A reader draws the thread to a dissenting close:
It seems to me that Tamerlan is the Lee Harvey Oswald of our time. Was Oswald motivated by communism? Maybe. But more likely he was motivated by a sense of restlessness, a feeling that he was a great man who couldn’t quite get his shit together. Both he and Tamerlan were frustrated by professional failure. Both went overseas looking for something. Both had strikingly similar domestic situations. Is it a coincidence that Tamerlan, Oswald, Czolgosz and Booth — and even Timothy McVeigh — were all about the same age?
Never mind the conspiracy theories, Oswald was a lone wolf. And so was Tamerlan (plus his kid brother). Had he been a secret agent, an al Qaeda plant and part of a larger terror network like the 9/11 terrorists, that would be something. But the actions of men like this don’t really deserve political or ideological scrutiny. Their actions are just sad, all-too-familiar human tragedies.
Is radical Islam more violent than communism or anarchism or white racism? Hardly. For guys like Tamerlan, ideology is just something to wear in a cold world.
So is theology.
(Photo: Getty Images.)