over a decade. Cooperation with Russia in counter-terrorism is valuable, and as a general rule I think antagonizing Russia is a pointless and destructive way to handle the relationship. However, I don’t see how Russian cooperation would have made any difference in this case. Russian help might be useful in determining whether or not there are any links between the Tsarnaevs and some group in the North Caucasus, but for now there wouldn’t appear to be any obvious implications for Russia policy here.

As for the “vindication of Putin,” I don’t think that holds up very well, either. Russian policy in the North Caucasus has been and remains brutal and repressive, and the Kremlin’s brutality contributed to transforming what was originally a separatist struggle into a jihadist cause. Insofar as the second Chechen war contributed to the Tsarnaevs’ willingness to engage in terrorism, the Boston bombings are a delayed form of blowback from Putin’s war. Obviously, none of that excuses the atrocities that Chechen terrorists have carried out over the years, but it is important to remember this in order to understand why Chechnya became a magnet for jihadists and why Chechens driven out of the region would be drawn to jihadism. In the case of the Tsarnaevs, it appears that the Chechen wars may be part of the explanation for their radicalization, but they are not the whole story.

As I have and did say before; everything happens for a reason. Something set these two off.