Once again Americans mourn the destruction of lives wrought by a twisted ideologue beholden to fantastically evil interpretations of Islam. A 29-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan drove a rented truck down a bike path in Manhattan, killing eight and injuring others. As if to punctuate the overall impotence of his misguided cause, the killer, Sayfullo Saipov, stumbled around afterwards shouting “Allahu akbar” while brandishing a measly pellet gun and a toy used to fire balls of paint.

No God of consequence enough to be called great that we know of would approve of such a hateful and cowardly sin against humanity. What a pathetic excuse for a human being is Saipov.

After the massacre in Las Vegas, we joined many in calling for restraint from politics in the early part of the investigation. Much remained unknown about the Vegas shooter then, but with Saipov, it’s easy to connect the dots.

Sadly our president, Donald Trump, connected the dots and without thinking tweeted out his political reaction less than 24 hours after the carnage. Trump sought to politicize a long-standing visa program by incorrectly blaming Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s minority leader and a reliable Democratic critic of the president, for its existence. In fact, the program was created during the first Bush presidency with bipartisan backing. A more recent effort Schumer backed to end the program was defeated by Republicans who objected to other provisions of the legislation.

Trump also suggested Saipov, who police shot but didn’t kill, should be sent to the terrorist prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The president, who won the 2016 Republican primary in large part because of his anti-immigrant stance and intolerance of Muslims (he called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States, among other outrages) said justice should come more quickly to Saipov.

Trump even suggested our justice system “is a joke and it’s a laughing stock,” never mind that prosecutors using our traditional courts here on American soil put the surviving Boston Marathon bomber on death row and successfully have locked up terrorists in our toughest prisons. It’s at Guantánamo where too often bad actors are released back to their old haunts and justice is obscured without due process.

So in our period of mourning, let’s look back to the victims and the cause of defeating the twisted militants of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

We praise the brave men and women who have fought these enemies for 16 years on the battlefield, in the work of counterterrorism, in the courts, in campaigns to win hearts and minds and in tending the recovery efforts of innocent victims.

Overwhelmingly those efforts showcase what’s best about our American system. Efforts to subvert our laws, as happens when we rely on extrajudicial investigations, secret prisons and the embarrassment that is Gitmo, only serve to embolden terrorists in their efforts, and help them attract recruits.

America will win this war by taking the high ground not succumbing to our basest reactions.

Those who lost loved ones and friends, the survivors who are recovering bravely from injury and the great city of New York, are in our thoughts and prayers.

For Saipov we only have thoughts of a life spent in Supermax.

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