Our city attacked

It was an attack in New York. It was an attack on New York. The nightmare of Nice, of London, of Berlin, of Barcelona, of Jerusalem has visited our free and open city with vengeance, as a rented pickup truck plowed down bicyclists and pedestrians. The driver’s Islamist shout: “Allahu Akbar!”

By a simple, horrifying act — conversion of an inconspicuous vehicle into a weapon, steered by blinding hate — eight innocents are dead. A dozen more are injured.

Now come officials’ entreaties, so well-intended, so necessary, to live our lives as we would before, not to cower in fear as the terrorists would have us do.

But it is impossible not to ask ourselves: Might a walk down the sidewalk, a ride down the bike lane, leave us vulnerable? Might large groups congregated in city centers be exposed to the worst?

Fear must not debilitate us. But it must motivate us, and the trusted professionals of the NYPD, to raise our defenses every sane way we know how.

The name of the attacker, according to police, is Sayfullo Saipov. He came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010. He has a Florida driver’s license. He rented his vehicle in New Jersey.

Dots must be connected, and quickly. Gaps, exposed and closed. Authorities must determine whether Saipov was being monitored for ties to radicalism. And if not, why not.

By design, vehicular assaults, especially when committed by lone wolves, aim to frustrate any hope that they can be interrupted — even by New York’s best-in-the-world anti-terrorism operation. No travel ban would have stopped this man. But the NYPD and its federal partners can and will dig deep. They cannot hack into minds. Short of that, and consistent with the Constitution, the push to prevent should know few limits.

New York City, knocked to its knees on Sept. 11, has just fallen victim to a fatal Islamist terrorist attack for the first time since. This cannot — will not, we say with confidence — become the new normal.