In vengeful America, Rolling Stone has got into all sorts of trouble for running an attractive cover photo of one of the alleged Boston Bombers, 19-year-old Dzokhar Tsarnaev.
To counter the “threat” of an attractive terror suspect, a Boston police officer, Sean Murphy, provided local papers with some bloodied shots of Dzokhar Tsarnaev. “This guy is evil,” said Murphy.
The Rolling Stone article is actually quite subversive to “war on terror”. Perhaps the US would be better off understanding what makes very ordinary people, good citizens in other respects, let off bombs, rather than have America spend billions on fighting wars abroad and spying on its own people, all in the name of fighting terror.
The Rolling Stone article does a good job to advance our understanding of the Boston bombing. The author Janet Reitman spent time with Dzokhar Tsarvaev’s friends and she portrays him as a caring American teenager from a struggling family. In the summer of last year he was lifeguarding at a Harvard pool. “I didn’t become a lifeguard to just chill and get paid,” he tweeted. “I do it for the people, saving lives brings me joy.”
Subsequently, perhaps under the influence of his older brother Tamerlan, Dzokhar seems to have become more alienated from America, to the point of justifying the bombing. Rolling Stone says Dzokhar admitted he did not like killing innocent people, but “the US government is killing our innocent civilians”, presumably referring to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In some ways, Dzokhar’s apparent rationalisation for letting off explosives mirrors Barack Obama’s, when he orders drone strikes in Pakistan, knowing that most of those killed or wounded will be innocent civilians. For both men, civilian casualties are seen as an unfortunate overhead of the “war”.
It doesn’t help bring to an end this madness to portray either a Dzokhar Tsarnaev or Barack Obama as “evil” or a “monster”. Nelson Mandela is rightly considered as an icon who showed that there is a better way. He treated his antagonists in the brutal apartheid regime as human beings who could change and reject further violence and repression. To Mandela vengeance was not a solution.
If you treat others simply as “evil” or less than human you lose some of your own humanity.
If the US had spent the same trillions of dollars; effort; energy; and manpower on resolving the Palestinian-Israel crisis, as it does on wars and arming it’s proxt states – the course of history would be considerably different and young men (and women) would not feel alienated and compelled to do violence.
The “front line” simply moved from Baghdad to Boston.
In the process, people in the US as well as the Middle East are feeling the effects of state-sponsored terrorism. Which, I guess, suits politicians for whom a terrified populace is a compliant populace.
And our own John Key wants us to also live under the same fear as in America as a way to make his dirty GCSB bill happen. And despite the fact that the public opposes it, it is going to pass with a majority of one vote according to the Herald this morning.
This man seems to have been judged guilty before he has even seen the inside of a courtroom. This is what is so disturbing. He has gone from ‘suspect’ to guilty without benefit of a trial, based on information given to the media by police. Instead of articles explaining how he allegedly became radicalised, it would be better explaining how a person can be adjudged guilty, and in his brothers’ case executed, without benefit of a trial where the evidence can be exposed to the light. What we have here is a one-sided argument biased to the authorities’ agenda.
I agree. Regarding this issue of RS, the headline is the worst part. He hasn’t been convicted yet. So much for due process and a fair trial.
Those incensed by the “image portrayal” of Dzokhar Tsarnaev did not seem to be similarly upset by the image accompanying this Reuters article U.S. soldier accused of Iraq shooting “psychotic”: doctor
Had a quick look for other images accompanying news articles about soldiers on trial, but then realised this was pointless. The Defence Force will be very vigilant in not allowing images to accompany articles, especially when bringing the institution into disrepute. Irregardless of the fact that the stories do exactly that.
Sorry, mucked up the link.
Here it is.
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