Guest Opinion: How to respond to a terrorist attack

BOSTON – There is no right way to react to a terrorist attack. Oklahoma City rebuilt after Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 truck bomb attack on the federal government.
Atlanta moved on following anti-abortion activist Eric Rudolph’s 1996 bombing of the Olympics. New York displayed staggering resiliency after the September 11 attacks. Boston, though, may have set a new standard.
Customers swarmed restaurants and businesses on Boylston Street, the site of the marathon bombings, after police reopened the area on Wednesday. There is overwhelming pride here in the public institutions – police, hospitals, government officials and news outlets (forgive my bias) – that responded so swiftly to the bombing. And there has been no major backlash against the city’s Muslim community since two Chechen-American brothers were identified as the prime suspects.