Headlines around the world have been dominated by the Boston Marathon bombing which killed three people, including an eight year-old boy and left 140 injured, some of them seriously. The outrage among Americans is the greater because this was a fun event in which no less than 23,000 gutsy individuals were running over 26 miles, most of them to raise money for good causes. The runners came to the oldest modern urban marathon from all over the United States and some ninety other countries, to be cheered on their way by an estimated half a million spectators. For the watching crowds, places near the finishing line were particularly valued and it was there that the bombers chose to strike. Yet Americans were not alone in their agony. In Iraq 23 car bombs exploded in several cities, including Fallujah, Hilla, Samarra and Tikrit. The butcher's bill for these outrages is currently around 31 dead and more than 200 injured. Yet despite the higher death toll and their considerably greater extent, news of these horrors in no way displaced the coverage of the Boston bombings in world headlines. Part of the explanation of course is that attacks of this nature in America are rare. However, because the United States continues to be haunted by the depravity of the 9/11 attacks and has erected a substantial and, in the view of some, illiberal Homeland Security apparatus, the fear and fury engendered by the Boston bombings is all the greater. Iraq by contrast has been in grip of a bombing campaign of varying intensity since the American invasion. Gross though it is to admit, the blasts and the destruction they cause to both human life and property, have become a dismal part of everyday life. The security forces seem incapable of mounting many successful intelligence-led operations to intercept the bombers before they can attack. Thus it is the emergency services, the police, fire and ambulance men who have become experts at the gruesome business of rescuing the terribly injured and gathering up the slain. In the anger and agony caused by all such deadly attacks, public thoughts about the bombers themselves are generally incoherent. However, the FBI in Boston will be thinking very hard about the perpetrators of the Marathon massacre, seeking to build a profile of the killers, trying to work out if they are home-grown radicals or foreign terrorists. But for most decent people, it is simply incomprehensible that anyone could even contemplate such wanton destruction of innocent life. While understandable, this response is severely limited. There are people out there who really believe that the cause to which they have committed themselves as terrorists, absolutely justifies the mass murder of civilians. They construct their car bombs, strap on their suicide vests and detonate them in the midst of crowds of ordinary decent people, going about their dairy lives. Somewhere in their mental journey they have convinced themselves, or more probably, been convinced by others that their end goal fully justifies their terrible means. These terrorists were once children, who knew fear and tears and hopefully even love. Certainly this deadly trade must attract psychopaths or the plain evil, but it has to be that among the bombers there are may people who once had most or all of the decent instincts of normal society. One of greatest questions has to be how their hatred could so ossify their hearts.
