A lot can happen in one week's time. Take the week of June 28, 1863, when Lee's armies marched into Gettysburg in an invasion of the Union and were repulsed. Take the week of December 7th, 1941, when America entered the Second World War and Japan attacked half the Pacific. And, though it wasn't as significant as either of these weeks, you could make the case for this past week. No, I'm not saying that this past week comes close to being an extremely important week in American history, or that it's even one of the most important weeks of the 21st Century. But I would dare to say that this past week has been among the most significant, in terms of terrorism, since the fateful years that began our current century. This week may even outdo Bin Laden. On the other hand, everything is relative. But I digress.
First and foremost, I should discuss some events that occurred beyond the boundaries of this past week. Two weeks ago today, in Garland, Texas, two gunmen launched an attack on a cartoonists' contest featuring caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, not unlike the ones featured in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. If you're unaware as to how that instance played out, the would-be killers wounded one man before they were gunned down themselves. ISIS claimed responsibility for the event in the days after the attack, seemingly in an effort to rattle Americans. It's unclear if the men were operating on ISIS's orders (and little evidence supports it), but it appears that the men were in contact with members of ISIS residing in western nations. At any rate, if ISIS hoped to strike fear into the American public's hearts, they failed miserably. All they managed to accomplish was to give us a new Texas joke. The government is taking things more seriously, though - security has been ramped up at military bases across the country. But there are other reasons for that, which I'll discuss later. In another string of events that has been occurring throughout recent weeks, a Saudi-led coalition is continuing to launch strikes against Shia rebels in Yemen, who forced the Yemeni president to flee to Saudi Arabia. The rebels are backed by Iran and are one of a number of factions in the war - among them, Al Qaeda. Yemen warrants several posts of its own, so I won't elaborate much here.
Earlier in the year, I posted about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber, whose trial began months ago. Well, it turns out he may not be surviving much longer - Tsarnaev was sentenced to death this week. He was charged on six counts, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. To recap - Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan, religious extremists, wanted to get revenge on America for its actions in the Middle East. They rigged two pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon - one to kill the runners, the second to kill the rescuers as they rushed to help. Three spectators - a restaurant manager, a graduate student, and an eight-year-old boy - were killed in the blasts, and hundreds were injured. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar would later kill a young MIT police officer while on the run. The defense in the trial will undoubtedly try to get the case before a court of appeals. If the sentence stands, Tsarnaev will be executed by lethal injection in Indiana. One of the great ironies of the case is that the defense wanted Tsarnaev's trial to occur outside of Boston, for fear that the odds would be stacked against him. Recent polls show that only 15% of Bostonians and 19% of Massachusetts residents (I'm not sure what the proper demonym is) feel that Tsarnaev should be executed - compare that with 60% of Americans overall. There's another factor at play here, one that gives it even more weight: if the sentence is carried out, Tsarnaev will be the first terrorist executed in the United States since September 11th. A chilling milestone, no matter how you look at it.
Perhaps the most significant events of this past week, as they relate to the world as a whole, involve the Islamic State. ISIS took Ramadi, the capital of Al-Anbar, Iraq's largest governorate (the equivalent of a province) this weekend. This marks a significant blow to the Coalition's overlying goal of halting the Islamic State's advance through Iraq. But earlier this weekend, the Coalition struck a major blow to ISIS. In one the first American ground operations revealed to the public (only one other has been confirmed so far), soldiers of the First Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, better known as Delta Force, raided an ISIS stronghold in Syria. They killed an ISIS commander known as Abu Sayyif (not his real name, it seems), who managed ISIS's oil funds. In a struggle that involved hand-to-hand combat and intense gun battles, Delta Force killed about a dozen ISIS militants, executed Abu Sayyif, captured the commander's wife, and freed a Yazidi girl being held as a slave. The White House confirmed that the raid was a success, and that the commander was killed. ISIS hardly took the news well. In one of their usual messages, they threatened to execute President Obama and western "cross-worshippers." In a more chilling twist, they released a photoshopped photo of President Obama being beheaded. I'm not going to share a link. I mentioned earlier that the Pentagon is stepping up security on many of its bases...that's among the reasons why. Ultimately, only time will tell if the events of these past days will make the world a safer place, or a more dangerous one. But in the short run, one thing is clear: chaos is gaining ground in the world.
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