RUTHFULLY YOURS

Just in case New Yorkers have never noticed that they’re “strong,” “resilient,” and “undeterred” in the face of terrorism, a swarm of elected leaders reminded them after Tuesday’s attack in Lower Manhattan. But those officials never talked about the terrorist himself, Sayfullo Saipovm, his cause, or the specific nature of the threat posed by his co-religionists worldwide. Nor did they seem much interested in the hard work of protecting the city.

“Terror won’t beat New York because we get back up stronger every time,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo. “New Yorkers are smarter and stronger and better than those who seek to harm us.”

“An act of terror was intended to break our spirit,” chirped Mayor Bill de Blasio, “but we know New Yorkers are strong and resilient.”

“We will not be intimidated. We will not be deterred,” insisted Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

“I am appalled and horrified at this deliberate act of terrorism,” said City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “We are a resilient city and we will not be deterred by these cowardly acts.”

Mark-Viverito herself certainly wasn’t deterred by the cowardly acts of convicted terrorist Oscar Lopez-Rivera, when she arranged—with the assistance of Schneiderman and the acquiescence of Cuomo and de Blasio—to honor him at last spring’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade. Lopez-Rivera and his confederates maimed and murdered New Yorkers in Lower Manhattan 40-some years ago, crimes that fundamentally differed from Tuesday’s attack only in objective: back then, it was Marxism. Today, it’s Islamism. But you would scarcely know what motivated Tuesday’s attacker from listening to Gotham’s elected class mouth their platitudes.

Tuesday’s pickup-truck slaughter was the third fatal terrorist attack in New York City’s 1st police precinct since 1993, preceded by the first World Trade Center bombing and 9/11—each one carried out on behalf of radical Islam. The elected officials made no mention of this because candor would conflict with their political goals, undermining arguments supporting minimal national border security and “sanctuary cities.” Hard-core New York progressives like de Blasio, Schneiderman, Mark-Viverito, and, increasingly, Cuomo himself, won’t let that happen. De Blasio, in particular, disdains aggressive counterterrorism efforts—he began dismantling a hugely successful NYPD anti-terror unit soon after taking office. So, empty rhetoric rules.

In practical terms, of course, there’s only so much that any city can do to protect itself from the kind of threat New York weathered Tuesday. But Cuomo’s insistence that the terrorist was a “lone wolf” is sheer excuse-mongering, suggesting helplessness while ignoring reality: the Islamist threat is an intricate, Internet-centric, near-transcendental presence that bloody-minded individuals—acting alone, but hardly lone wolves—can step into or slip out of at will.

Fourteen years ago, I wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal on “The Bike-Path Left”:

There was a revealing moment on MSNBC the other night. Chris Matthews asked [Howard] Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in an American court or at The Hague. “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference,” said the governor airily. Mr. Matthews pressed once more. “It doesn’t make a lot of difference to me,” he said again… So how about Saddam? The Hague “suits me fine,” he said, the very model of ennui. Saddam? Osama? Whatever, dude.

So what does get the Dean juices going? A few days later, the governor was on CNN and Judy Woodruff asked him about his admission that he’d left the Episcopal Church and become a Congregationalist because “I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church over the bike path.” I hasten to add that, in contrast to current Anglican controversies over gay marriage in British Columbia and gay bishops in New Hampshire, this does not appear to have been a gay bike path: its orientation was not an issue; it would seem to be a rare example of a non-gay controversy in the Anglican Communion. But nevertheless it provoked Howard into “a big fight.” “I was fighting to have public access to the waterfront, and we were fighting very hard in the citizens group,” he told Judy Woodruff. Fighting, fighting, fighting.

And that’s our pugnacious little Democrat. On Osama bin Laden, he’s Mister Insouciant. But he gets mad about bike paths. Destroy the World Trade Center and he’s languid and laconic and blasé. Obstruct plans to convert the ravaged site into a memorial bike path and he’ll hunt you down wherever you are.

The Hudson River Greenway is not, formally, a 9/11 “memorial bike path”. But it does run within 300 feet or so of the World Trade Center as it begins its progress up the West Side Highway toward the Bronx. So close enough. Yet on the central point I was wrong. The “bike-path left” will surrender the bike path as they surrender everything else.

As I write, eight are dead – all men, five Argentines, one Belgian, all in the path of an Uzbek Muslim who decided to take a Home Depot pick-up truck down the bike path for 20 blocks mowing down bicycle after bicycle after bicycle before exiting the vehicle and yelling – go on, take a wild guess – “Allahu Akbar!” Well, I never! You could knock me over with a feather duster – which the Mohammedans will no doubt find a way of weaponizing any day now.

So two hours after the attack, Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and other New York bigwigs assembled for the usual press conference to give the usual passive shrug – this is the way we live now, nothing to be done about it, etc, etc. Every so often in New York, as in London as in Stockholm as in Berlin as in Nice as in Brussels as in Paris as in Manchester as in Orlando, your loved one will leave the home and never return because he went to a pop concert or a gay club or a restaurant or an airport, or just strolled the sidewalk or bicycled the bike path. “Allahu Akbar”? That’s Arabic for “Nothing can be done”. So Andrew Cuomo ended with some generic boilerplate about how they’ll never change us:

Didn’t you want to wipe the sneer off that kid’s face – the one who drove a truck into eight innocent people on that Manhattan bike path?

The Manhattan truck killer should finally get all American patriots to cry out in outrage.

In spite of our heroic military taking casualties, in spite of Trump-Mattis finally calling jihad the named enemy, most of this country is not yet serious. This is war. Our parents and grandparents did not hesitate to declare war on The Day that Lived in Infamy, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But a morally weakened, liberal, and feckless U.S. Congress failed to declare war after 9/11/01, even after acts to murder of men, women, and children occurred time and time again, on our soil, and on the soil of our allies. This is the most abject act of plain cowardice in American history, and conservatives now have their own web media to tell that truth.

The United States Constitution reads, “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

Who has given aid and comfort to our enemies?

First of all, the Democrats under Obama and Hillary, who have declared war – not on the murderous enemy of civilians in Manhattan the other day, but on our duly elected president of the United States. The left-stacked courts may not go along, but the people of the United States can recognize it without the shadow of doubt. Our proper response is not violence, but a loud and clear message by a hundred million voters for Trump that the behavior of the left will not go unanswered anymore. It is time to get serious.

Second, we know that Obama did everything in his power for eight years to surrender to jihad, to turn nuclear weapons over to Iran (which is known to collude with North Korea) with Putin’s collusion. Putin and the Chinese have to know that the American people hold them responsible for their active support of the Iranian (jihadist) and North Korean (self-declared nuclear enemy) of the United States of America.

Third, patriotic Americans must act much more cohesively, in exactly the way we did with the National Football League, which is now in danger of bankruptcy for the way it allowed its employees to show open contempt for the flag of the United States of America.

Fourth, the left, which has a treasonous doctrine in Marx, Lenin, and the rest, must be deprived of our dollars, just as patriots deprived their favorite NFL of dollars in the face and plain and obvious disloyalty.

Six months before this week’s Manhattan bike path attack, the Transportation Security Administration warned about the threat of “unsophisticated” vehicle ramming attacks and distributed guidance for rental counters, prepared in conjunction with the truck leasing industry, on spotting potential terrorists.

The security and awareness brochure prepared by the Truck Renting and Leasing Association (TRALA) and the Department of Homeland Security advised employees of companies that rent out trucks how to spot and report suspicious behavior, including customers “inquiring whether vehicles can be modified to handle heavier loads, create additional storage areas, increase fuel capacity, or vehicle speed.”

In an explicit vehicle-attack infographic in the May issue of their Rumiyah magazine, ISIS told would-be jihadis to rent a vehicle with a “slightly raised chassis and bumper,” a “double-wheeled, load-bearing truck” that is “large in size, heavy in weight” and is “fast in speed or rate of acceleration.”

That month, the TSA issued a report on the vehicle ramming threat that discussed reporting “any suspicions arising from the rental of large capacity vehicles in areas and within a proximate timeframe of parades and other celebratory gatherings, sporting events, entertainment venues, shopping centers, or other activities which place crowds near roads, streets or venues accessible by vehicles,” as well as “repeat renters who may appear to be ‘practicing’ their large vehicle skills in the time leading up to a nearby open event.”

The TRALA brochure distributed to companies said “insisting on renting a truck with a wooden rather than metal floor” could be a red flag, as well as using cash for large transactions or a customer being vague about references or the name used to rent the vehicle. The guide advised looking out for customers “wearing extraordinary attire such as heavy coats in the summertime” or who “seem to have attempted to disguise their appearance.”

Returned vehicles that “show physical evidence or produce an odor suggesting chemical or fertilizer transport” should be reported by employees, as well as those that “contain maps, blueprints, photos or drawings of buildings, roads, or other infrastructure or notes regarding the surveillance of such objects.”

“Always be observant of your surroundings whether at the rental counter, inside or outside the company’s facility, or in the areas near your company’s location,” the brochure states, and pay attention to “unauthorized persons loitering where rental vehicles are parked or serviced.”