Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is currently recovering from his injuries, under heavy guard, at a prison medical center in Massachusetts. While these severe injuries sustained during his capture initially complicated authorities' efforts to question him, the American justice system is, if nothing else, a patient one. There are obviously a multitude of issues that Tsarnaev's interrogators will discuss with him. The logistics of the bombings, and whether the Tsarnaev brothers received outside support, is an important concern. Perhaps more pressing is the potential influence of radical Muslim groups on the brothers' radicalization, planning and possible training. Most intriguing, however, is the simple question of purpose. Granted, how exactly the Tsarnaevs pulled this off is important but why did they do it?
Resolving the issue of motive is significant beyond satiating the public's desire for explanation in the wake of chaos. In addition to serving as an ingredient for public healing, identifying a motive could act as a preventative tool for similar issues in the future. By isolating the thought processes of the Tsarnaevs as they planned their attack and corresponding changes in behavior, authorities may discern patterns of action that repeat themselves in other terrorist incidents.
The Tsarnaevs' crime was, without a doubt, an act of terrorism. Despite this, there has been some debate about the legal issues surrounding Dzhokhar's eventual prosecution. Federal investigators controversially waived the reading of his Miranda rights in an effort to more quickly extract potentially life-saving information. Some members of Congress wanted to designate Dzhokhar as an enemy combatant to facilitate the judicial process. Yet these issues matter only with respect to the American legal system. Regardless of his Miranda reading or criminal designation, Dzhokhar will stand trial and will probably hopefully be put to death. But legal semantics, and even constitutional rights, do not change the fact that Dzhokhar is a terrorist in the purest sense of the word.
If we treat the bomber as a terrorist, and not just a simple criminal, we are closer to discerning his motive. A terrorist is someone who seeks to incite terror in a population. Fear, and not a high body count, is the ultimate goal. The initial public and governmental response to the bombings fits this definition perfectly. Although relatively few people died in the attacks and, in terms of people killed, the equivalent of a Boston bombing occurs on the streets of Chicago every two days, an entire major metropolitan area was essentially shut down. Millions of people became paralyzed by widespread fear fear for themselves, fear for others, fears for their country and way of life. So although the Tsarnaevs were never able to detonate explosives in New York, more deaths would have been almost redundant. By terrifying an entire nation, they had already succeeded.
And the inciting of fear, I believe, is most fundamentally a means to gain attention. Enduring personal fame or notoriety is not always a goal quick, try to name two of the 9/11 hijackers but all terrorists do seek to bring attention to something. Although many believe that the Tsarnaevs' actions were motivated by radical Islam, we can assume that something larger than just killing people motivated the bombers. By committing their horrific act and literally trapping millions inside their homes, the Tsarnaevs enslaved a captive audience that would, out of necessity, pay attention to them, their stories and their ideals.
Perhaps most sobering is the fact that our collective paralysis, our loss of freedom, was the only possible reaction to the bombings; to ask the people of Boston to go about business as usual would have been out of the question. We were, and still are, largely powerless against motivated attention seekers like the Tsarnaevs. No amount of policing or security will ever eradicate the problem of terrorism. But what we can do is endure. We can, and must, remain resolute in the face of such tragedy. And we must remain rooted to our collective belief in freedom, because a belief in freedom, even if we sometimes lose our sense of it, is the only way to defeat those who would take it away.
