In its Criminal Complaint against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the FBI charged him with “unlawfully using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely, an improvised explosive device).” That is, the FBI labeled the pressure cooker device that killed two people and injured more than 200 others a WMD.
Glen Greenwald, in the Guardian, wrote a powerful essay entitled “Why is Boston ‘terrorism’ but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?” Reminder:
- In Aurora, 12 people were killed and 58 others wounded with multiple weapons, including a semiautomatic rifle.
- In Sandy Hook, 20 school children and six adults were murdered with a semiautomatic assault rifle.
- In Tuscon, six people were killed and 14 (including Gabrielle Giffords) were wounded by a semiautomatic pistol.
- In Columbine, 12 students and one teacher were killed and 24 others were injured by several weapons, including a semiautomatic pistol.
So, here’s another question: When can a weapon or weapon system be called a weapon of mass destruction? Choose one or more of the following answers:
- When it falls into the category of nuclear, biological, or chemical (NBC) weapons.
- When its sale and use does not profit the weapons industry.
- When it can result in as many fatalities over time as nuclear weapons systems.
- When it serves the purposes of the military-industrial-corporate media complex.
Let’s consider these possibilities in relation to the Tsarnaev brothers’ pressure cooker devices.
- The most common definition of WMD has been NBC weapons. Pressure cooker bombs do not fall into this category.
- The pressure cooker bomb does not profit the weapons industry, although semiautomatic weapons do.
- Since World War II, pressure cooker bombs have accounted for a miniscule portion of fatalities. In contrast, as reported (opens in PDF) by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “small arms” have killed as many people as all other weapons combined.
- You decide: in what ways can frequent use of the term “weapons of mass destruction” play into the hands of the military-industrial corporate media complex that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned our country to beware?
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology