The US This Week: Tsarnaev's Trial

Almost two years ago, a duo of Islamic extremists planted homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Two explosives went off, one after the other, as the runners started to pour through. The first was to cause an initial wave of devastation. The second was to kill the rescuers. Three spectators were killed, and hundreds more were injured. The two extremists fled, killing a police officer with a handgun in the days after the attack, before the law caught up with them.

The suspects, as we all know, were two brothers - Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They were born in the Soviet Union (former Soviet Union, in Dzhokhar's case) and raised in the nation's Muslim regions. Their family moved to the United States in 2002. But two things set the Tsarnaev brothers apart from many other Islamic Extremists. First off, they were not raised in a house that condoned religious extremism. The Tsarnaev brothers grew up in a moderate, traditional Muslim home. Secondly, and much more importantly, they were homegrown terrorists. Dzhokhar was a popular, well-liked kid who liked hip hop music, volunteered to help students with special needs, and wanted to be a dentist. His brother Tamerlan seems to have been the source of the radical ideology that destroyed both of their lives - by all reports, Dzhokhar idolized his older brother. It didn't end well for the two of them - Tamerlan was gunned down in a shootout in police, while Dzhokhar lay bleeding from wounds in a boat all the next day. He scrawled a note, saying that the attacks were retribution for American actions against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. The evidence points to Tamerlan having been responsible for introducing his brother to the radical ideology.

Fast-forward almost two years: Dzhokhar's trial is set to begin in the upcoming weeks, having been delayed. A spokesperson for the US District Court asserted that the initial date for the trial's commencement, this past week, was unrealistic. The defense team is trying to get the case moved out of Boston - and, indeed, out of the state of Massachusetts - on the grounds that the local feelings towards the bombers will deny Tsarnaev of his constitutional right to a fair trial. To be quite honest, though, I don't think that will help their case much. Tsarnaev and his brother are certainly guilty of a number of crimes, among them four murders, a carjacking, and resisting arrest. He's also guilty of an breaking an unwritten law, that may very well be his doom - he attacked the United States. He attacked innocent Americans in cold blood. His own moral justification for the events doesn't quite sit with the vast majority of Americans. The vast majority of Americans are calling for his head. Nothing unifies us like an attack on our country. These times of trouble are really the only times when liberals and conservatives will even consider working together. Politicians didn't bury the hatchet in the aftermath of the bombings, but many across the nation - particularly in the Boston area - stood strong after the attack, and forgot their trivial partisan separations. And in launching his brutal assault on American citizens in their own country, Tsarnaev may have ensured that he winds up as his brother did - dead, and not from natural causes.

There's no question of the fact that Tsarnaev is guilty. He did plead not guilty in 2013, but we all know that's complete crap. The chance that Bin Laden wasn't really behind the attack on the World Trade Center is greater than the chance that Tsarnaev is innocent. The real focus of this trial - we all know it - is whether or not Tsarnaev will get the death penalty for his actions. And it seems likely that he will. If the judge denies the defense's request to transfer the trial to another state, Dzhokhar will almost certainly be put to death. The defense isn't wrong - odds are, a Boston jury will be calling for blood. The interesting thing about this whole case is that America has spared men responsible for many more deaths than Tsarnaev is. Take the Taliban men President Obama exchanged for (perhaps willingly) imprisoned Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. They may not have injured more Americans directly, but their crimes are above and beyond Tsarnaev's (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/

06/02/bowe-bergdahl-was-traded-for-5-taliban-commanders-heres-who-they-are/). But their crimes aren't personal to any potential Boston jurors. The bombing of the marathon, on the other hand...that's very personal. 

Is the death penalty appropriate in this case? I'm certainly not an authority on the subject. I don't live in Boston, for one thing. Also, I've never heard Tsarnaev's side of the story. At the very least, he does have the right to a trial. Ironic, though, that that right is protected by the very nation he attacked on that day in 2013. The nation he called home for most of his life. This entire case is a mess of home-grown domestic terrorism, the morality of the death penalty, and American nationalism, and is far too complicated for me to communicate in a single post. We'll just have to wait and see how the trial unfolds. And we may have to wait a while. 

Movie Review: American Sniper

I saw the film last night with a few friends. At first, I'd planned to write this post upon arriving back home. However, the film required a bit more processing than that. And so, here I am, twenty-four hours later, finally ready to talk about what I saw. And, though this goes without saying, spoiler alert.

American Sniper chronicles the life of Chris Kyle, one of the most lethal snipers in world history. Kyle, a Texan, joined the Navy in 1999 and became a SEAL. An expert marksman, he often acted as a sniper, providing cover on missions. All told, he served four tours of duty in Iraq and racked up at 160 confirmed kills. Upon leaving the Navy, he ran a training company for law enforcement and wrote two books on his experiences before his death in 2013 (more on that later). In the film, Kyle is portrayed by a nearly-unrecognizeable Bradley Cooper. Cooper gained forty pounds for the role, of course. But that isn't what puts this performance in a league of its own. The laid-back funnyman I've grown accustomed to seeing Cooper play is long gone. His mannerisms, his facial expressions, even his hairstyle...everything is completely different. Cooper's Texan drawl is spot-on - noticeable, but not forced. There's an unmistakeable tensity throughout the film, just from the way Cooper plays Kyle. The character changes drastically after his first experience in combat, and seems to exhibit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is distant from his family, with that thousand-yard stare, and is prone to fits of anger - in one harrowing scene, he whips his dog for playing too roughly with his son. It's also implied that he associates certain everyday sounds with the war, another symptom of PTSD.

The film does an excellent job of keeping true to Kyle's story, as I understand it. Some parts are embellished, of course, for the sake of the film. Having never read Kyle's autobiography, I can't say for certain which scenes deviate from his description of the events, but I assume that the total is greater than those I'm listing here. Director Clint Eastwood and writer Jason Hall did deviate for the sake of action, or for the sake of depth. To get the classic "good guy, bad guy" element going in the film, the writers created a rivalry between Kyle and an insurgent sniper. At the climax of the film, Kyle kills this sniper with a 2100-yard shot. This isn't what happened in real life, to my understanding - Kyle didn't kill a rival sniper who'd killed some of his friends with a 2100-yard shot. He did, however, take out an insurgent armed with a rocket-propelled-grenade (in layman's terms, a bazooka) from such a distance. And in spite of this rivalry, the film draws interesting parallels between Kyle and the insurgent sniper - they are both fathers, they both have wives, and they are both fighting for their homes and their countrymen. From interviews I've seen featuring the real Chris Kyle, I would venture a guess that Cooper played his PTSD symptoms up a bit for the sake of the film. I may be wrong - Kyle may have put on a brave face for the cameras. And the transition from military life to civilian life certainly took a toll on him - he attested to that in multiple interviews. But on camera, he seemed perfectly at ease with his situation - cool as you please and laid back.

Since this is a film relating to the war in Iraq and directed by Clint Eastwood, you would expect it to either condemn or justify the actions our country undertook in Iraq. But if that's what you're searching for in this film, you'll be sorely disappointed. Sniper neither condones nor condemns the war, in that it does both to roughly the same extent. The psychological toll the war takes on Kyle and other veterans is the central theme in the film. In several extremely intense scenes, Kyle has women and small children in his crosshairs (that's all you're getting out of me), and these instances clearly shake him. Many of Kyle's good friends from the SEALs are lost in combat in violent fashion - some of them grow disillusioned with the cause altogether. You hear all that, and you'd expect it to be an anti-war flick, right? Well, that's because I haven't mentioned one scene where an Iraqi father and son are tortured and killed with an unconventional weapon, and another where the bloody, mutilated corpses of American soldiers are strung up like butchered animal carcasses, and another where a seemingly hospitable man turns out to be a heavily-armed insurgent. When Bradley's Kyle calls his foes "savages," you don't disagree with him. There are definitely partisan undertones in the film, though. Cooper's Kyle comes across as a stereotypical nationalist-patriot. The film's version of Kyle is definitely a lot more reserved in this respect. The real Chris Kyle was unabashedly conservative with an aversion to political correctness who may or may not have punched out former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura at some point. He had no qualms about killing insurgents, who he viewed as savages. But Cooper and Eastwood brought that point across in the film as well: both Kyles regretted the American lives they couldn't save more than they regretted the enemy lives they took. Some of the other SEALs provide a more liberal view on the conflict, as does Kyle's wife, Taya. Granted, their "partisan" views are motivated by the fact that they want the war, which has an enormous impact on their immediate lives, to come to an end rather than by politics, but the message still gets across.

It's history, so this isn't really a spoiler: Chris Kyle and another veteran were killed on February 2, 2013, by an ex-marine with severe PTSD they were trying to help counsel. Eastwood and Cooper showed a scene of a recovered Kyle to add to the meaning of what had happened. The film ended with actual footage and photographs from Kyle's memorial service at AT&T Stadium (home of the Dallas Cowboys) in Arlington, Texas, the funeral procession from Midlothian to Texas State Cemetery in Austin, and the burial itself. I don't often cry during films. And by "I don't usually," I mean "I hardly ever." My eyes have been bone dry for the vast majority of pictures I've seen. The ending of Return of the King got me the first time around, and It's A Wonderful Life tends to hit close to home, but aside from that, very little. But I did tear up at the end. The way the final scene with the actors was structured emphasized the cruel irony of Chris Kyle's death - after he survived combat and rebuilt his relationship with his family, he was gunned down by a man he was trying to help. And perhaps the best indicator of the ending's power lies in the audience's reaction. When the screen went dark and the credits started scrolling, every single person in that theater walked out in complete silence.

American Sniper may not be the best film I've ever seen. But it is, beyond all doubt, the greatest film I've ever seen in theaters in my seventeen years. I'd recommend it for anyone with a strong enough stomach - some of the images are pretty graphic. It's a gritty, no-holds-barred, brutally honest film that showcases the arguments for and against the conflict in the Middle East while focusing on the life of a very human soldier. It was definitely worth the money for the ticket, and it definitely deserved those six Oscar nominations. Go check it out when you have the time.

The World This Week: Charlie Hebdo

It's happened again.

A peaceful setting shattered. Innocents cut down. At least sixteen French civilians dead, along with three radical Muslim assailants. But that isn't the worst part.

No, the worst part is the fact that I'm no longer surprised.

I could talk about the attack itself, but that would be pointless. That two-line second paragraph tells you all you need to know about the events of the attack. What I need to discuss is what motivated the assailants, and just how disturbing it is that these sorts of events have become commonplace.

The French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, published cartoons satirizing all sorts of things, including the major religions of the world. Christianity, Catholicism in particular, was jabbed, as was Judaism. Islam, of course, also was mocked by the publication. I've seen some of the cartoons. And they're hardly sensitive. In fact, as a Catholic, I would describe their portrayal of my faith as downright offensive, and I could definitely see any Muslim feeling the same way about the portrayal of theirs. Was I irritated by what I saw? Yes. Did I have any desire to make the writers and cartoonists pay with their own blood? No. Because it's satire. It's meant to make a point, but not to be taken too seriously. When someone makes a joke about Christianity, I let it go. I may get offended, but I still let it go. I occasionally want to punch Bill Maher in the mouth, but I still think he's entitled to his own views. If you think religion is garbage, well, I strongly disagree with you, but you have every right to believe that. And many Christians, Jews and Muslims across the world are of a similar opinion. Many Muslims across the world, from the United States to the heart of the Middle East, slammed the shootings as utter barbarism. Millions of people from around the globe have expressed solidarity with the satirists and raised their voices in support of free speech. Jon Stewart summed it up perfectly in a recent episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OWD9aP7O6o) - in our society, we tend to take free speech for granted. And without free speech, it's only a matter of time before the world we know is replaced with an Orwellian dystopia. And hundreds of thousands of people are in France tonight, in support of free speech -and indeed, freedom from fear. 

There's something else at play, though, that is highly disturbing. In the aftermath of this horrible attack, the desire for political correctness is absolutely mind-boggling. French officials are refusing to label the acts as Islamic terrorism. And that's absolutely ridiculous. Bill Maher, the guy I sometimes want to punch in the mouth, hit the key point in the aftermath of the shooting: it's pathetic that people are refusing to call these acts what they are for fear of offending people. The acts were obviously committed by Islamic extremists in the wake of a negative portrayal of their faith. To suggest that all Muslims are of similar ilk is utter garbage. But to suggest that the assailants' Islamic faith played no role in motivating the attack is just as unbelievable. Going back to Bill Maher: if some radical Catholic group stormed his studio and shot him and his writers down because of their views, I would be first on line to call that terrorism. The Pope probably would as well. And I don't think it's presumptuous to assume that the vast majority of Muslims in France, the United States, and across the western world view the shooting at Charlie Hebdo in a similar light. To not call the attacks what they are because you may offend extremist Muslims who loathe you in the first place, and perhaps a few non-extreme Muslims as well...that's unfathomably incompetent. I can't put it into words how much this disgusts me. The Charlie Hebdo writers were killed because they offended Islam. To refuse to risk offending Islam in the aftermath of the attack...well, the French government would be giving the terrorists what they sought. And that sort of attitude only fosters more terrorism, because the terrorists see that their tactics are working.

That brings me to the point that I'm no longer surprised by news of acts of terrorism by Islamic jihadists.   To be honest, why should this be surprising? When I was growing up, the news was full of Taliban car bombs and Bin Laden's famous suicide vests. And even in the last few years, when the west has backed its armies away from radical jihadists, the attacks have continued. And they've spread. There was Times Square back in 2010 - attempted bombing. And, of course, there was the Boston Marathon in 2013 - successful bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial will unfold in the upcoming weeks - but that's a discussion for another day. ISIS's bloody rise to power in the Middle East, which now looks toward Saudi Arabia - again, a discussion for another day. Hundreds of shootings and murders across the globe, in the years before and since 9/11. And who could forget that café in Sydney, not even a month ago? Terrorism is something that westernized countries (I use the term to include Israel) have grown accustomed to. Israel was always accustomed to it, of course, but we've joined in its ranks. My first thought when I heard about the shooting was, "Another one?" I've said it before, but it's a vicious cycle. The only way to stop Muslim extremists is through brute force. But that brute force only encourages some Muslims to adopt the radicalized, twisted version of their faith promoted by terrorists and take up the fight themselves. This is what we've seen in the Middle East in the last fourteen years. What is the end to this deadly circle of terrorism? Who can say?

One thing's for sure, though - Charlie Hebdo wasn't the first attack of its kind. And it certainly won't be the last.