Many Injured in Explosions at Boston Marathon

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poojan

New member
I went to school in Boston and at least two of my friends were at the scene. Thankfully neither were injured; both helped in the relief efforts.

RIP to the victims and thoughts with those still struggling for their lives.

Whoever did this, foreign or domestic, their days are numbered. We WILL come for them.
 
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annao

New member
I feel dickish for saying it, but isn't this the kind of attitude that causes America problems? I understand the sentiment and the context but its a thought that's been nagging me
 
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Aristes

Member
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought we were talking about a deliberate bombing of innocent civilians at an international sporting event hosted in the City of Boston.

I said we would come for the people who did this. Like we came for Timothy McVeigh. Like we hunted down Eric Robert Rudolph. Like we hunted down Osama Bin Laden. I didn't say a thing about Iraq, which has nothing to do with those runners and spectators in Boston, and I don't appreciate you and Southpaw putting words in my mouth and trying to spin what I said into something completely different.

Let me make something clear. I lived in Boston for a number of years. I had a number of friends at the Boston Marathon this year, either as participants or spectators. Two were present at the scene of the blast. Thankfully, neither was hurt, and both were able to help with the relief efforts. NONE of my friends are big Pentagon head honchos or whatever. Nobody there was. This attack was against innocent civilians. And this attack is personal for me. And the bastards who did this, there is no amount of justification or moral relativism or America-bashing or whatever that makes it anything other than deliberate, cold-blooded murder.

And the people responsible will face justice. We will find them, and they will face justice.
 
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bob1442

New member
I'm inferring from the tone of your posts that your idea of "justice" isn't a very happy one. But anyway, I'm happy to hear your friends are safe. I wouldn't wish this kind of attack on anyone. All I was saying is the call to arms type responses I've been seeing everywhere don't strike me as going to lead anywhere positive. Its quite lynch mobby to me.

I understand you have an emotional interest in what happened but I don't see it all leading anywhere good. If philosoraptor had substituted Iraq for Afghanistan in his post he wouldn't have been far wrong. That's the reason this kind of response worries me.
 
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Annjulianne

New member
Timothy McVeigh was tried in a court of law, sentenced to death, and executed.
Eric Robert Rudolph was located after years on the run, arrested, plead guilty, and is serving life without parole at ADX Florence supermax.
Osama Bin Laden was killed while resisting capture by a Special Forces team.

Any of those is satisfactory to me. I don't understand what you want by a happy ending. There is no happy ending. The dead can't be brought back to life, and the maimed can't be made whole. There is no happy ending. There can be justice though.



Are you trying to pick a fight or something, or do you not know what lynching is? What the hell.

[Lynching] is associated with re-imposition of white supremacy in the South after the Civil War. The granting of U.S. Constitutional rights to freedmen in the Reconstruction era (1865–77) aroused anxieties among American citizens, who came to blame African Americans for their own wartime hardship, economic loss, and forfeiture of social privilege. Black Americans, and Whites active in the pursuit of integration rights, were sometimes lynched in the South during Reconstruction. Lynchings reached a peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Southern states changed their constitutions and electoral rules to disfranchise blacks and, having regained political power, enacted a series of segregation and Jim Crow laws to reestablish White supremacy. Notable lynchings of integration rights workers during the 1960s in Mississippi contributed to galvanizing public support for the Civil Rights Movement and civil rights legislation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

Saying that we will track down the terrorists who committed this atrocity is NOTHING like a group of white supremacists murdering a black man for trying to vote. Nothing.

Your comment has me seething right now, so I will stop instead of saying what's really on my mind.
 
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KALL

New member
Not exactly. The problems usually start when it turns out that the wrong people were killed. Or the right people were killed, along with a lot of 'collateral'
 
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WiZ34MyY3aRz

New member
Yeah. Sure.

I don't think anything is wrong with OBL getting shot. He was guilty, admitted it, and if anyone had it coming, it was him. But it's not like they were trying to 'arrest him' alive.

Alive, the whole world would have been watching to see what would happen next. Put him on trial? Hardly, because there are unfortunate connections between him and the CIA. And I'm sure that the US would be loath to a) share their intelligence in a public trial and b) risk him getting off because the US didn't follow proper procedures in gathering evidence or arresting him.

He could be put away without trial, but as long as he lived, he'd be a figurehead for a cause. Also the US would like public opinion to forget the 'kidnapping and holding people without trial' thing.

No. I think they went in to kill him.
Which I think was the best course of action in this case to begin with.
to say that he was killed resisting arrest is like starting to shoot at people, and then claim self defense when they shoot back
 
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aschauer29

New member
Anyhow, I think this is further proof that the 'foreign terrorist' threat is vastly overplayed. If terrorists really wanted to hurt the US population, they'd be doing it already. Apparently, all it takes is a pressure cooker, ball bearings and gunpowder. Not exactly hard to get.

The fact that this is the first time it's happened should be proof enough that there are no hordes of foreigners trying to kill Americans.
 
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Cosmicgirl

New member
Right. Sorry I've been reading a lot of stuff on facebook with colourful descriptions of what should happen to the person or persons and I took your post in the same vein. My fault for making assumptions there.




Lynching was the wrong word then.I always think of it just meaning a rabble of angry people killing someone. Posse maybe was a better word? I dunno.

edit: Actually it wasn't. Lynching is normally used to refer to the racist killings but its the exclusive definition.








Feel free to say what's on your mind. We're a couple guys on the internet its not like I'm going to cut myself over it.

I was thinking about this at work this morning and I think I've come up with why I find all the "we will hunt you down, and we will find you wherever you hide and justice will be meted out" type replies bothered me. Last time I checked 3 people were killed in the attack. Injuries were in the hundreds but I have no idea how that class those. I know there's been a few amputations either in the explosion or in the hospitals. But anyway, 3 people died. 3 people died and the overwhelming response to that is "we're going to do something about this."

Now, twenty six people get killed in yet another high school shooting and the country has to have a long debate over whether you're even allowed to attempt to do something to stop that happening again because we all know it will.

Obviously there's a lot of difference in context between a school shooting and a bomb planted at a marathon, and I'm not trying to downplay what happened to Boston. It was a vile thing and I hope those involved recover. That being said, I can't help but wonder where all this anger and desire to act was among the country when twenty kids were slaughtered for no good reason.
 
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EastCoastAssassin

Member
Because it's easy to be angry 'at someone' and then get rid of that someone so that 'the problem is solved' and can be forgotten.

Solving systemic problems otoh requires a) structural changes which many people will not like / accept b) acceptance that any solution will not prevent it from happening again, but will just decrease in statistical likelihood.

And that is uncomfortable for most people. Especially in the US where the political spectrum consists of absolutes on both sides, and compromise and nuance are dirty words. Someone needs to be blamed, and someone's head will need to roll. And then 'the problem is solved'.

Before someone gets mad at me: I am not saying heads should not roll. Whoever did this should be punished. But far too often, people are only interested in the punishment and not in the underlying problems.
 
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mashaov

New member
It seems to me that the longer time goes on without someone liming responsibility, the more likely it is to be a domestic source and possibly a lone individual at that.

Surely if it was Al Qaeda they would be all over the media claiming responsibility? Similarly any other organised group.

To all our American MAPers and those with friends affected pease accept my best wishes.

Mitch
 
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jrokalilla

Member
Obviously we need pressure cooker control. I admit I am guilty of having an unregistered unlicensed pressure cooker. I haven't even been trained in its use. My cooker is within reach of children. Yes I admit my sins, maybe I am just compensating for some masculine insecurity issue by owning one. Maybe I am some pressure cooker nut! Yes we must have pressure cooker control to solve this problem!
 
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yoshino

New member
Connotation versus denotation. In America, the word "lynching" has undeniable KKK connotations, even if that doesn't appear in its denotation in the Oxford English Dictionary. In America, the term means a racist murder carried out under the false premise of vigilantism. And you were accusing an American upset over a terrorist attack in America of having a "lynch mob mentality." Know your context.



Cussing somebody out would violate the terms of service.



HOLD ON. The dead haven't been buried, the wounded haven't been stabilized, and you're trying to turn a discussion about the Boston terrorist bombing into your "a ha" trump card for a gun control debate?! Jesus Christ man. You're acting like the right-wing nuts who reacted with glee to the China school stabbing because they thought it proved their point in a policy debate, instead of reacting with horror because a bunch of kids just got stabbed.

But as long as you're forcing the issue, in reaction to acts of mass murder, I want the perpetrators brought to justice, but I don't want a knee-jerk restriction of civil liberties as a response. I want another FBI manhunt that brought in Eric Robert Rudolph or another Special Forces raid that killed Bin Laden. I don't want another Patriot Act. The Patriot Act pissed all over the Fourth Amendment because "we have to do SOMETHING." It was an obscenity to the Constitution and it didn't even make it safer, but it was rammed through because "we have to do SOMETHING." I don't want any more knee jerk reactions like that. Not to Sandy Hook (tossing the Fourth Amendment aside and banning the nation's most popular rifle) and not to Boston (say, tossing the Second Amendment aside and allowing police officers to search backpacks in public area without probable cause).

I want justice for the perpetrators.

And that is the last I will say about Sandy Hook or Second Amendment restrictions, because in case everyone forgot, this is about BOSTON and the terrorist bombing that was perpetrated there two days ago.
 
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