SMITH: How not to handle the aftermath

The tragedy that began when two bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon last Monday has finally come to a close. It resolved itself after an intense shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown, which resulted in the death of one suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the capture of his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

But despite the apparent finality of this result, there are still many potential variables that will dictate exactly how American justice, morality and ethics are applied, and that also may influence America’s relationship with attacks of this kind in the future. Accordingly, I’ve laid out some ground rules:

1. Don’t kill him.

Dzhokar Tsarnaev is 19 years old. Reports from family members indicate he was very much a follower of his older brother, with one family member dubbing him “like a puppy.” As the facts emerge, they will almost certainly indicate that it was Tamerlan who came up with the attacks, and convinced Dzhokhar to follow.

Besides this, there are signs that terrorism was not likely Dzhokhar’s primary motivation. He had failing grades in his classes at UMass Dartmouth, yet received a scholarship from the city of Cambridge in 2011. The academic change indicates the presence of a severe depression, which again manifested itself when he tried (and failed) to kill himself before being captured by police. Had Dzhokhar not had access to the weapons his brother provided, he may very well have turned out to be a tragedy rather than a villain.

The death penalty is wrong. It denotes a degree of moral and criminal certainty that human beings don’t have the capacity to possess. That’s why killing is wrong in the first place — because human beings are not meant to judge other human beings that harshly. Deep down, I do not believe the loss of another life will appease the loss they have suffered.

1. Don’t declare him an enemy combatant.

There have been calls from Republican senators to declare Dzhokhar an enemy combatant. Doing so would allow prosecutors to question the suspect without the presence of a lawyer for up to 30 days, essentially revoking the rights he has as a United States citizen for that time. This was already done to a certain degree in the 48 hours after the crime, when citing a public safety clause allowed questioning without a lawyer so that the whereabouts of other potential bombs could be determined. There were none, and now Dzhokhar’s rights as an American citizen must be restored.

Declaring him a terrorist is only attempting to create a monster where there is only a scarred, stupid 19-year-old kid. Besides that, what happened last Monday was more than anything an attack on American justice and morality. If we show our morals to be shaken, our ethics tarnished, then the Tsarnaev brothers have gotten what they wanted.

1. Don’t invade Chechnya.

America, as great a country as it is, has a propensity for fixing leaky faucets with a sledgehammer and a blowtorch. That is to say, we overreact. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 created a wake so large that it allowed for the invasion of an entire country with the express intent of killing the man responsible. They created a wake so large that they allowed for the invasion of a second country purely by association, through the sheer dumb will of a slow president. A decade later, we haven’t alleviated the tragedy of 9/11 — we’ve merely created a second tragedy in the form of two wars we didn’t need.

That’s why, when news came out that the two brothers were from the Russian region of Chechnya, I got nervous. We can’t jump to conclusions and say the brothers were motivated by Chechen separatist groups. In fact, the main rebel group in the region has stepped away from the brothers, affirming they are at war with Russia, not the United States. Filtering these attacks through a Chechen separatist agenda makes no sense, and the last thing we need is another enemy.

1. Don’t blame Islam.

The two brothers were Islamic. To deny that Tamerlan’s radical viewpoints were shaped by Islam would be a waste of time. They were, and so are countless other bad peoples’ viewpoints the world over. But the same goes for Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. There are bad people out there. Some of them are religious, and that’s the way it is. These attacks must not become an excuse to further berate and alienate Islam. It must not be used as an excuse to berate and alienate Arab and Middle Eastern people, who have nothing to do with these two brothers whatsoever.

If one good thing comes from these attacks, it will be our commitment as a country to the tolerance and acceptance we were founded upon and the knowledge of how tightly we must hold on to keep these things from slipping through our grasp.

Colin Smith is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at colin1@bu.edu.