Revenge

Within a day after being captured alive, they were talking about killing him. The media wasted no time in stating that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could get the death penalty for his role in the bombings at the Boston Marathon. A talk show host I heard said that one terrorist was dead and hopefully the second one would soon be as well. It reminds me of the eagerness with which people awaited the execution of Timothy McVeigh and the subsequent satisfaction when it was carried out.

Before McVeigh’s execution I heard a talk given by the father of a young woman who worked at the Oklahoma City federal building that McVeigh bombed. She was a beautiful young woman in her mid 20’s with so much life and potential ahead of her, and in an instant Tim McVeigh took it all away.


Over the coming months and years her father went through all the heart-wrenching emotions all the people who lost a loved one did, and he could not forgive nor forget what McVeigh had done. But eventually he did what he believed his daughter would have wanted him to do and he reached out to another grieving family that was in anguish from the same event. There was initial reluctance and suspicion, but eventually he met with Tim McVeigh’s father and his sister at the father’s ranch. Family photos were on the wall, including pictures of Tim. The father of the dead young lady harbored no resentment toward her killer and had forgiven him: he was only looking for closure and to help comfort Tim’s family in their pain. But the rest of America had not forgiven Tim McVeigh. In one tragic moment the gift of life was crushed out of an extraordinary young woman and many others, but at that same instant the McVeigh’s also lost a son and a brother. Tim was not yet dead, but when he was identified as the killer everyone wanted him to be. His eventual execution would be closure for many of the victims families and for greater America, but while a countless number of people celebrated as Tim McVeigh was put to death, the McVeigh family would have to grieve for his loss a second time: and those to comfort them must have been few indeed.

Now this country is angry at a young man who, with his brother, killed three people and caused the injury and mutilation of many dozens more. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appears to be a victim too: a victim of blind loyalty to an older brother radicalized in Islam. But that does not excuse his act. How did a young man who spent half his life in America and appeared to be well-adjusted to our way of life do this? Perhaps only Dzhokhar knows. Whatever his reasons we want him to pay. Some people want him to pay with his life. I’m not one of them. If my six-year-old was killed by the Tsarnaev brothers, or my wife was brain damaged by shrapnel, or I lost my legs in their attack, I might indeed want to see their blood. The emotions are currently too raw for much of anything except grief and revenge. Over time, and as Dzhokhar’s roll becomes clearer, perhaps the victims and the rest of my countrymen will wish to show some mercy. Perhaps, and perhaps not. Much of it undoubtedly hinges on his behavior. When the manhunt was ensuing for him on that fateful Friday after the bombings, the bothers’ uncle called for Dzhokhar to turn himself in so he could seek forgiveness for what he had done.

That’s the kind of revenge I would like to see.

I don’t want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to physically die at the hands of the nation who condemns him; I want him to intellectually/spiritually die to the ideology that caused him to engage in his horrific violence. I want him to live with the knowledge of what he has done and spend the rest of his natural life making reparations as best he is able from his jail cell. I want hate to die in his soul and life to emerge from his actions.

I don’t know if Timothy McVeigh ever repented from what he had done, nor do I know if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ever will, but eventually – after the anger, hate, despair, depression, hopelessness and all the other emotions have run their course - maybe some of the people suffering from the Boston attack can forgive Dzhokhar whether or not he has sought their forgiveness. For those who repent from a wrong and ask for forgiveness, healing - and the curial pain that comes with knowledge and truth – can readily begin, but the people most often blessed by forgiveness are the ones who do the forgiving. When you forgive others you are freeing yourself to live life again. Whether or not someone has repented or even knows you have forgiven them is often irrelevant: forgiveness means that whatever hurt, anger, or hate was holding you hostage no longer has that power over you.