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Obama Took His Time In Calling Boston Marathon Attack ‘Terrorism’

  • April 17, 2013
  • The Progressive Policy Institute

McClatchy’s Anita Kumar quotes PPI President Will Marshall on the President Obama’s response to the Boston marathon attack:

In his first term, the president was criticized for his responses to several potential incidents of terrorism.

Most notably, he was vacationing in Hawaii in 2009 and waited three days to speak publicly about the attempted bombing of a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight as it prepared to land in Detroit.

“There’s a suspicion among Republicans that he is only willing to be tough against al Qaida and nobody else,” said Will Marshall, a former Democratic speechwriter who heads the Progressive Policy Institute research center.

Obama, Marshall said, struck the right tone in trying to calm the nation after three people were killed and more than 170 were wounded Monday in two blasts near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

“When there is a crisis we look to the president to be calm, not to be excitable, not boiling over,” he said.

Read the entire article here.

 

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