Avoiding Reality on Terrorist Motivation by Jacob G. Hornberger

Avoiding Reality on Terrorist Motivation

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 24, 2013http://fff.org/2013/04/24/avoiding-reality-on-terrorist-motivation/

Before 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev was interrogated, President Obama asked, “Why did these young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence?”
Yesterday, the Washington Post provided the answer to the president in a news article entitled, “Boston Bombing Suspect Cites U.S. Wars as Motivation, Officials Say.” According to the article,

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews…. the evidence so far suggests they were “self-radicalized” through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which ended in December 2011 with the removal of the last American forces, and the war in Afghanistan, where President Obama plans to end combat operations by the end of 2014.”

What I find fascinating is that President Obama would have such a difficult time conceiving of that possibility. Why wouldn’t it occur to the president that the death, destruction, abuse, and humiliation that the U.S. government has wreaked upon people in the Middle East, who are predominantly Arabs and Muslims, would make some people, including people of Muslim faith, angry.

http://fff.org/2013/04/24/avoiding-reality-on-terrorist-motivation/