The lameness of official responses

Sayfullo Saipov

There's something almost as distressing as the terrorism itself about the stupidity of the responses by government officials.

New York's mayor:

Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference, “Based on information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians.”

Accusing Muslim terrorists of being "cowardly" is irrelevant, since they act on the assumption that their psychopathic god will approve of the murder of random unbelievers. And in some alternate universe do guilty "civilians" exist who deserve to be murdered? And what, for that matter, does the term "civilian" mean in this context? We aren't dealing with anyone in uniform.

The Governor of New York does no better:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo cautioned at a news conference, “There’s no evidence that suggests a wider plot or a wider scheme.” In the aftermath, city and state law enforcement agencies increased security at high-profile locations.

That there was no "wider plot" is not exactly comforting, since that only emphasizes the reality that these "individual jihad" attacks are impossible to prevent. The individual fanatic no longer sees the need to conspire with others and increase the risk of discovery---or get an automatic weapon or explosives; all he needs is a motor vehicle and a busy city street to inflict a lot of damage on us unbelievers:

The attack added New York to the growing ranks of cities around the world where terrorists have struck crowds with vehicles, a blunt and simple form of violence recommended on militant sites. Eighty-four people died in an attack in Nice last year. An attack on a bridge in London killed eight. Another in a Stockholm shopping district, four. Most recently, in August, attackers in a van killed 13 people in Barcelona.

And surely everyone now understands that "increased security at high-profile locations" after one of these attacks is futile and strictly cosmetic.

“We’re not safe anywhere,” said Cecilia Lovecchio, a tourist from Argentina, the home of a group of visitors who lost five of their number in the attack. “It can be a bomb or a truck. A truck could very well come at us right now as we speak. What can you do?” Those words were seemingly unpacked and thought through across the city Tuesday night and Wednesday.

Trump can thump his chest and demagogue the issue, but there's really nothing much the authorities can do to stop these attacks, as the late Christopher Hitchens warned years ago:

We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. 

They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims...The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. 

The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war"...(emphasis added)

See also Terrorism "Cliches and Platitudes" and Caliphate of the Mind.