Watching a tragedy like the Boston Marathon bombings unfold truly puts things into perspective. It reminds us of the horrors that everyday life can often bring, especially reminding us of Sept. 11, 2001, the last major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It reminds us that our time can be short, and that people can be influenced to commit acts that none of us could ever conceive of otherwise. It’s scary. But tragedy also offers bitter lessons, ones that are hard to swallow in the midst of tragedy, but are important nonetheless. So, here are a few suggestions about the moral of the Boston Marathon story.
The need for effective crisis communication: One of the main critiques of the response to Sept. 11 was the lack of effective communication and cooperation between bureaucracy, police and fire departments and city government officials. The U.S. learned from its mistakes though, and Boston crisis communication was effective and graceful. Of course, the prevalence of social media in 2013 (compared to 2001) assisted in spreading the word and issuing statements, but citizens also witnessed leadership, decisiveness and unity from public servants and leaders. In the midst of tragedy and the disjointed terror that followed, it was crucial for the city’s leaders (as well as the nation’s leaders) to clearly lay out a summary of events, explain what action was to take place and communicate honesty and transparency with its citizens.
How terrorism is viewed and acted on has changed drastically since Sept. 11, 2001. The defense strategies have shifted dramatically, and despite criticism of methods and true validity of security measures, the U.S. prevented a major terrorist attack on its own soil for almost 12 years. In that time, President Obama went on the offensive to find and kill Osama bin Laden and, just as in that situation, U.S. law enforcement took the fight to the Boston bombers, hunting them down and restoring a cautious peace to Boston. In an article on the “Boston Globe” website by Nicholas Burns, a columnist for the Globe and professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he had this to say about the change imparted since 9/11: “The one thing we know about the record of modern terrorists is they cannot defeat a democratic society.”
However, another lesson to learn from Boston is that sometimes tragedy cannot be prevented. Past national tragedies, such as the Newtown school shooting and last summer’s Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting, were different in this respect. Further research showed that both suspects in these cases had past mental-illness issues. People were comforted by the fact that they could blame someone for these tragedies; there were warning signs, and we always seem to expect that someone else should have prevented this. As far as we know about the Boston bombers, though, their behavior was completely unexpected. Interviews with the parents of the bombers paint pictures of even more heartbreak: they believe their sons, who they called “angels,” are completely innocent. Warning signs were virtually nonexistent and some family members are still in disbelief and think the Tsarnaevs must have been set up.
Harsh and unfair stereotypes linger in the American conscience. An analysis and consideration of the ruthless anti-Muslim sentiment that still remains in the U.S. is, I believe, the most important lesson to be learned from Boston. In 2010, Duke University and the University of North Carolina conducted a study that proved that the terrorist threat by radicalized Muslim-Americans has been exaggerated. Researchers said that “in the aftermath of 9/11 … the possible radicalization of Muslim-Americans is a key counterterrorism concern.” The research cited multiple accounts of Muslims being wrongly-accused and arrested for crimes that people assumed they committed simply because they were Islamic. While no false-arrests were made (as far as we know) in Boston, the “New York Post” ran a front page photo of 17-year-old Salah Barhoun, connecting him to the bombings with the headline “BAG MEN: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.” Barhoun visited a police station to “turn himself in” and clear the record about his innocence, but it absolutely should not have come to that. While the Post’s error may have been innocent, the accusation only worked to fuel flames already started on social media based on racist and hurtful assumptions.
