Security overkill is terror’s real triumph

The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on New York’s West Side cycle path, my heart sank. Now, you might think that any decent human being — I marginally qualify — would be profoundly saddened by the pointless murder of folks merely out enjoying a city’s recreational facilities on a crisp autumn day. But that wasn’t it.

Or you might think — since I spend a fair whack of the year in New York, where as usual I get everywhere by bike — that I might be concerned about becoming a terrorist target myself. I use that bike path constantly in summer. Had the attack occurred earlier in the year, one of those victims could have been me. But that wasn’t it, either.

Maybe this means I don’t qualify as decent after all, but what plunged me into despair was the immediate certainty that the powers-that-be would rush to utterly destroy a vital transportation route in the name of protecting it.