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As the public thirst for more information on the two Boston bombers is being satisfied by the omnipresent, but increasingly delinquent modern media, the “psychotic” version of the Boston tragedy is predictably fading.
The “leader” of the terrorist pair, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was obviously neither a ‘psycho’ nor a ‘loser’ in American parlance; awards for boxing, a beautiful American-born wife and numerous girlfriends – seems he blended right in.
His accomplice, 19-year-old US citizen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, appeared an even more promising case with his college education and a pack of American friends who stayed loyal to him even after his arrest. The case is almost symbolic: it smashes into the Western delusion that militant Islamism can be “cured” by access to free media, voting rights and “eradication of poverty.”
The brothers had it all. But the Tsarnaevs’ exposure to all these “Western values” did not prevent them from becoming killers.
This complex reality actually vindicates Russia’s pessimistic view of the so called Arab Spring (and of the “Islamic democratic revival” in general), which is still enthusiastically embraced by the US and many European powers.
The first day of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s interrogation was eventful. On that same day, Canadian authorities revealed that a plot of Islamist terrorists to blow up a train on its way from Toronto to New York City was foiled in Canada.
“The brothers had it all. But the Tsarnaevs’ exposure to all these “Western values” did not prevent them from becoming killers” [AP Images]
In all three cases, the actions of these Islamist extremists defy the Western logic that guided previous engagements and policy decisions of the Western powers.
The Chechen terrorists came to the US as refugees fleeing what the Western media portrayed as the “oppressive” (some even used the word “genocidal”) Russian regime.
The Libyan Islamists won their war with Qaddafi thanks to the “pioneering” French bombing raids in 2011, which inaugurated a mass-scale foreign intervention into Libya’s internal affairs by the NATO countries. This intervention, inevitably, greatly aided the Islamists’ victory
One has to swallow European headlines about the new Libyan government being “liberal,” with a pinch of salt, especially in view of the continued attacks against foreign diplomats in Libya. It was only last summer that the American ambassador in Libya was killed during an attack by militants, initially described as a ‘protest’ by a spokesperson of the US Department of State. This is a situation that tells you volumes about the new regime in Libya and America’s dangerous illusions about it.
Libya and Boston echoed in the terror attempt in Canada. One of the two failed Canadian terrorists (Tunisian-born Chiheb Esseghaier, 30) before his arrest was a PhD student in Montreal’s “Centre de la Recherche Scientifique” specialising in biosensors. The ‘preachers of democracy’ are baffled yet again.
The bizarre nature of the alliance between Western powers and Islamist insurgents in Syria has been underscored by the events in the US, Canada and Libya. European newspapers carried headlines on the Boston terror attack next to that of the imminent lifting of the EU embargo prohibiting lethal arms’ supplies to Syria (“Syria” in this context is an EU-coined euphemism for “Syrian anti-government rebels”).
Meanwhile, even the conservative French Le Figaro daily expressed doubt as to the ability of European donors to control the future use of the supplied weapons once they get into the hands of the Syrian rebels. “There is absolutely no guarantee that these arms would not be resold to anti-Western jihadist organisations or not used to suppress minorities in Syria,” notes Le Figaro’s columnist Renaud Girard. “There are no reliable puppets in geopolitics.”
In the end of his opinion piece, Renaud Girard stresses that the French president, Francois Hollande, would do a wise thing if he listens to Russia’s doubts on the “regime change” in Syria – for once in recent years.
One might add that China had similar doubts during NATO’s action against Yugoslavia in 1999 (let’s not forget the anti-NATO protest actions in Beijing at the time) and South Africa was deeply skeptical about the operation against Libya, whose controversial authoritarian leader, Muammar Qaddafi, was, among other things, one of the most influential leaders of the Organization of African Unity. Alas, ‘doubt’ is something that the bullish and imposing modern Western civilization often rejects. Even if these doubts are “backed up” by such tragic events as the Boston Marathon bombing.
Dmitry Babich is a senior journalist based in Moscow who has worked with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Moscow News and Ria Novosti. He is currently a political analyst for Voice of Russia.
