The horror in Barcelona

I

t has happened again: A vehicle driven by a radical jihadist maniac plowed into a crowd of people in a densely populated city, this time killing 13 and injuring dozens in Barcelona. As in Nice, as in London, as in Stockholm, as in Jerusalem.

The banality of the methodology, the now mind-numbing frequency of the bloodshed, makes the pain no less acute. To the contrary: It forces the mind to leap to imagine the worst in our own crowded metropolis, where people gather every day to relax, hear music, shop and protest.

So New York City grieves alongside Barcelona, the beautiful and welcoming city where ISIS “soldiers” — in truth, murderers of defenseless innocents at random — struck.

We grieve for the souls killed in one petrifying, chaotic instant. They had families and friends, senses of humor, aspirations, all stolen in by adherents of a fanatical religious ideology.

This ideology, be clear, grows out of Islam. That fact does not make more than a billion decent Muslims, who want nothing more than to coexist with others as neighbors, the least bit culpable; to the contrary, they too are often victims of the perversion of a book taken by most as an admonition to live well and peacefully.

But the link between Islam and ISIS and Al Qaeda and other groups is indisputable. The killers read the Koran and find in its words inspiration if not explicit authorization to slaughter.

If the U.S. and its allies have any hope of protecting their people from maniacs who believe themselves to be doing God’s bidding, who think their rewards come in the afterlife, they must complete the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

They must follow the sophisticated counterterrorism tactics well understood by Gens. Jim Mattis and H.R. McMaster, which rely in large part on killing terrorists through precision warfare, and winning others’ hearts and minds.

They must disregard the simplistic advice of the man in the White House, who seems enamored of large weapons, and of the tactics of Gen. Black Jack Pershing in the Philippines early in the 20th century. President Trump, who last year told a false story about Pershing killing suspected terrorists with ammunition dipped in pig’s blood, repeated that lie on Thursday, an obscenity that dishonors both the dead and the living.

They must harden targets here at home to smartly protect innocents where possible without changing the very nature of our open society.

And they must try every possible way to track and kill the seeds of radicalism before those seeds take root in angry and impressionable minds.

As the New York Police Department, the world’s most sophisticated and relentless frontline terrorism fighters, well know, it is impossible to succeed in every case.

But it is irresponsible not to try.