I'm shocked after seeing footage of the Boston Marathon explosions. How can terrorists act in such a callous way and injure people who are raising money for charity? Do you think they really believe they have a point or are they just evil?
I guess the point behind these horrible acts is answered by the second word in your question - to shock.
Detonating explosives in a public place scares people and makes everyone going about their daily business feel vulnerable knowing they could be next.
But why do terrorists want to create a climate of fear?
I'm of the belief that most atrocities of this nature are masterminded with some sort of financial or political motive in mind, and the only people that are brainwashed enough to believe these acts serve a "greater purpose" are the ones recruited to commit the acts of violence.
Although there are occasional acts of terrorism that are genuinely borne out of reckless evil - I'm convinced that most major attacks are carefully planned, and designed to create a political or financial advantage for the brains behind the murders.
At the time of writing this, it's still too early to attribute the explosions in Boston to any known terrorist group - but I'll use the example of Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda is a terrorist organisation that originated in Saudi Arabia. For anyone that doesn't know anything about them, it'd be easy to assume that they're a group of religious fanatics hell-bent on forcing their extreme way of life on the rest of the world.
The truth is very different. It's well known that Al Qaeda is funded through arms and drug smuggling, hardly an example of devout Islamic practice.
Also, in combatting the terrorist threat, the Saudi Arabian government has found that the most effective way to deal with terrorists was to simply pay them off!
That's right, for a few thousand Riyals these so called 'ideological martyrs' are willing to hang-up their AK47's and retire.
What about the ones that strap themselves with explosive belts and blow themselves up? They're usually carefully recruited, groomed and indoctrinated to believe all the ideological lies - so that they can carry out their mission.
My point is, the terrorists that actually get blown up or captured whilst carrying out these cowardly mass killings are just brainwashed pawns.
The people funding and plotting these terrorist plots are interested in creating and manipulating social disorder to their advantage.
I think what we can't
avoid is that people can act
in such a callous way, given the right psychological profile,
personal history, circumstances and manipulation. I suspect that very
few people would be immune to the right combination of these, and
that most of those that actually do commit an act of terrorism, would
under different circumstances not dream of such an act. So it is
probably unhelpful to focus on the individuals involved, as if being
a 'terrorist' somehow made them alien, and try to understand the
circumstances instead. We should certainly have enough evidence to
study by now!
With
such a huge and diverse population in the world, and so many
political, economic and religious grievances, it is unlikely that
terrorism will ever be completely preventable. The vanishingly low
level of incidents or casualties in politically stable countries,
either home-grown or foreign, does suggest however that it can
eventually be brought down to statistically insignificant levels (as
they are in the USA). I am sure this doesn't give much comfort to the
far greater number of victims of weekly terrorism living in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Pakistan though...
While
acts like those in Boston are horrific, and attract overwhelming
attention in the West as a result, we shouldn't lose our sense of proportion –
after all we don't try and eliminate the driving of cars which kills
far more people! This doesn't mean of course that we shouldn't do
everything reasonably possible to prevent these acts from a security
point of view – that would just increase the number or attacks and
casualties, and be politically unsustainable. However, overreaction
demonstrably increases attacks rather than reducing them.
As
to the people that committed the atrocity in Boston, we have to
assume that they feel they have a point, and that they have been
deceived, (or they have deluded themselves), into believing that they will make a
difference - this is where the power of religious or ideological
'faith' is so dangerous.
I personally don't believe that any person
can be described as 'evil', although some are so psychologically
warped or morally adrift, that to all intents and purposes they
appear to us to be. The acts are evil for sure.