Many labels have been thrown about in recent days to describe the two men responsible for last week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon. “Terrorists” has been, perhaps, the most common label, while others deem them “enemy combatants” commiting acts of war who are undeserving of the rights afforded to most other criminals.
But one label the American public seems to avoid calling Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is “traitors.”
Both Tsarnaevs pledged an allegiance to the U.S. in some degree. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev-arrested following a manhunt that shut down the city of Boston last Friday, Apr. 19-became a U.S. citizen on, of all dates, Sept. 11, 2012. Tamerlan Tsarnaev-killed in a shootout with police while trying to escape with his brother- had been on track for citizenship, but that application was stopped after he was involved in a domestic dispute.
That makes them traitors in our book, participating in treason, a crime punishable by death. Tamerlan Tsarnaev already paid his price, and it seems like only a matter of time before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev gets what’s coming to him.
A person need not be a U.S. citizen to commit treason under the Constitution. Aliens who live in the United States, for example, can commit traitorous acts during the period of their residence in the U.S.
The Tsarnaev brothers moved to the U.S. a decade ago with their parents, fleeing the war-torn region of Chechnya in Russia. The parents later returned to Russia, but the brothers and a sister stayed.
The brothers managed to make nice lives for themselves in the Boston area, attending local colleges, having their own apartment and enjoying other pleasures of the American way of life. Somewhere along the way, however, they decided to repay society by concocting and then detonating two pressure cooker bombs loaded with ball bearings and nails at the finish line of the Boston Marathon last Monday, Apr. 15.
If that weren’t enough, they even assembled for themselves an arsenal of weapons used to kill one police officer, seriously injure another and fire upon other law enforcement agents as they tried in vain to escape justice.
After being pulled out of a boat in Watertown, Mass. last Friday night and hospitalized with various injuries, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was officially charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.
He joins the ranks of modern traitors who attacked innocents in this country. They include American born Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major who shot 13 pepole and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood base in Texas in 2009; Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani immigrant who attempted to explode a car bomb in Times Square in 2010; and Adis Medunjanin, Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay who plotted to attack New York City subways in 2009.
They were all charged with a series of crimes under federal law except one that fits most perfectly-treason.
So far, it seems that only one “terrorist” has been charged with treason: Adam Yahiye Gadahn, an American-born traitor who became a senior advisor to Osama Bin Laden and made many anti-American videos. Indicted in 2012, he’s still at large.
All of these traitors have committed treason. Let’s call it what it is. They turned their backs on this country to kill Americans. Let them pay the ultimate price for their crimes against the nation.
