It has been a horrifying week. On Monday, two bombs were set off at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring many more. Monday’s violence was followed by the murder of a young police officer on the M.I.T. campus, a carjacking, a gun battle, the violent death of one of the suspects in the bombings, and, finally, the capture of a bloodied Dzhokar Tsarnaev in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Events like this bring out the best and the worst in us. Ordinary people behaved heroically: witness the men and women who rushed to help the injured on Monday. Ordinary people behaved idiotically: witness the witch-hunts on sites like 4chan and Reddit, which succeeded only in sullying the names of innocent people.
The revelation that the FBI’s “Suspect #1” and “Suspect #2” were brothers of Chechen origin fueled a further frenzy of speculation. The widespread ignorance about Chechnya was staggering; journalists seemed to have very little idea of the conflict in Chechnya, and frequently seemed to conflate all violence in Chechnya with a narrative of Islamic terrorism.
The ignorance of Chechnya revealed in American reporting was not just about the history of the Chechen conflict; indeed, the ignorance appeared to be so profound that the Czech ambassador in Washington felt compelled to issue an official statement:
As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.
Under happier circumstances one might suspect the Czechs of engaging in a bit of absurdist humor, but some of the reactions to the events of the week by American politicians make it clear that the ignorance of geography is the least of our problems.
On the crucial issues of liberty, justice, and due process, prominent American politicians did far worse than mistake Bohemia for Chechnya. On Saturday, less than 24 hours after the arrest of Suspect #2, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), John McCain (R-Arizona) and Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire) and Congressman Peter King (R-New York) issued a shockingly ill-reasoned statement calling for Dzhokar Tsarnaev to be held as an “enemy combatant.” The justification for this status boils down to this:
It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city. The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans.
Given that one of the victims of the Marathon Bombing was in fact a Chinese citizen, it is probably worth reminding Senators Graham, McCain, and Ayotte, and Representative King, that murder is a crime even when the victim is not an American citizen. It is also worth noting that our criminal justice system does a remarkably good job of finding, trying, and convicting perpetrators of crimes like these–and it does so without having to resort to extra- or unconstitutional measures.
Not convinced? Ask Terry Nichols, serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole; you can’t ask Timothy McVeigh, because he was tried, convicted, and executed by that the very constitutional system that our members of Congress think inadequate to deal with the Boston case. By contrast, the un-constitutional system imposed at Guantanamo has been a miserable failure, simultaneously imprisoning people the United States recognizes are not guilty and failing to try and convict people who are pretty clearly very bad news indeed.
Rushing to embrace extreme measures is a bad idea–morally, because it strips us of our decency–and practically, because taking shortcuts simply does not work. As the New York Times reported last week, the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment concluded that the use of torture
has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.
So now that Dzhokar Tsarnaev has been apprehended, we must do better than to indulge in the base reflexes that seem to have motivated the fearsome foursome. We could do worse than heed the words of President Obama, whose response to the crisis has been measured and dignified:
One thing we do know is that whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not — cannot — prevail. Whatever they thought they could ultimately achieve, they’ve already failed. They failed because the people of Boston refused to be intimidated. They failed because, as Americans, we refused to be terrorized. They failed because we will not waver from the character and the compassion and the values that define us as a country. Nor will we break the bonds that hold us together as Americans.
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