Searching for a Motive?

If I wrote a detective novel, the only reason my investigator would search for a criminal's motive would be if his identity was unknown or if there was a list of suspects. If the investigator had all the facts of the crime, a murder for instance in which the victim was shot in the back multiple times that multiple people witnessed all caught on video, knowing the motive would be irrelevant. The facts would stand on their own merit. In the real world, a criminal's motive isn't always known. Here in the U.S., a lot of murderers take the motive to the grave with them. It's their way of making the family suffer. In those cases the facts spoke loudly and clearly. The motive was irrelevant for the murderer's conviction. Knowing the motive would have been nice but wasn't necessary.

In the time between the Muslim terrorist attack in San Bernardino and the FBI's announcement that it was terrorism, the official story was that they were searching for the "motive" to determine whether it really was terrorism. Finally, at some point it was officially announced that the massacre was indeed an act of terrorism. I never heard a motive other than terrorism. But we already knew it was terrorism. Making it official changed none of the facts of the case.

Let's go back to my detective novel. Imagine me writing a story in which the murder is clearly murder, victim shot multiple times in front of witnesses all caught on camera, but my investigator spends the first half of the book searching for the motive only to declare that the motive was murder. It wouldn't make any sense, would it? That would be a pretty bad story. Imagine that the reason for his search for motive was because his boss ordered him to do it in order to make sure the motive fit a tricky legal definition. That was the reason for the FBI's search for the "motive". They had to make it fit a very narrow legal definition of terrorism that the FBI uses.

Basically, the entire search for motive appears to have been a fictional event presented as reality. The night of the attack the Joint Terrorism Task Force was activated. The JTTF was investigating the event as terrorism the entire time the FBI was "searching for the motive" to determine if the massacre was terrorism or not.

The whole incident should strike fear into Americans. The government suppressed information from the very beginning of the attack. It presented a narrative with holes in it. If there hadn't been so many people involved and so many witnesses, would we ever have officially found out the "motive"? Would it ever have been terrorism, or would it have been whitewashed like Fort Hood?

I haven't heard much from the survivors. It's like they're being encouraged to stay off camera or only say certain things during interviews. I have a huge question that needs answering. Did the terrorists shout allahu akbar during the attack? Because if they did, the "motive" was known within about five minutes of the attack. It took police 4 minutes to reach the scene. Survivors were telling them what happened when they went in the door.

Book Stuff
Despite all the challenges in real life, I've been trying to get the YA spy novel finished. I can see the end in sight. (I've gotten some things done for the next B'vellah War book, too, even a tiny, tiny bit of the first chapter done.) If I can get the ending right on the YA book, I think it's the best book I've done yet. For the Messenger series, I ignored the "rules" and wrote the kind of thing I wanted to read. The unpublished mystery/romance had more of a structure to it. The YA novel has even more to it. All that experience is going into the next B'vellah War book. It feels unbearably delayed, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

Amazon FBA Stuff
I've sold a little bit more, but it's really slow getting off the ground. In January I should be able to afford to import a real product from China. I have a post planned about my first feedback. It was negative, and it wasn't my fault! Amazon had to fix it. It was more hindrance.