Bombs Explode At Boston Marathon, Three Dead

[Барбоса]

As one UK analyst was talking about last night, if these two brothers were not part of some larger cell with more members, planned their attacks in face to face meetings rather than through phone calls or email and then used ordinary household items to make their bombs (although they must have gotten the know-how from somewhere), it becomes almost impossible to track.

 

[BaconBits]

Because that site doesn't have an agenda or anything...

Sites like that are so sad. The levels of ignorance by many Americans are mind boggling.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

The celebration was fine but seemed innapropriate. It looked more like something that would take place after a Final Four victory than the end of a manhunt.

My favorite thing about this ordeal is the uncle's statement. He put things in a proper perspective. These two were "losers". Not in the sense of being unpopular or outcasts, but in a sense that they lose in life when they had to go to these lengths. The media and it's audience (myself included) are going to be speculative, introspective, and hypothetical in finding reason for why these guys did what they did. But the uncle is right, they did what they did because they are "losers". Their cause, reasons, and justifications don't trump the fact that in the end Sandy Hook, the Columbine douches, OKC Bomber, the 9/11ers, Batman screening guy, Canadian wrestler murder-suicide guy, and Arizona Congresswoman shooting guy are "losers".

Only "losers" handle life this way.

 

[JGlass]

Look, I realize I'm in a bit of a minority here, and I'm really not trying to convince anyone to agree with me as much as I'm trying to at least explain my way of thinking, so this is going to be my last post on the matter of the celebration in the streets.

For me, when a horrific event like this effects a community as tightly knit as Boston, it seems odd and inappropriate for people to be dancing in the streets while so many are still suffering the consequences. It just doesn't seem fair to them that while 98% get to get on with our lives, these folk's lives have been forever changed.

When it gets down to brass tacks, it just feels stupid to celebrate the death of one guy and the capture of another in the face of so much carnage in such a flamboyant way. Like GSB said, this type of celebration usually follows a huge win. We did this when Obama won the election in 2008, and this is what happened when the Bruins won the Cup. Nobody lost a son during the the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, and nobody saw their family get mangled by an explosion during the 2008 election. To celebrate like that following such a terrifying chapter in our city's history seems tasteless.

I'm not against celebrating in a more respectful way, but this seemed disrespectful on a variety of levels.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

and nobody saw their family get mangled by an explosion during the 2008 election.

Natural Selection believes otherwise.

 

[Lee]

 

[Big Nick Dudley]

Look, I realize I'm in a bit of a minority here, and I'm really not trying to convince anyone to agree with me as much as I'm trying to at least explain my way of thinking, so this is going to be my last post on the matter of the celebration in the streets.

For me, when a horrific event like this effects a community as tightly knit as Boston, it seems odd and inappropriate for people to be dancing in the streets while so many are still suffering the consequences. It just doesn't seem fair to them that while 98% get to get on with our lives, these folk's lives have been forever changed.

When it gets down to brass tacks, it just feels stupid to celebrate the death of one guy and the capture of another in the face of so much carnage in such a flamboyant way. Like GSB said, this type of celebration usually follows a huge win. We did this when Obama won the election in 2008, and this is what happened when the Bruins won the Cup. Nobody lost a son during the the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, and nobody saw their family get mangled by an explosion during the 2008 election. To celebrate like that following such a terrifying chapter in our city's history seems tasteless.

I'm not against celebrating in a more respectful way, but this seemed disrespectful on a variety of levels.

You're definitely not alone. It looked strange and actually made me uncomfortable.

 

[sidney]

Dear Shocky

danced in the street after we won WW2, but we didn't forget the millions of lives that were lost or effected.

You ( the U.S.A. ) did not win WW2 single handed. It is plain insulting to the hundreds ( maybe millions ) of people who fought and died before you decided to join in. my country ENGLAND decided to fight HITLER because it was the right thing to do. Your country did nothing

 

[sidney]

We did because it had to be done. And you cannot say bombing Japan helped because most of the scientists who developed it were not American.

 

[sidney]

Before I forget, the best way to deal with Norh Korea is to talk to China. World power changes. England once was. America now is. China will be.

 

[Remy LaCroix]

Dear Shocky

danced in the street after we won WW2, but we didn't forget the millions of lives that were lost or effected.

You ( the U.S.A. ) did not win WW2 single handed. It is plain insulting to the hundreds ( maybe millions ) of people who fought and died before you decided to join in. my country ENGLAND decided to fight HITLER because it was the right thing to do. Your country did nothing

All I got from this was that America lacked the cajones to fight.

 

[One Punch Doug Crashin]

Dear Shocky

danced in the street after we won WW2, but we didn't forget the millions of lives that were lost or effected.

You ( the U.S.A. ) did not win WW2 single handed. It is plain insulting to the hundreds ( maybe millions ) of people who fought and died before you decided to join in. my country ENGLAND decided to fight HITLER because it was the right thing to do. Your country did nothing

PSML

 

[Барбоса]

Close this thread.

It has been Godwined.

 

[Rayne]

Dear Shocky

danced in the street after we won WW2, but we didn't forget the millions of lives that were lost or effected.

You ( the U.S.A. ) did not win WW2 single handed. It is plain insulting to the hundreds ( maybe millions ) of people who fought and died before you decided to join in. my country ENGLAND decided to fight HITLER because it was the right thing to do. Your country did nothing

...after they gave away Austria, the Sudetenland leading to Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and were faced with imminent invasion after your beautiful failure in Belgium and the shores of Dunkirk. Scholars of WWII might further be able to tell you that the United States funded your out-of-cash asses through the Lend-Lease Act, until, like Britain, the United States got into it after we were threatened directly.

"The right thing to do." Please. Germany had a knife to the United Kingdom's throat, that's the only reason the United Kingdom went to war, and that's after they gave away half of Europe to avoid it. If you're going to criticize other people for their jingoist bullshit, look out for your own. Not a single damned actor, besides maybe Canada, got involved in WWII because it was "the right thing to do". They got involved because it benefited their national interest, not because they were such jolly good fellows.

 

[Барбоса]

Actually, Hitler had barely threatened the UK with war at all before the collapse of France in 1940 - Sept. 1939 to May 1940 is called the Phoney War in western Europe for a reason. Hitler feared fighting the Empire due to its navy (and in all likelihood, its alliance with the USA), going out of his way to suggest a separate peace plan with London throughout the years leading up to the actual outbreak (he actually secured one regarding naval rearmament).

Britain had no need to go to war with Hitler and likely would not have been attacked by Germany had they stayed out of continental affairs. However, it relied too much on European trade and its alliance with and promises to France to not get involved and painted herself into a diplomatic corner after signing away Czechoslovakia and its valuable defences in the Sudetenland and arms factories at the Munich Peace Conference. The embarrassment of "peace in our time" and Hitler's insatiable want of lebensraum/revenge from 1918 left Britain and France no real option but to finally draw the line at Poland's western frontier and relive the same scenario as happened with Belgium in 1914 - they guaranteed the sanctity of Belgium/Poland and when the Kaiser/Hitler refused to abide by it, Britain had to declare war.

However, just because Britain went to war with Hitler without being directly threatened does not mean that the USA should have too in 1939. Ignoring the vast amounts of commercial and military aid that she gave to Britain before late 1941, America had very little direct interest in Europe at the time following the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash and continuing Isolationist dogma is to expect far too much.

It is too easy to say that she should have stuck her nose in European politics before being dragged into them by Hitler's quite frankly ridiculous declaration of war in 1941. I am unsure how much American aid helped the British during the aerial Battle of Britain in 1940 but had it not been for American convoys and American intervention, Britain would have starved before the Soviets could have defeated Hitler.

 

[Rayne]

I deliberately presented my argument from a point of view diminishing British contributions to the Allied effort in World War II, in parody of sidney's jingoistic criticism of jingoism. Britain didn't stay at war with the Third Reich because they were such jolly good blokes; they stayed at war with Germany because German hegemony over continental Europe would strangulate Great Britain economically. You wouldn't have had to fight a war in 1939; you would have had to do it in 1948, with a defeated Russia. That's why Poland was the last straw, and why the United Kingdom went to war despite the numerical/technological superiority of German forces at the time.

The United States passed the Lend-Lease act not because we were great guys (that's beside the point), but because we could do business with Great Britain and her allies. Germany was setting up a closed economic sphere in Europe. No one went to war in World War II (again, with the possible exception of Canada) because there was a moral cause; every player had real geopolitical concerns about the future of their country.

 

[Барбоса]

Not convinced that Hitler's Germany had what it took to defeat Soviet Russia even without war in France and North Africa. Those operations used very few troops in comparison to the millions that when into Russia and the way the Soviets fought, capturing Moscow was not necessarily going to end the war. Freed up men from the lack of fighting in the West would likely have just meant more deaths rather than greater military conquest.

But you're right, Britain would have been dragged into war at whatever point due to the expansionism of Germany and Japan. And there isn't really much to be proud of about being manipulated and embarrassed into a moral stance

 

[Alastor]

Show me a nation that went into war purely because it was 'the right thing to do' or for a moral cause and I'll show you a nation brainwashed by their leaders.
The only nations that probably believed in that during World War 2 were the aggressors who believe they have the right to everything.

 

[Rayne]

Not convinced that Hitler's Germany had what it took to defeat Soviet Russia even without war in France and North Africa. Those operations used very few troops in comparison to the millions that when into Russia and the way the Soviets fought, capturing Moscow was not necessarily going to end the war. Freed up men from the lack of fighting in the West would likely have just meant more deaths rather than greater military conquest.

But you're right, Britain would have been dragged into war at whatever point due to the expansionism of Germany and Japan. And there isn't really much to be proud of about being manipulated and embarrassed into a moral stance

It's not a given that Germany would have defeated Russia, but the calculus of that war would have changed dramatically. Imagine a Germany that had reached a peace with Britain and France after the fall of Poland; not an entirely incredible idea, as German armed forces had significantly outstripped British forces by 1939. Soviet Russia would then not have been able to rely on aid from the United States and the UK; not from the UK for obvious reasons (any peace with Germany would obviously require neutrality at the least), and not from the United States as we were not any friends of the Soviets.

It's not a given that Germany would have defeated the Soviet Union had they not opened up the Western Front prior, but the enemy they faced would have been much weaker; mere months after Stalin's Great Purge had petered out and in a financially compromised position. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact allowed the Soviets to prepare for war while relatively unmolested, leaving one to wonder how the war would have played out if the Eastern Front had opened first.

 

[Барбоса]

The Russians were not exactly ready for war in mid-1941 either. Indeed Stalin had been completely taken in by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and had performed virtually no war preparations. However, your point about the Purge is a good one. An Operation Barbarossa launched in 1939, even if the Germans themselves were not up to their mid-1941 strength, would have found the Soviet hierarchy in even more disarray and perhaps have been able to make even less costly gains - plus I have a suspicion that the Russian winter of 1939/40 was not anywhere near as bad or early as that of 1941/42.

In a 1939 war where Britain and France have stayed out of it and it is essentially a Nazi-Soviet war, the real wild card in the whole thing becomes Imperial Japan. Her launching any sort of attack against territories of the British Empire, French Indochina or American bases would have started a domino effect that would have brought Britain, France and the USA into the fighting both in the east and eventually in Europe. In that scenario, Hitler would have been on the phone to Hirohito to tell him to focus solely on Chinese Manchuria and Soviet territory.

Consider this thread thoroughly derailed into a "What If?"

 

[Rayne]

Yeah, once I saw that I could derail this thread away from the direction where it was headed, I went all Dagny Taggart on it.

 

[klunderbunker]

Apparently there was a judge brought into the hospital and they held court where he was charged with trying to detonate a WMD. That's punishable by death.

Also the surviving guy said he and his brother acted alone, were motivated by religious ferver, and learned how to make bombs off the internet.

 

[Remix]

WMD? Seriously? On what planet is a pressure cooker bomb a WMD?

 

[klunderbunker]

WMD? Seriously? On what planet is a pressure cooker bomb a WMD?

It was a weapon. It caused mass destruction. I think that sums it up pretty well.

 

[Remix]

It was a weapon. It caused mass destruction. I think that sums it up pretty well.

1) That's reaching insanely far, considering the "mass destruction" in question amounts to three dead people.

2) If bombs that kill 3 people are classed as WMDs, then how the heck does the US Government justify using "WMDs" in the form of every grenade, missile, shell and bomb that it supplies its armed forces with? Fuck, a bullet could be classed as a WMD if that's all it takes.

3) This is what happens when an actual WMD is deployed.

Boston is not a crater.