Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have chosen to have a shootout with the Boston police as an act of suicide; to die waging jihad, although questions remain about exactly how he died. In any event, I think it's safe to say that the authorities wanted to capture the brothers alive to be able to question them.
It would be most interesting to be present the moment after a jihadist dies and discovers, with great shock, that there's no afterlife. Of course, by definition, there would have to be an afterlife for him to discover that there's no afterlife. On the other hand, a non-believer would likely be thrilled to find out that he was wrong.
Let us hope that the distinguished statesmen, military officers, and corporate leaders who own and rule America find out in this life that to put an end to anti-American terrorism they're going to have to learn to live without unending war against the world. There's no other defense against a couple of fanatic young men with backpacks. Just calling them insane or evil doesn't tell you enough; it may tell you nothing.
But this change in consciousness in the elite is going to be extremely difficult, as difficult as it appears to be for the parents of the two boys to accept their sons' guilt.
Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, stated after the Boston attack: "The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks. ... We should be asking ourselves at this moment, 'How many canaries will have to die before we awaken from our geopolitical fantasy of global domination?'" [See ForeignPolicyJournal.com, April 21, 2013.]
Officials in Canada and Britain as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice have called for Falk to be fired. [The Telegraph (London), April 25, 2013; Politico.com, April 24]
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