Nice Return on Our Investment, Huh?

This combination of undated photos shows Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. (Credit: AP)

Tamarlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar came to the United States when they were boys, refugees from Russia. This country took their family in, gave them asylum, educated them, offered them every opportunity, and, according to the Boston Herald, provided them with taxpayer-funded welfare  benefits. Of course we did. Here's how The Herald reported it:

"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.

"The news raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization

on taxpayer money."

So America embraced this family as "one of us" and provided them welfare benefits, giving them help and hope, as we, in our deep naivete, believed they would assimilate and love us back.

Instead of love, we got a profound, violent hatred. Their hatred of the U.S., fueled by the Islamic jihad, ended in two deadly terrorist explosions at the Boston Marathon and a hail of bullets that killed one police officer and wounded another while an entire American city was forced into lockdown.

Nice return on our investment, no?

Post-Boston, we need to address a number of glaring and fatal problems, among them: Why didn't the FBI more aggressively pursue Tamarlan after repeated requests and warnings about his radicalism from Russian intelligence? Why did the FBI not visit the Islamic Society of Boston where the brothers often worshipped until 4 days after the bombings Why weren't our intelligence and law enforcement agencies talking to one another about Tamerlan after all of these red flags went up? After all, tearing down that communications wall so that they COULD talk to each other was a key adopted provision of the 9/11 Commission Report. It's also why we have a Director of National Intelligence---to make sure all of these agencies are communicating. (Of course, the current DNI, James Clapper, is fairly useless.) And, in era in which the federal government and state governments are broke, shouldn't we be dealing far more aggressively on entitlement

reform, so that, say, suspected terrorists don't get welfare?

Just a few questions to get us started here, because America definitely needs to start paying closer attention to the "returns" we're getting on our "investments."