City University of New York Professor Ruth O'Brien complains in an op-ed that “too much force” had been used against Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by the police.
She writes:
Now we have captured the two terrorists from Chechnya who come from the troubled region that is Muslim, but we cannot understand their motives, not yet. And Obama encourages us to refrain.
This said, the mortuary pictures of the older brother of the two are extremely disturbing, raising questions as to whether the Boston Police Department captured him with too much force. I understand the explanation offered by Katharine Q. Seelye, William H. Rashbaum, and Michael Cooper. Yet, it does not ring true. A picture is worth a thousand words that will keep our ears ringing as we recoil from this photo. Images have a way of searing themselves into our memory in a way that can’t be undone. We have an emotional memory, not just a rational one that is exemplified by words.
While terrorism is about causing fear — again an emotion — we do have to account for our conduct in these extreme times when adrenaline is running high.
At my home, to at least offset this, we turn off all media. I couldn’t believe my sons’ explanation when they got home about one brother running over the other one. So I found a place to read about this, and I recoiled after seeing the picture. Still, we all know that terrorism, like crime, “leads if it bleeds” with the established media. The established media fixates on the domestic-violence or crime-of-passion aspect of terrorism, and it, too, inculcates more fear in all of us.
