We are all Bostonians this week. We are all Americans. And we must all vow the heinous acts that killed three people and injured scores of others during the Boston Marathon on Monday will not deter us.
Very little is known so far. Was this an act of domestic terrorism, timed, perhaps, to Boston’s celebration of Patriots’ Day, which commemorates the earliest days of the American Revolution? Or was it timed to the deadly bombing in 1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh? Was it orchestrated by foreign nationals?
We don’t know. There are no suspects; there have been no claims of responsibility. But President Barack Obama assured Americans that “we will find whoever harmed our citizens. And we will bring them to justice.”
The cowards behind these attacks will, in time, face the inevitable wheels of justice. It is unfathomable to think that those responsible believe that the killing of three innocents, including an 8-year-old boy, is justified by their hatred.
We all feel, of course, grief, sadness and pain at the sheer horror of the act. But we also feel admiration and gratitude for the selfless people who vaulted over barriers in the moments after the bomb blasts, before the smoke had even cleared, and helped the victims. The people who pulled off belts and shirts to stanch bleeding. Who held the hands of the wounded until medical professionals arrived. Who rushed the wounded to waiting ambulances. Who took runners who couldn’t retrieve their belongings into their homes.
In a briefing Tuesday on the bombings, Obama praised the generosity of the volunteers. “If you want to know who we are, what America is, how we respond to evil — that’s it. Selflessly. Compassionately. Unafraid.”
The attack surely raises difficult questions for other major events where absolute security is either difficult or impossible. Think Fourth of July celebrations around the country, holiday parades or just about any major sporting event. Americans spend a lot of time in crowds. Those security concerns should be addressed, and lessons should be learned just as they were after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
This is one of the prices we pay for our free society. We must be alert and cautious. But we must not overreact. If there is any lesson from past attacks, that is a key one.
We must not shrink from living our lives. We must, instead, live them all the more fully as a memorial to the victims of Boylston Street.
“The American people refuse to be terrorized,” Obama said Tuesday, “because what the world saw yesterday in the aftermath of the explosions were stories of heroism and kindness and generosity and love.”
Amid all the images beamed to millions of television viewers around the world was that of 78-year-old Bill Iffrig, a retired carpenter from Lake Stevens, Wash. He was only yards from the finish line when the first bomb detonated; the shock wave knocked him to the pavement.
“The force from it just turned my whole body to jelly, and I went down,” Iffrig told the Seattle Times. “I thought, ‘This is probably it for me.’ “
Later, in a matter-of-fact way, Iffrig told CNN’s Piers Morgan: “Everybody else is out there having fun, and you got one or two people trying to destroy the whole thing. It’s hard to figure out. Terrorists, whatever they are … I don’t have much use for it.”
After the blast, a race official rushed to Iffrig and helped him up. Together, they walked the last few steps to the finish line. In that way, he completed his 45th marathon — and his third Boston Marathon. Then he walked six blocks to the hotel where his wife of 58 years was waiting.
“We’re not quitters,” he told the Seattle newspaper.
A fitting sentiment in the aftermath of the bombings. We must bring those responsible to justice. We must move on, undeterred. We must not quit.
