We're still picking up the pieces from the chaos following manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last night. Now that we have the identity of the terrorists, the moment I've been dreading is upon us. The villains are Chechen, a predominately Muslim ethnicity. I don't have it confirmed that Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev and his brother are Muslims, but they most likely are.
On Tuesday Ross Douthat put out a great message on Twitter:
Dreading the moment when we find out whose pre-existing political views this atrocity "vindicates."
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) April 15, 2013
I've been hearing wild, baseless speculation that the suspects will turn out to be Muslims, right wing extremists or left wing extremists. Perhaps they were motivated by American foreign policy or Boston's cosmopolitan atmosphere. Maybe they hate civilization and technology.
Well, all of those unfairly firm conclusions were based on groups the guessers hated. Someone was going to win, and whoever it turned out to be was destined to get smug about it.
It turns out, it will be the anti-Islamic people who get to say "I told you so" today when in fact, they didn't know so. They were only guessing.
My view that the fiends were crazy bastards was vindicated though.
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