Don Roach: America’s Most Wanted Man Finds No Rest In Death

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Don Roach, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

I don’t really need to rehash the story, because we all know it and we all know where we were on April 15th. We probably know where we were that Friday as well, as much of the Boston metro area was shut down while hunting Tamerlan’s brother.

But here’s the shortest version in case you have been on vacation in Maui for the last month.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev went from a relatively obscure former Golden Gloves winner to one of the two most wanted men in America in a matter of hours. After allegedly planning and executing the most horrific terrorist attack on US soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks, Tamerlan found himself hunted down and eventually killed by his brother (who ran him over) or by the unified police and federal forces during a shoot-out a couple of weeks ago.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

His body was prepared by a funeral home, but no cemetery in the country appears willing to bury his body. Whether it’s a mosque or the city of Cambridge, there are not a lot of folks coming forward willing to accept Tsarnaev’s body.

Can you blame them?

Would you want an alleged terrorist next to grandma or old cousin Floyd? No! Most cemeteries also don’t want the publicity that would come with allowing him to be buried in their cemetery. Here’s the conversation I see happening across cemeteries across America.

Cemetery Director (Bob): Hey Phil we just got a call from Massachusetts. They want to know if we’ll bury that Tsarnaev guy. What do you think?

Cemetery Owner (Phil): Are you crazy!?!? Lose that number, we don’t want anything to do with a guy killing an eight year old boy, maiming a bunch of other people, and then killing a cop like he was out on a Midnight stroll. You’re fired for even bringing this to me, Bob.

Maybe that’s not exactly how hundreds of conversations went down, but I imagine that’s how many of them went…sorry, Bob.

I struggle with what to do. I’m a Christian and we believe in forgiveness. The logic goes that one needs to forgive someone else in order to have your own sins forgiven. As crazy as the comments are from the Tsarnaev’s parents, they still lost a child. And I tried to put myself in their shoes if one of my kids did something this crazy what would I want for my child? Obviously, it’s devastating but your kids are your kids, right?

Thinking like this is the only way I’ve been able to make sense of what to do with Tsarnaev’s body as I try to think about how I’d want my own child to be treated if this happened. In my opinion, we should ship his body back to Russia so his parents and whomever else can bury him. Some of you may be thinking that it’s a mercy too kind to send his body to Russia and instead we should take him to the local garbage dump and throw him out with the rest of the trash.

I get that feeling and if I’m honest admit to having similar feelings during the moments after I learned of his death. But if we throw him in the garbage, how does this help anyone and/or bring back any of the people we’ve lost? It doesn’t. It may make us feel better for a moment, but I find that the best way to wound those that seek to hurt us is destroy their hate with love.

I’m not trying to sound cheesy, but our country is built upon freedoms and rights that our ancestors fought for and we enjoy. We believe that our country, our democracy, is the greatest thing on earth. We are unwilling to allow this guy and his brother to destroy that so let’s do to him what he was not willing to do to us in order to show that the ideals we stand for are far superior to the ones that motivated him to set off a bomb at a marathon.

Let’s give him the respect he doesn’t deserve and didn’t give to the lives he destroyed that day. Send him to Russia, and on the casket write these words – You fought Democracy and Democracy won.

Don Roach can be reached at [email protected].

Related Articles

• Don Roach: Boston Bombing—The Latest Challenge To Our Freedom
• Don Roach: North Korea’s Napoleon Complex
• Don Roach: Making Sense of the Newtown Tragedy
• Don Roach: Assessing Blame for the Latest Fiscal Crisis
• Don Roach: NECAP and Gist
• Don Roach: RI Sales Tax Needs to go

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.