Our hearts go out to all the casualties of yesterday’s Boston Marathon bombing.
There were horrific wounds. The U.K. Daily Mail quotes a policeman saying that “at least” 25 to 30 people have lost at least one, and sometimes both, legs. Among the dead is an eight-year-old boy.
It is impossible to fathom what the people directly affected by this bombing must be going through right now. We all yearn to do something for them.
It would be hard to know what to say if one had to make public remarks immediately. So I realize that President Obama didn’t have an easy task yesterday. But I am still going to take issue with him.
The president promised to hunt down whoever did this horrible act but then he cautioned Americans against “jumping to conclusions.”
We did not need that caution, Mr. President.
We are not a vigilante people, Mr. President.
Give us that much credit. Trust us that much.
Even when we read that the eight-year-old boy who was killed was waiting at the finish line to hug his father. Even when Americans read things like this, we don’t “jump to conclusions” and we don’t hunt down people as mobs because we still expect the apparatus of legal justice to do this.
I concede parts of the United States don’t have a perfect record on this issue, but we have proven time and again since September 11 that we do not jump to conclusions and that we do not take the law into our own hands. Nor will we now, Mr. President, even in this horror.