Beyond the Boston Marathon Bombing

Published May 5, 2013.  Last revised July 4, 2013

One of the terrorists that killed three and grievously wounded many more with two bombs at the finish line of the recent Boston Marathon is dead and the other wounded and in custody.  Investigation continues here and in Russia into who may have helped before or after with the bomb making or by obstructing justice by hiding evidence.

The security organizations  and local police, with help of ubiquitous surveillance cameras and observant bystanders, including at least one of the severely wounded, quickly and competently got the bad guys. They have traced three of the bombers' friends, who, in the manner of 19-year-olds, showed poor judgement and a misplaced loyalty by aiding and abetting after the fact. And our guys continue the very difficult job of investigating the why of the matter. What they find will be presented by prsecutors in the public trial that is our honored tradition.

A personal aside: We stayed recently for four days at the Charlesmark hotel on Boylston street (recommended), across from the Boston Public Library and a block or so from Copley Square.  The city of Boston has no more lovely, lively neighborhood.  While our hearts beat for the families and friends of the dead and shattered, the trashed neighborhood is a loss, hopefully temporary, to Bostonians and their visitors as well.

In the aftermath the second guessers are out and about, bloviating about "connecting the dots" and gravely disclosing just how this tragedy could have been easily adverted if only the alphabet soup of  the FBI, CIA, DHS and the NSA had cooperated more and shared what they knew among themselves and with local police.  The television talk show is their natural habitat:  thank you, God, for the mute button.

These critics' favorite weapon is hindsight.  My favorite definition of hindsight is: "Looking up that place where the sun don't shine."  Ancient seers stared at the equally obnoxious entrails of chickens with equally irrelevant results.

Consider the working day of the intelligence analyst.  If his file of new emails didn't overflow over night it soon will in the morning as various embassies, field offices and clandestine operatives supply bits and pieces of knowledge about suspected plots afoot.  In the 12 years since 9/11, when lack of cooperation among agencies was indeed a problem, a growing habit of sharing most everything has only expanded our analyst's data flow.  His task of sifting the evidence and evaluating and prioritizing possible threats is hard.  Determining after the fact what happened and how in a perfect world it could have been prevented is easy.  Once a successful plot has gone down, terrorists crow about rather than carefully conceal their intentions. 

Of course Congress must needs hold hearings separately in each branch.  Watching them prance and preen for the cameras while browbeating their witnesses and asking irrelevant questions is stomach turning.  They are rehearsing the play that will be performed when they seek reelection, nothing more.   Consequently as a group they have the attention span of a tribe of idly curious monkeys. The men and women who grapple with the responsibility of turning bits and pieces of facts, conjecture and misinformation into intelligence the nation can use, can only sit there, listen to the flowery non sequiters and try to be polite.

Agency spokes persons can only murmur the hard truth that our enemies abound and will occasionally succeed in doing us harm no matter how hard we try to prevent it, or how much navel gazing the politicians and the chattering classes indulge in after the fact.

Let Winston Churchill  explain what we are now -- and of late -- called upon to endure and how we can eventually win: "Let us therefor brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if [the United States] lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." We the people are ready.  Our leaders have a ways to go.