First off, I join the chorus of people all over the world and offer my condolences and sympathy to the city of Boston and those impacted by recent events there.
I've had a day to get acclimated to the events at the Boston Marathon, and the flashbacks from April, 1995 here in Oklahoma City have subsided. My overwhelming thought on the matter is, "Why does stuff like this happen in Boston and Oklahoma City? These places don't deserve this kind of catastrophe."
I don't think the random killing and maiming of innocent people who are just going about their days is ever a good thing. Terrorism is not warfare. There are ways to make one's point without causing such indiscriminate damage or loss of life. Humanity, with or without God, needs to mature to the point where the whole species, even the least of us, understands that this kind of thing is as unthinkable as a square circle or division by zero.
My prediction is that the perpetrator in this case turns out to be a skinny white guy that is mad at the world, just like the incident in Oklahoma City. But whoever did this is undoubtedly is proud of themselves just now. And that alone is enough of a tragedy all by itself.
As bad as this would be in any city on earth, even in places like Afghanistan or Pakistan where events like this are commonplace, the fact that this happened in Boston just makes the whole thing worse.
This stuff never seems to happen in Miami, Detroit, Newark, etc. I've been to cities all over America, and they are not created equally. Different cities have different personalities and some cities are crappy for reasons other than geography. There are many cities that I have spent some time in and would as soon never visit again.
But Boston, Oklahoma City Chicago, Denver, Houston and a host of other cities all over this country are filled with wonderful, loving, happy people that love Life and get along just fine. These cities should be immune somehow from the urges of crazy people who think they have a point to make through acts of terrorism.
Personally, I really like Boston, and would retire there if I could figure out how. It has the best of all worlds, and I really like the people there. I'm genuinely sorry for what happened there this week. It's a real shame.