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Sarasota News Leader April 26, 2013 OPINION Page 73 Caucasus. Life there was so much worse that His status as a househusband steadily eroded the family returned to Kyrgyzstan within a his self-esteem. Katherine earned money and year and applied to the U.S. for refugee status. put bread on the table; he changed diapers. Tamerlan felt himself shamed as a man. A man In the U.S., Tamerlan aggressively pursued provides for his family; but like his father, he amateur boxing. It was to be his way out of could not. His father was a loser. Tamerlan poverty and obscurity. Tamerlan aspired to was a second-generation loser. join the U.S. Olympic boxing team and hoped one day to turn pro. For a number of years Tamerlan's conscious drift into religious fanaticism was the logical next step toward Tamerlan did well in the ring. self-destruction. In order to confirm to himself Tamerlan did not have the skills necessary to the correctness of his commitment, Tamerlan become a champion. After losing an important needed a pliable acolyte whom he could mabout, he gave up boxing. Later, and after con- nipulate. His brother, Dzhokhar, proved a willverting to conservative Islam, he explained ing recruit. Dzhokhar appears to have had no that he disavowed boxing because no Muslim moral compass whatsoever. He neither supshould hit a man in the face. Muhammad Ali ported terrorism, nor disavowed it; he simmight have differed with him on this point. ply rationalized it in order to please his elder One can almost hear Tamerlan speak the lines brother. spoken by Marlon Brando's character, Terry Molloy — another washed-up boxer — in the Tamerlan made no escape plan. He was shot to death in a gun battle with law enforcement film On the Waterfront: "I coulda had class. I officers, becoming — in his own mind, at least coulda been a contender. I coulda been some— shahid, a martyr for Islam. As of this writbody, instead of a bum, which I am, let's face ing, no one has claimed his body for burial. it." Burial is a prerequisite for entering the marTamerlan was a bum. He failed at everything tyr's paradise, so even in death, Tamerlan rehe touched: boxing, school, work, marriage. mains a loser. % The Sarasota News Leader No-Nonsense Reporting