Terrorism in Boston: A Marine Tells It To You
Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)
That the attackers were radical Islamic extremists from Chechnya was unsurprising as we had killed any number of their brethren murderers in Iraq and the same can be said of Afghanistan.
No doubt some are unsettled by the fact that the two terrorists had lived for a long period in the United States but not I.
Too many modern progressive Americans abandoned the idea that newcomers should embrace the core beliefs that once held the nation together; most obviously a submission to the values put forth in the Constitution. Instead, we replaced those tenets with a dubious form of individualism where “our common bond” came to be defined as superficial social interactions and certain minimal civil behaviors that, as this case so amply proves, allows the vilest of haters to pass as acceptable.
That gets to the crux of the matter: Why do they hate us?
Look to the Constitution as there is no other document that better serves to answer the question as to why radical Islamic terrorists hate America and therefore, any and all Americans. Of course, a quick corollary can be made to expand that hatred to all liberal democracies across the globe. Such is the perceived power and engendered fear associated with freedom and free societies by one-dimensional radicals.
Where to begin? The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the opening ten words defeats the ultimate goal of radical Islamic extremists everywhere: Islam will never be the established religion of the United States and, even worse, other religions not of the Book are not only permitted but treated equally with Islam.
Please do not read too much into this for hundreds of millions of Muslims are comfortable with the Constitution. It is equally true, however, that for Islamic extremists, like Chechen terrorists, the First Amendment is an affront to Allah and justifies the most savage of acts in revenge.
They see this as the wellspring of America’s war on Islam as the First Amendment eats away like a cancer at “true” Islamic values and everything else America does or does not do perpetuates this harm: our freedom of speech, our equal treatment of women under the law (which contradicts the Koran at a number of places, an unforgivable sin against Islam for the extremists), even the Thirteenth Amendment that bans slavery is a sinful act that raises America’s laws above those of a Koran that explicitly states that slaveholding is permissible but not a duty for a good Muslim.
I could go on but you get the point: Modern America’s values are deemed wrongfully incompatible with Islamic beliefs by the extremists and they will wage war against us to end our evil ways.
We must also remember that their intolerant hate is not limited to America. India is well acquainted with these people’s hatred towards Hinduism. One of my favorite newspaper photo’s addressing this pan-hatred of other religions shows a Buddhist monk wearing his saffron robe in Southeast Asia while holding a placard declaring that, “The world is not just for Muslims” and the 2001 destruction of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan statues by the Taliban sparked shock and outrage in nations like Japan and Korea. Finally, those who suffer greatest by the hand of Islamic extremists are the millions upon millions of Muslims who do not "measure up."
After having gone to far parts of the globe to combat these “haters,” I feel safe in writing that what sets the Islamic extremist, like a Chechen terrorist, apart from the mainstream is unbridled and arrogant intolerance, unquestioned surety in their beliefs, a conviction that their life is of little importance as heaven is the reward and, since they care not for their own life, the life of their enemy – an endlessly expanding group and the object unthinking hatred – is truly worthless and can be taken without compunction.
Semper Fi,
Mike
