Judging by the nature of the site, perpetrators of these attacks intended to exact an indiscriminate and heavy human toll at a crowded place, a gathering of nationals coming from across the globe. Regardless of the identities of the perpetrators, we condemn such violent criminal acts.
This odious act turns out to be the first attack on US soil since the 11 September 2001 bombings of the World Trade Centre. The same, however, cannot be said about many parts of the world where the USA, as it continues to date, took the “War on Terror” to.
The carnage, mayhem and distress which the war has caused make part of a long untold tragedy of suffering, a lost generation and a roll-back of social progress some of the targeted nations had been making.
In this war without end, revealed secrets and details are now making it uncomfortable for a growing number of Americans some of whom had been part of the administration that started it all.
As NPR reports, a bipartisan study says it's undeniable that the U.S. tortured people after 9/11. This report comes hot on the heels of the revelation that several Guantanamo Bay detainees are on a months-long hunger strike, in protest of their continuing humiliation and denial of rights.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations has pointed out in a statement that the report of the bipartisan study shows a need to stop the "disturbing erosion of American principles."
An excerpt of a new book published by Penguin yesterday under the title “The Way of the Knife” shows that this erosion of principles runs deep and now bares whatever remained of the moral authority of the US.
Subtitled “The C.I.A., a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth,” this book by Mark Mazzetti reveals how a secret deal was sealed by the CIA, the ISI and Pervez Musharraf to assassinate individuals termed as terrorists, even if some of those targets were mere domestic challengers of Musharraf’s (mis)rule.
We now know as we continue to witness that in the name of killing ‘high profile’ targets whether it is a 'Taliban commander' or an 'Al Qaeda operative', be it in Afghanistan or Pakistan, whether in Yemen or Iraq, thousands of innocent bystanders, women and children have become nameless expendable collateral damage.
These nameless innocent victims classified as collateral damage are in fact humans, with dreams and aspirations, loved and known to their families, just as the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings have been known across the world...
The mistrust will never go away across the globe as long as the pain of Boston Marathon bombings is multiplied over and over and routinely delivered to innocent people via allies and agents of the USA as we have witnessed, in the name of "War on Terror".
Courtesy : Jamiatul Ulama South Africa