Subsidizing Terrorism: Boston Bombers on Welfare

Did you ever notice that as reporters delved into the story about the brothers Tsarnaev, there was no mention of a job?  Yet they went to school and Tamerlan spent his time boxing ... and going to bars, paying for things and, in the words of a former friend, He'd give them rides in his nice car and he would pay for things.   How could he afford to do that?

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.

State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home.

In addition, both of Tsarnaev’s parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state.

(H/T Instapundit)

Rush Limbaugh has questioned where the Tsarnaev brothers got the money for their fancy cars (Mercedes & BMW)  and travel to Russia.  The suspicion was that they were supplied money from Islamofascists overseas. Now we know that at least part of it came from taxpayers.

And this appears to be part of a patterns. Mickey Kaus:

Does Welfare Cause Terrorism?

 

Here are some suspected terrorists in the news:

Zacarias Moussaoui, the French North African charged with conspiracy in connection with the 9/11 attack, became an Islamic radical living in London "while drawing welfare benefits and studying economics," Newsday reports.

 

Ahmed Ressam, the member of Algeria's Armed Islamic Group who was arrested crossing the U.S. border with bombs designed to blow up L.A.'s airport, moved to Canada in 1994 where he "survived on welfare payments" and petty crime, according to terrorism expert Peter Bergen.

 

Metin Kaplan, who heads a German radical Islamist sect suspected of attempting to fly a plane into the Ataturk mausoleum in Turkey, "claimed social [welfare] benefits in Cologne for many years until 2m Deutschmarks ($1.2m) in cash was found in his flat," reports the BBC.

 

Abu Qatada, the cleric who taught Moussaoui and is accused of having links to al-Qaida agents in six countries, avoided extradition to Jordan on terrorism charges by settling in England, where "[l]ike many other London-based Arab dissidents, [he] has received regular welfare checks from the British government—and government subsidized housing," according to the Washington Post. Abu Qatada's welfare payments were stopped when it was discovered he controlled a secret bank account containing approximately $270,000.

 

Do you see a pattern? There's a story here!

 

So, are Western nations subsidizing terrorism?  The answer appears to be YES.

Kaus makes the point that welfare may actually be an essential ingredient in the promotion of terrorism.

In fact, there's a good argument that "welfare benefits + ethnic antagonism" is the universal recipe for an underclass with an angry, oppositional culture. The social logic is simple: Ethnic differences make it easy for those outside of, for example, French Arab neighborhoods to discriminate against those inside, and easy for those inside to resent the mainstream culture around them. Meanwhile, relatively generous welfare benefits enable those in the ethnic ghetto to stay there, stay unemployed, and seethe. Without government subsidies, they would have to overcome the prejudice against them and integrate into the mainstream working culture. Work, in this sense, is anti-terrorist medicine. (And if you work all day, there's less time to dream up ways and reasons to kill infidels.)
 

Welfare permits people, not just immigrants, to avoid useful work in order to dream up ways to get into trouble, gather a harem, or brood on how their (adopted)  country is persecuting them, even as he draws a check from his alleged persecutor.