The “lone wolf” terror attack on a bicycle path by the Hudson river in New York’s Manhattan will intensify the political debate over immigration and security in the US. America was subjected to its first European-style attack in which an ISIS-inspired terrorist drives a vehicle through a street running over people, as seen earlier in France, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Spain. As irony would have it, this Uzbek-born terror acolyte managed to kill five Argentinians and a Belgian visiting New York among his eight victims. The ISIS may have been soundly defeated in Iraq, driven out of their last bastions of Mosul and Raqqa, but those indoctrinated by the “caliphate” will continue such attacks, particularly against the West. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and society must find ways to cope with the anxieties of those attacked while just going about their daily activities.
Islamist attacks aren’t the only type of terror to hit the US, whose gun laws are so lax that it takes only a brief loss of mental balance over an itchy trigger finger to rain death on people, as Las Vegas showed recently. The Trump administration has decided to tighten immigrant screening in its “extreme vetting” programme, with Donald Trump tweeting: “Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!” Each Islamist terror attack will only harden Mr Trump’s stand. While fighting terrorism, there can’t be any compromises, even if it means some peaceful refugees from the killing fields of West Asia are denied their dream of reaching the “land of opportunity”. One can only sympathise with the innocent who are killed amid this pointless rage against humanity.
