Tsarnaev Cites War as Motivation for Bombing

[Content Note: Terrorism; war.]

According to anonymous sources "familiar with the interviews" of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, he has cited "the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" as the motivation for the attacks carried out with his brother.

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has acknowledged his role in planting the explosives near the marathon finish line on April 15, the officials said.

...The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, do not appear to have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization.

Rather, the officials said, the evidence so far suggests they were "self-radicalized" through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which ended in December 2011 with the removal of the last American forces, and the war in Afghanistan, where President Obama plans to end combat operations by the end of 2014.

Obama has made repairing U.S. relations with the Islamic world a foreign policy priority, even as he has expanded drone operations in Pakistan and other countries, which has inflamed Muslim public opinion.

I am not justifying the Tsarnaevs' attack when I observe the following: The wars and drone operations continually justified as "spreading freedom" and/or "making us safer" do neither.