How can democratic societies forestall terrorists attacks while still safeguarding their basic freedoms?
Friends and associates of the Tsarnaevs expressed shock after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. At no time did the brothers reveal any radical views. They had lived ten years in America and the younger brother, Jahar, had become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2012. Two years later, on December 2, 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, wearing combat gear and black masks, stormed a holiday party for employees of the San Bernardino county public-health department, where Farook worked as an inspector. Fourteen people were killed in the hail of bullets fired by the couple. Farook was a native-born American and his wife had recently emigrated from Pakistan. There was nothing in their backgrounds to indicate they were anything but ordinary, middle-class young people. On December 6, 2019, a shooting at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, killed three U.S. sailors and severely wounded eight other Americans.
