From the beginning of the manhunt for the marathon bombers, one question stood out: why did the Tsarnaevs kill MIT Police Officer Sean Collier and trigger a massive manhunt? Why weren’t they a three-day drive away from Boston? How could they have been so stupid to force a confrontation with a cop? Officials didn’t yet know who the bombers were. Officer Collier wouldn’t have known they were the bombers. Of course, we know now that they killed him execution style, so it doesn’t appear that they overreacted to some sort of inadvertent encounter. So, the question remains: why invite the attention?
Maybe they killed Officer Collier to trigger the manhunt.
It would explain a lot. Why they stayed in Watertown after the bombings. Why they were equipped with a car full of more explosives. Maybe even why they carjacked the SUV. They knew they were going to get identified. And, when they did, they wanted to go out in a hail of gunfire and shrapnel, taking down as many cops as they could. When they weren’t identified quickly enough, they poked the law enforcement dragon. In the end, the younger Tsarnaev — alone and injured and exhausted — just didn’t see the plan all the way through.
If that’s what they intended, it is remarkable — and very lucky — that more people weren’t killed or injured in the hours following the execution of Officer Collier.
Makes this all look a lot more like Columbine than terrorism. Two disaffected young men wanting everyone to know their names.
Disaffected young men? Suffering from lack of recognition? Remember, they had won scholarships, were recognized for boxing and wrestling skills, were in college, enjoyed friendships, one was married and had a child. Our only sin is that they were not taught well enough in school (in Cambridge) to think for themselves and not fall prey to the fanaticism they bought into! Definitely not Columbine. My guess is they ate the Caucasus Emirate’s bait, hook, line and sinker.
Pen/Sword – the older brother was not in college, had not won a scholarship and did not have friendships (he said he had no American friends because he could not understand Americans). The younger brother was doing great until he got to UMass, Dartmouth, where he was apparently struggling academically.
I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or stunned every time I heard a news report refer to the “prestigious Cambridge Rindge & Latin School” – apparently having Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as alums and having “Latin” in its name makes it something special.
Maybe we should up our prestige quotient and change this blog’s name to “Vicus XIV”
Not usually one to hurl insults but this piece specifically is pretty rediculous, completely basless, and contrary to what we supposedly do know about the situation. Why publish it?
Mike,
It’s a blog. Not the New York Times.
How can the supposed connection of last Monday’s bombing to Islam or the quirkiness of Cambridge be used to explain Columbine, Newtown, Aurora, Arizona and the many other acts of senseless mass violence that have occurred in this Country over the past several years?
I think it’s instructive, too, that officials at the Mass Avenue mosque in Cambridge told the older brother to stay away because of the nonsense he was spouting. He was obviously over the top and not at all representative of what the mosque was preaching and teaching. I think eventually it will all come down to the oft told story of the angry older sibling drawing a highly impressionable younger brother into something evil and despicable. Finally yesterday I heard someone spout nonsense that a tip off should have been the fact the younger brother was a champion high school wrestler because wrestling is such a violent sport. I wrestled (quite marginally ) in both high school and college and I can attest that my teammates were generally some of the gentlest people I knew when they were not in the ring.
I suppose if it were the Times it would be even less reasonable… so can anyone just make a blog post on THIS blog? I assumed they were somewhat vetted.
Bob, your point on wrestling probably ties into the simple fact that sometimes there aren’t easy answers so people come up with stupid theories (and then a bunch of them wind up as law or policy). I’m honestly surprised this is the first major bombing we have seen in a while, especially with ties to fundamentalist Islam. In my lifetime I expect to see larger and more violent acts of terrorism in the U.S… that’s just how the world works… Tragedies happen and you can’t stop everything. Did anyone really think after 9/11 they would NEVER see terrorism on U.S. soil again?
There are already calls for more stupidity as a result of this. I fear our country will get a little less “free,” or at least some events will, as a result of last weeks tragedy… And it won’t do a damn thing to stop the next one.
Remember, every-time we lose our freedoms, or live in greater fear, or blow billions of more dollars, because of acts like this, we are LOSING. Every time we find them, put them to trial, or kill them, and then move on, we are winning. If you want to worry about something, worry about cancer, heart disease, car accidents, murder, lightning, etc.
Mike
@Mike. We are on the same frequency here.
Apparently they murdered Officer Collier to steal his gun and then couldn’t get it out of the holster.
A story on Slate described the murderous brothers as a dyad similar to the Washington Beltway shooters and the Columbine killers. Such a dyad consists of a charismatic sadistic leader (suspect one) and a submissive follower (suspect two). The Slate post refers to the Columtine killers as one (Eric Harris) who wanted to lead a parade and a second (Dyland Klybold) who wanted to march in one. This seems to fit the brothers and to coincide with the anguished comments of one of their uncles who said that any religious reference in the bombings was a “fraud and a fake”. The killers were clearly fanatics whose religious motives were secondary to their appetite for destruction.
Too early to tell and too little info. That would appear to at least be part of the story, however.