Now that the initial shock has worn off from yesterday’s attack in Boston, I’ve been able to collect my thoughts. And I do mean collect — they were originally scattered all over Twitter. But a couple strong nighttime brandies, followed by seven hours of sleep, followed by a very angry Trifecta shoot on the subject, I think has me a little more coherent. So in no particular order, a few observations.
• It could have been much worse. That’s a terrible thing to say about an attack which seems to have been carefully designed to blow the legs off of runners, but it’s true. Had the killer(s) used better quality explosives and more shrapnel, the results would have been more devastating.
• Have the reports of unexploded bombs been dismissed? If not, then we may be looking at the work of an impatient young man. Either impatient in how he rigged the blasts, or in how he executed them. Al Qaeda enjoyed at 75% success rate on 9/11, and it would have been 100% were it not for the quick spoiling attack by a handful of passengers on Flight 93. If this attack’s success rate was really only 50%, then it would seem more Shoe Bomber and less Osama bin Laden.
• If the reports have been dismissed, it just goes to show how little attention you should pay to early reports. A simple fire at the JFK library was thought for hours to have been caused by a third bomb.
• The Left is absolutely shameful in its instant politicalization of the attack. The only one I know of who has apologized for his shameful remarks was Nick Kristof. But of course he’s still an idiot, so it makes no difference. None of this surprises me, but it hasn’t lost the power to sicken.
• Yes, some on the Right did it, too. But the Right doesn’t control the first responders, doesn’t control the mainstream media, doesn’t control the narrative. So those particular idiots are just internet cranks. But one flippant remark by a David Axelrod, uncritically repeated by the MSM, can have lasting and harmful effect.
• When these events happen, I used to go to Drudge and Instapundit and Google News and CNN and Fox and one or two of the major networks. Now I pretty much just bring up Twitter. So do millions of others. There’s a two strengths in this. Twitter has the ability to disseminate information widely and quickly, while also helping like nothing else to filter out the crap — and to shout down the Kristofs and the Axelrods. The other strength is, it gives people a place to gather, without a physical location for the terrorists to target. That failed to materialize fully in Boston yesterday, as traffic overwhelmed the cell phone system there. We need our communications to be hardened against EMP attack, yes, but also made more robust for times of crisis.
• Barney Frank is a reprehensible human being, assuming he’s a human being.
• Sharks gotta swim, bats gotta fly, ignoramuses gotta speculate. Especially the professional ignoramuses.
• IEDs coming to America is the real terror story here. It’s the nightmare scenario, in fact. It was also inevitable. Let’s not do something inevitably stupid to try and make ourselves “safe.” One PATRIOT Act this century is plenty, thanks.
• Quit saying “device,” you milquetoast talking head cowards. A “device” that goes “boom” is a “bomb.”
• When a bomb goes off and you don’t know who did it, just say a bomb went off and you don’t know who did it.
• Terrorism is vandalism writ large: Mindless, sniggering destruction for its own sake. This particular person or group was particularly fiendish, setting the bombs to go off at the time in the race when the biggest group of runners is approaching the finish line. And if these bombs really were set low to rip off the perfect legs of long-distance runners, then that’s a bit of fiendish sadism unequaled even on 9/11.
That’s it for now. What are your thoughts?
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