Daily Lessons from Life 18-20 April 2013 - Boston Marathon Bombing ...

Being distracted for sure with this piece of tragic news. Especially being a jog-and-walk marathoner for the last 5 years in Singapore since 2008.

A few things to reflect upon and lessons drawn:

1. a twisted mind cannot be comprehended by a normal mind. This brings the terrible question to those do gooders who need to anticipate and be one step ahead of the devious mind - how can the do gooders think like their nemeses! Will they become corrupted in the process of trying to capture the devious ones?;

2. this puzzle of new citizens, mainly, though there are some old citizens from the so-called developed countries like USA, UK, Germany, and France, etc engaging in terrorism has no solution yet. Some are fairly well educated so the old theories of the 'minders or manipulators' finding poorly educated, socially displaced, intellectually handicapped or 'persons with hatred due to personal tragedy brought about by the people they are striking against (war widows, war orphans, etc) NO LONGER applied. It is now PURELY individual terrorist expressing his or her own way of 'getting back at whatever that irked him or her'? If so, the only way to prevent massive harms to innocent people is restriction of access to explosive and automatic assault weapons!;

3. while everyone is happy or relief that the 1st suspect was killed as a result of the gun battle between the suspects and the pursuing law enforcing troop and the 2nd suspect was captured while seriously wounded, a few things troubled me:

3.1 the reported firing of hundreds of rounds of bullets in the gun battle is excessive though I know I will be opened to many criticism like: 'what would you have done if you were in that situation' or 'what do you know since you have never fired a gun before in such a dangerous situation', etc. For me, if the law enforcing team is well trained, and NOT influenced by watching to many of the bad guys vs. good guys gun battle scenes so glorified in the USA film industry, NO ONE should be firing ANY SHOT if he or she is NOT under direct fire. Also, the fact that the 2nd suspect was only seriously injured is a miracle IF the reports that hundred of rounds were discharged during the final battle with him in the shrink-wrapped boat just before he was captured. I mean, a civil minded Bostonian from Watertown walked past the boat, lifted the shrink-wrap and found the 2nd suspect inside the boat. Why do we need another hundred of rounds of bullets to be fired?;

3.2 in any crisis, I believe well trained and DISCIPLINED troops are the key ingredient for success. Well trained means not firing unless you are absolutely certain you are under the line of fire. Disciplined means fire only when you can see the target in sight;

3.3 the 1st suspect supposedly was questioned by FBI in 2011 and one cannot help but wondered could something had been picked up that would 'predict' such a behaviors in this case? I don't think so as it is too risky to say that just because you may commit a crime then you should be incarcerated without carrying out what the authority think you will do!!

4. having said that, it must be conceded that the Bostonians have shown great character and resilience to stare down this senseless tragedy. The security folks did what need to be done and got the job done. This phase of the Boston Marathon bomb attack has finished. Hopefully the 2nd suspect lives to tell the story of why they did what they have done?

Hopefully these 2 suspects only acted in their own twisted logic way and no organization is actively involved with preparing and equipping them. If not, the authority will have to go after that organization.

As the next phase of the investigation commences, let us remembered the 3 killed in the bombing, the 26-year old MIT campus officer killed, and the many injured who are still recovering as well as those still in critical conditions.

May such a situation NEVER happen in our home, Singapore.