Skialalia

I woke up this morning to hear about the bombs that ripped through spectators at the Boston Marathon's finish line. Three dead (one, an eight year old boy), 141 injured as things stand right now. According to medical personnel, there are still many people on the critical list. The surgeons have performed multiple amputations and taken bucketloads of shrapnel - ball bearings, nails, and the like - from people's bodies.

The footage is all over both the mainstream and social media, dominating YouTube. It's an understatement to say it's hard to watch.

The thing that got to me most was learning that the last mile before the finish was dedicated to the memory of the children and teachers killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Some of the families were at ground zero. That was widely publicised - so it's hard not to think that these people were deliberately targeted. Especially when the second bomb went off a few moments later, as people - unknowingly - were running towards it.

Add to that it's Patriots Day, this is a televised event, and there's also been a fire (possibly started by an explosion) at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and a really sour taste creeps into the mouth.

They're calling it an 'act of terror' - but not saying that it was perpetrated by 'terrorists'. Apparently, terrorist is now an official, card-carrying thing. You have to be a member of some designated organisation. I wonder if Anders Breivik would find that amusing. Personally, I think you're a terrorist the moment you commit an act like that.

And inevitably, as soon as media go to wall-to-wall coverage, there are the cries of 'Oh, but this happens in Iraq or Afghanistan every day, and hundreds of people die. Western bias, the Americans think they're the only ones, how shameful, etc'. To an extent, that's true. Oddly enough, American media tends to spend a lot of air time on incidents that happen on its own soil. (/sarcasm)

I even read an op-ed that declared the Boston bombing was 'just desserts', because of how prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were treated, so we shouldn't get all upset about it. Right. Because the Sandy Hook families shaped government policy, and somehow deserve it. Seriously. Sometimes I despair of humanity.

I did get to thinking, though. Apart from my initial horror when I first found out about what happened at the marathon, and my admiration for the bravery of those runners who gave up their recovery cots to victims or kept running all the way to the nearest hospital to donate blood - I was scared. Why? I don't live in Boston. I'm fairly sure this will turn out to be an act of 'domestic' terrorism, perpetrated by someone with an extreme right-wing outlook and an axe to grind about 'protecting his right to bear arms', or something similar. There's no reason to suggest this is the beginning of anything larger, or that there's any danger to me or mine.

Yet I'm still scared.

I finally put my finger on it. It's not the incident itself - it's what might happen next. Already, media have started to draw the comparison between this and 9/11, a terrorist event aimed at private citizens (and particularly, at citizens who are already suffering from another act of senseless mass killing). In a way, it's the equivalent of bombing or shooting at an IRA funeral. It's despicable - and America tends to lash out violently and think later if it thinks it's under attack.

There's something about a bombing. It's not the same, in people's eyes, as a disturbed kid with an assault rifle, or even a guy hiding in a van sniping complete strangers and holding an entire city hostage can be grasped. It's personal. A bombing, though, immediately suggests a political motive. And when it comes to America, a political motive immediately suggests al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Take the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, for example. Two wannabe-militia guys who wanted to 'get revenge' on the FBI for the fiasco at Waco with the Branch Davidians - but when the bomb went off, reports abounded of 'four guys with turbans', and the backlash against Muslims (who don't even wear turbans) was vicious. This was before 9/11.

The FBI announced just a few moments ago that they had issued a BOLO (Be On The Lookout) for a 'darker-skinned, possibly black' man, who they described as a person of interest. Of course, the immediate assumption is that he's Muslim. FOX News is still reporting that the FBI are interrogating a '20 year old Saudi national' - a report that's already been debunked. The Saudi man is being questioned, yes - like all the others in the hospitals. The FBI is trying to find out what happened. But that doesn't matter, does it? It's a terrorist act - it 'must' be Muslims. And therefore terrorist organisations Striking At Our Way Of Life.

'America's enemies' must be punished.

And that's what terrifies me. The idea that America will go to war. Oh, not 'officially'. Maybe a few drone strikes on a terrorist camp or two, but not some massive mobilisation. I'm talking about the America that carries guns and shoots a kid in the back because he's black in a white neighbourhood, beats up or sexually assaults a woman in a hijab, spews hate speech until some idiot thinks they've got a mandate to attack anyone who 'looks Muslim'. (And let's not forget 'Patriot Act'-type laws, straight out of Orwell.)

And as America goes, so goes Australia. We already have hatemongers like Senator Corey Bernadi telling us that we are being 'Islamised' by stealth, 'forced' to eat halal meat and threatened by 'creeping sharia law'. We have Tony Abbott and his disgusting lackey, Scott Morrison, telling us that our borders are under attack from desperate people seeking asylum, who just happen to be Muslims (even when they aren't). We have a cowardly government that panders to xenophobia instead of giving people a well-deserved smack around the ears, because they'd rather see people persecuted than risk losing office. Every time there's an incident that might involve someone who might be Muslim, the rhetoric ratchets up and the violence and the hatred escalates with it. We may not have the guns, but we have the fists and the knives and the hate.

President Obama said, 'We shouldn't jump to conclusions about who might be responsible for this - but ...' - and that 'but' was a warning to 'groups'. And most of the media aren't taking any notice of the President. They've got no problem speculating wildly, and damn the consequences.

So yeah, this bombing scares me. Not because I think this is a prelude to invasion of some foreign land, or because I'm blinded to the suffering of people in other countries who deal with this sort of horror every day - because it's all too likely that this will become the excuse for further violence and suppression.

And in all of it, the most important thing gets lost. People suffered terribly - are still suffering - and that suffering becomes nothing more than a political tool.

I hope I'm wrong. I really do. It would be wonderful to see this handled with a level of sanity, of clarity.

I hope I'm wrong. I fear I'm not.