That is all that is really left to understand in my mind.

If that is true, then I also believe we won't learn anything from him as he wouldn't have ascribed to his brother's philosophy, and likely would only know cursory things. It is all around very sad. I have three younger brothers, and it makes one wonder what power we exert over our siblings.

He was a follower who picked the wrong idol.

I may be wrong of course but he doesn't seem to be a sociopathic type like McVeigh. He seems very young, rather rash, and impulsive -- manipulated by the older brother too easily. With his older brother dead, he is going to have to face some harsh truths about the nature of their actions and all the hurt and devastation created for so many families, including his own family.

You'd have to think there was a point in time where the younger brother came to the realization that his life was over, and of course he blamed the older brother. He had always worshipped the older brother, and the older brother was obviously at least the leader.

Some people say running over his brother to make sure he died was calculated and tactical, but I think the act was just violent and emotional. After all he is just 19 and this was his brother, he's not a trained military operative.

The cops were handcuffing him at the time, but they jumped out of the way.

I.e. Kill him rather then let the infidels torture him.

"It was written"

You can't turn back the clock.

Why is important.

Knowing the 'why' absolutely matters.

How is that going to make any difference?

really attempt to analyze the real reasons that people (i.e. terrorists) commit these acts (and it's not because they hate our freedoms)?

prevention in these situations.

We assume that this was terrorism. But when I saw a picture of their mother after her arrest, I began to wonder whether the motivations of these two young men were more complex. The desire to avenge their mother and the honor of their family should be considered as a contributing motivation.

This kind of irrational anger is hard to understand. But we have so much violence that appears to grow out of this kind of anger. We need to study it just as we would study the cause of any other disease.

Just calling it "mental illness" or political or religious fanaticism does not help us help kids who are going off the deep end.

And we all know young people who are mentally ill who never come close to doing things like this. So I do think it is worth asking more questions.

That is not to say the behavior is excused. It is merely to say that, after they have been tried and convicted, we should study the people who do these things and try to find out how they think, how they fall into such violence. Maybe we could save some lives that way. I think that some individuals have tried to figure this out. But I don't think that they have gone about it as scientifically as is needed.

To policymakers. To anyone who wants a more complete picture of reality.

The same reason they interview serial killers. Understanding the deviant Criminal mind advances psychology, criminology, and law enforcement.

Isn't there a nihilism forum somewhere you should be following? Democracy — underground or otherwise — doesn't actually seem to be your thing.

Bang on.

he ends up bloodied and in that boat a million times. Just different views of reality. It's not like anyone can prove their view is the right one.

If not, understanding why it happened is vital.

I have two boys with the same age difference. The older could probably get the younger to do anything. The younger admires everything about his brother. Luckily for the younger the older is a good person.

he fell under the spell of his brother's forceful personality and beliefs. Like a 2-person cult? Just guessing ....

If his brother had been a success in life this wouldn't have happened. He let himself be sucked into the resentment of his brother's failures.

How ironic that a camera at the L/T Boston store was the device that initially identified the bombers.

http://natick.patch.com/articles/arrests-1-600-in-clothes-stolen

my idea.

Do you suppose maybe one motivation for the horrible crime rampage was avenging their mother?

The brotherly influence was likely more prominent after his parents went back home to Russia. Or maybe the parents were never Mother and Father of the Year.

Some kids--cheerful or otherwise--are just easily led. It's not a question of personality or intelligence.

I've seen this down the years, some folks are questioning contrarians, while others are eager to find someone to follow so they don't have to weigh life's tough issues themselves.

anything else.

If this young man survives and talks, maybe we will find more out than we now know.

I think it is important to try to find out all the motivations at play. If the brother was the deadly influence, it may be that there were other similar influences. Maybe someone influenced the brother. I hope we find out how that worked.

The uncle in MD calling that branch of the family losers, the aunt up in Toronto screaming at the reporters, the shoplifting mama, the girlfriend beating brother...more drama in that family than most. Probably not too healthy. Might have produced a real "people pleaser" in the youngest child...

A child who is fearful and cannot stand up in a healthy way to an authority that is wrong.

But then, at 19, very few have learned how to say "no" without getting into trouble to authority when the authority is behaving wrongly. It takes a long time to learn that.

Still, at 19, he is responsible for what he did, fully responsible.

I'm just keen on trying to understand how this works. If we could figure it out, we might be able to better inform parents about how they deal with their children.

If you ever have to deal with child abuse issues, you realize how deficient we are as a society with regard to helping parents deal with their children. We could lower our crime rate significantly without indoctrinating families if we could just make information about good parenting more available. I think the media does not do what it should in this area.

Weird.

I can remember when I was a certain age - I could have become so enthralled with someone and so convinced that they were the be all and end all - they could have talked me into almost anything. In this case there might have been an even stronger cultural tradition of a younger brother really looking up to an older brother.

I know when I have read of serial killers or other heinous crimes that involved more than one perpetrator - it appears to be a common pattern that one leads the way and another one - who many times would have never on their own thought of committing such crimes - through some dynamic of emotional dependency surrenders their will to the dominance of the instigator.

I doubt that Dzhokhar would have ever on their own even considered doing such things. For that matter - what was Tamerlan thinking? Boston is not in Russia. The U.S. government and media has generally expressed sympathy for Chechnya. So far we don't know of any evidence that he had any foreign accomplices. What could he have possibly imagined that he could have accomplished?

I doubt real seriously if those kids would have committed those murders had they not been under Charlie's influence.

They often wouldn't have started killing if they had not found that partner. That is based on my extensive knowledge from watching TV.

In a way the older brother got off easy. He should have been the one to answer for the crimes.

Thanks for posting that.

I find it rather insulting that it would be understandable for a loner to do something like this, but, but not one of the normal people, not a person who wrestles, drinks and smokes pot. No, the perp should be more like me. It's not like those wrestling party-types ever do anything wrong. Certainly one of them wouldn't just start whaling on somebody for no reason and then tape his victims buns together. (How the heck is that done anyway?)

Maybe the kid watched too much NCIS Los Angeles. I have seen at least one show feature some Chechen terrorists. Maybe that helped to convince him that a Chechen should be a terrorist.

Maybe he was not doing well in college classes (he is a wrestler after all ) and he wasn't making friends in college either, and felt like he was just gonna end up like his brother - stuck in menial jobs where they treat you like a disposable wash-cloth.

dislike/distrust others, but are content with their own company. Other "loners" feel rejected by and alienated from others. That alienation can breed resentment of/emotional distancing from others, which makes them more likely IMO to engage in antisocial behavior.

It's a more accurate description. I am a true loner -- I am perfectly happy with just my own company, could sit out in the woods counting birds for 6 months at a time, etc., but failed joiners REALLY want to have lots of friends, but because they are rejected by most people for some reason, they have no friends. My grandson has a classmate like this; because we see him in the neighborhood, we (that is, my grandson's parents and I) are trying to modify his behavior in some ways so he's more likely to attract a friend or two. That's all he needs.

I think though, that it's significant that he was socially connected and evidently that was true of his college life as well.

we'll see what his big brother got into.

it's an excuse to take his revenge out on others and try to justify it.

I have a 19 yr old brother, it really didn't seem a whole lot different. He definitely didn't come off as a radical or someone who seemed unhinged.

Based on what I read though, his brother seemed like a bit of an asshole.

when his mother was arrested?

For a Chechen a guest is a sacred person. That’s why friendship is appreciated so highly, as well as helping the weak person or those in need. A story tells about a driver who accidentally knocked down a woman on the street, and she died immediately. The driver took her in his arms and rushed to the nearest house, praying to God for help and mercy, for he had neither relatives nor friends near by. The man who opened the door saw his dead mother, and said to the praying driver: "Keep calm, I’ve heard your prayer. This dead woman an is my mother, and if you wish, I’ll be your brother from this day on. But by God, if you had only left her at the road and tried to run away, I would spend all my life looking for you in revenge for my mother."

http://www.truth-and-justice.info/chechnat.html

That appears to be some sort of pro-Chechen website. I have heard about this kind of revenge culture in that area before.

Here is a reference to that revenge culture in a footnote in what may be a scholarly publication.

Chechnya at a Turning Point
Winter/Spring 2001 – Volume VIII, Issue 1

Notes
. . . .
2. Blood revenge remains an essential component of Chechen culture. The filtration camps were used to hold numerous Chechens in temporary custody, officially in order to determine what links, if any, they might have with the rebels. The detainees were badly beaten and tortured.

http://www.watsoninstitute.org/bjwa/archive/8.1/Chechnya/Shenfield.pdf

Here is a link to the Watson Institute's website:

http://www.watsoninstitute.org/

In 2009 or so he was arrested on a domestic abuse charge. His father says he barely tapped his girlfriend or something to that effect but the cousin says he used to beat her up.

Apparently he went for his US citizenship interview and the arrest was a problem and during the year he lost an important boxing match, a title match iirc.

It was sometime after that the women in his life started dressing differently, in Muslim garb, and he started praying more often.

I think that is the timeline.

I have a feeling the wife is the key to understanding his problems more than the brother.

I just think there is some personal, selfish aspect to this Tamerlan.

He seems to have had no thought for the danger he placed his younger brother in. Seems very egotistical to me.

But then that is one of the things that all these killers and terrorists have in common: this strange satisfaction to the ego that they seem to get from placing themselves in a position in which they have power over others and can terrorize them.

Maybe that is the key, the link between all these criminals whether using the excuse of politics or some childhood slight or religion or whatever to commit their crimes. Maybe if we could understand how the desire to feel their power and their need to satisfy their ego triggers their desire to kill, we could spot those prone to this kind of behavior and prevent these terrible crimes.

There is something about revenge involved in these crimes. Maybe people prone to these kinds of acts feel very angry because they can't just relax and let go when they feel inadequate or have their feelings hurt. Maybe they cannot deal with their weakness or their rejection.

I don't know but I am convinced that we need to understand the mechanism that triggers these horrible acts. After all, we all have to deal with rejection, failure, disappointment. It's part of life.

He let his own ( or indoctrinated) religious/islamic beliefs outweigh the safety and love of his brother.

by our surroundings, especially the other people we're close to.

They will bring in the experts .. they will psychoanalyze this up and down, backward and forward. Every angle will be put forth and all their talking heads will have earned their big bucks. Everybody will be patting each other on the back saying job well done. And let's not forget who will be on top of the ratings. What a great news week .. oh shit, now back to gun control, back to chained CPI, back to cutting our Social Security .. you get the drift. Such great entertainment.

With the way the rabid right wing tea party spouts its violent rhetoric no wonder these kids snapped.

and never hurt anyone else are seen as the ones more likely to be terrorists.

but guy slike this who fail in life so take out revenge on others and use religion as an excuse are seen as normal and gone bad. when they were probably fucked up individuals from the start.

If you're patient, though, and follow the story, I'm sure you'll learn more. We all will.

Oh, I didn't? But you still felt the need to make a smug, patronizing comment.

I'm not going to link to their Twitter feeds because they've been taking a lot of predictable abuse in the last few days already (along with a lot of folks supporting them against it). They seem like a bunch of amiable, not unintelligent stoners.

The two I'm referring to can't reconcile what he's done with the guy they thought they knew. They condemn what he did outright, but they're hurting and confused and feel betrayed and would like answers.

guerrilla soldier fighting for the downtrodden - not just Islamic culture but a lot of cultures. I'm sure the idea of the heroic Chechen freedom fighter resonates very strongly in the Chechnyan community. I'm sure a teenage boy would be quite susceptible to the influence of an older brother who led him to believe that on some level they were acting as heroic Chechen freedom fighters. Of course, it is absurd to imagine that their actions in Boston could somehow help the Chechen people. But a gullible and highly impressionable 19 year-old boy - might have fallen for it - especially if that idea was being shaped for him by someone who he thought was the be all and end all.

He was at a vulnerable time in life..not a kid, but not yet a full adult..

and there's the angry self-absorbed big brother..

He probably should have gone back to Russia with his parents