Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bob Stannard, a lobbyist and author. This piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
What’s worse: two confused, misguided kids turned killers or a politician who can’t start another war fast enough?
In Boston, two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev proved to be different than they were perceived. For about $100 two kids made a bomb that changed Boston forever.
For reasons we may never know, the older brother, Tamerlan, married and the father of a child, along with his younger brother, decided to make two bombs and detonate them at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
In another orchestrated event, as soon as the younger brother was apprehended, a U.S. senator was immediately on Twitter sharing his thoughts on how best to handle the arrest of this young man who committed a horrible crime.
The esteemed senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, had his fingers on the ready on the night the authorities captured the wounded and presumably frightened younger brother. He declared that our president should throw away our Constitution (even though Dzhokhar is a naturalized U.S. citizen and Tamerlan was a permanent resident) and treat these two as “enemy combatants.”
From Graham’s Twitter feed we read the following:
“The least of my worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.”
“It is vital he be questioned for intelligence gathering purposes about possible future plots.”
“Now that the suspect is in custody, the last thing I want is for him to remain silent.”
Our nation owes a great deal of thanks to Sen. Graham for his thoughtful and helpful insight as to how our president should handle the situation. Graham also ran to anyone who would listen to him to declare that Chechen fighters are the most involved in supporting international jihad.
Sen. Graham wants us to believe that Chechnya is somehow behind this heinous act. If it’s not, maybe he can find a way to link the two brothers to this country in hopes of building support for another military action.
OK, so the two brothers were allegedly from Chechnya, but had not lived there in many years. Why was it necessary to try to tie these two kids to this country? Does Sen. Graham simply need another war or want get rid of the Bill of Rights? You may recall back in 2011 Sen. Graham called for limits on the First Amendment.
“I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy. Burning a Koran is a terrible thing, but it doesn’t justify killing someone,” Graham said on “Face The Nation” on Sunday, April 3, 2011, in response to the killing of dozens of people in Afghanistan as a result of evangelical minister Terry Jones burning of a Koran.
(Note: at the time we were not in a war.)
More recently, according to a piece written by Michael Rozeff in February 2012, Lindsey Graham is a leader in aggression against Iran.
“He explained that he would be willing to strike militarily in order to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon:
‘My belief is a military strike stopping the Iranian government from having a nuclear weapon is more effective than trying to deal with the Iranian government after they have one.’
He explained that he would strike Iran very hard:
‘And if military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iranian government’s ability to wage conventional warfare against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float.’
Graham would support the destruction of Iran’s infrastructure to accomplish his goals.”
Just last month Sen. Graham, along with Sen. John McCain; the latter of which at least did serve this country, advocated for military action with Syria over this country’s use of chemical weapons by deploying our troops in Syria.
And now it’s April and we have a bombing in Boston. Although not confirmed as of this writing, it appears as though these two brothers acted alone. But that’s not good enough for Sen. Graham. He wants us to believe that Chechnya is somehow behind this heinous act. If it’s not, maybe he can find a way to link the two brothers to this country in hopes of building support for another military action.
We are on the heels of ending two wars and hopefully reducing our debt by not having to spend a billion dollars per day fighting others and creating more foes for our nation. Maybe it’s time for us to take a little break from fighting and spending a little more time and resources repairing our own nation. We have more than enough work to keep us busy here for a long, long time.
Two kids, two bombs and a bad idea were able to create incredible upheaval in one of our major cities. Something happened to cause at least one brother to turn against the nation that he called home.
Yes, we need to determine the motives behind the two brothers who wreaked havoc on Boston, but maybe we should pause a minute to consider the motives of a senator, one who would never fight a war himself but has no trouble sending your kids off to fight.
