April 28, 2013

Kurtz Would Have Loved Them: 'Horror and moral terror are your friends'

By Joel Levine, MD
When Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations, he presaged the Boston Marathon bombings by the proposition that the cause of future conflict will no longer be economic or territorial; rather, our woes will come from profound differences in culture.  If nothing else, the emerging profile of the Tsarnaev brothers strongly suggests that our society simply does not understand the implacable forces that shape people who, with ball caps and backpacks, can kill with dedication, resolve, and reason. In the United States, as David Ortiz explained, we imagine Americans as a committed part of a national unity.  Our ethnic origins become heritage, our languages cohabit with English, our colors, often slow to succumb, eventually are blended into the physical evidence of a powerful mosaic.  We pride ourselves in what Ortiz said at Fenway, but the most telling words from Tamerlan Tsarnaev was that he did not "understand Americans" and had "no American friends."...(Read Full Article)