While I was out this past month, Rolling Stone decided to put the surviving Boston Marathon bomber on its cover, spurring torrents of outrage. It also spurred a misguided boycott, which according to the Christian Science Monitor, has backfired.
This story pops up as a free speech issue not because the government is stepping on anybody's freedoms, but because large masses of duped Americans are stepping on other Americans' freedoms. The kneejerk choice of the Boston police officer who released photos of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's capture is emblematic of the mindset that led to the failed boycott.
America needs to learn about what happened to Tsarnaev so that we can prevent it from happening again. I shudder to think that somewhere in Boston is still an officer of the law still serving as a police officer who believes so strongly in letting more Tsarnaevs happening in the US that he would be willing to step outside of the law in order to make a political statement. Such people do not have the mindset necessary for an impartial officer of the law and he should be immediately relieved of all duty, not just relegated to paperwork until this all blows over.
Of course, I don't think Sean Murphy actually wants to create more Tsarnaevs; but the effect of his statements and actions only perpetuate the climate of American ignorance that creates homegrown terrorists. All those people calling for a boycott of Rolling Stone over their editorial choice are also helping create more terrorists in the same ignorant manner. It's a matter of personal responsibility: either you take personal responsibility for society's ills and try to fix them, or like Murphy and the boycotters, you sweep society's ills under the rug until the burst forth again with renewed violence and more victims.
9/11 should have been a teachable moment. Millions of people around the world came together to support the United States. But when it became clear that such support was turning into military action, the support evaporated. We should have reacted to 9/11 by learning about what created Osama ibn Laden - the CIA, the ISI, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border conflict, and the larger Shia-Sunni struggle within the Islamic world - and taken steps as a nation to prevent that threat from growing. Instead, we destabilised the Middle East, entrenched the Taliban, and allowed religious fanatics to stake claim to legitimate government in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, and Egypt. Sadly, the way America responded to 9/11 created Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The way America responds to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will determine whether we create the next generation of terror. One of the things I have learned watching terrorism cases over the past 15 years, is that entrapment isn't just one of the tools used by American law enforcement to eliminate potentially terroristic personalities. It is actually the primary tool that creates domestic terrorism. From Newburgh to the Liberty City Seven, every single domestic incident of Islamic terrorism on American soil was incited by FBI investigators. The Tsarnaev situation is the first major terrorist case of this nature conducted by rogue operatives who were not incited to violence by the FBI. In both the Newburgh and Liberty City cases, the FBI gave money and fake explosives to the so-called terrorists. In the Newburgh case, as in many others, the perpetrators were coverted to Islam in jail by FBI operatives/informants, so that by the time they left incarceration they had been brainwashed into believing that "Jews" were responsible for all their suffering.
I don't know about Sean Murphy or my fellow Americans, but I find it absolutely disgusting to know that my own hard-earned tax dollars are being used to radicalise imprisoned Americans and convert them into anti-Semitic monsters.
The reason why Roling Stone's article is so crucial to our understanding and dialogue at this point in history is because the Tsarnaevs acted without FBI instigation. So did Wade Michael Page when he shot up the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI one year ago. In fact, so do many of our nation's ignored mass murderers. Our human reaction to these mass murders is one of disgust, but unless we are willing to take the philosophical suggestion of Jesus and Buddha and see ourselves within others, that disgust will lead to ignorance, which in turn leads to more mass murderers.
We are slowly discovering that a common thread in all these cases is social ostracisation, brought on by society at large percieving certain individuals as "socially awkward" or "mentally unstable". Rather than society dealing with the issue and fixing it, the approach of ostracisation makes the situation worse, pushing the individual toward instability when he should be headed toward adulthood. In many Muslim nations, especially in Central Asia, these individuals can join a guerilla group or terrorist group and end their suffering with a suicide bombing. In the US, they buy firearms and bulletproof vests and go on rampages.
For those who have read this far and think I'm a flaming liberal, this is the point where I stand up against gun control. Pushing for gun control does absolutely zero to end the ostracisation that is the cause of these mental disabilities and the root cause of all these murders. Sure, we must attribute personal responsibility to the murder and sentence him according to our law; but if we let it end there, we only allow future murders to happen. Therefore, pushing for gun control allows the same mentality to persist and allows future murders to happen, even if it might statistically reduce the per-capita numbers of gun violence.
Finally, we're also forgetting about suicide victims. How many more individuals decide to take their own lives instead of others? By focusing on gun control, we abandon suicide victims and their families while allowing their tormentors - who in most cases are serial abusers themselves - to walk free. Just look at the case of Phoebe Prince, and there are another 100+ recent cases of young people committing suicide under similar conditions.
So for the sake of the victims of 9/11, the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, the victims of FBI entrapment, the victims of suicide, and the victims of school shootings; I heartly applaud Rolling Stone for doing what needed to be done. It's good to see moral law preserving goodness in the face of evil people and it's good to see that confirmed economically by Rolling Stone doubling its sales for this one issue. For those of you who say I'm wrong, allow me to suggest you move to any nation whose political system suppresses the truth and values its peoples' ignorance.
America was put here as a revolution in the face of the Machiavellian order and all its abuses. If you have no interest in perpetuating the Revolution of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, you have no place being in America. And lest you think this is all about Tsarnaev and I'm giving him a free pass, I'm not. Tsarnaev's actions have demonstrated he is filled with the exact same mentality of contempt for America as still-serving police officer Sean Murphy. Both are a threat to our way of life, but luckily I live in America and still have the freedom to speak up and warn my fellow citizens: Let's make change now before any more Americans are killed.
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