In the wake of a move that looks overly cautious in retrospect, defenders of Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines’ decision to close the schools on Tuesday argue he had no choice.

But of course there was a choice. And New York City made a different one.

In a move that is sure to encourage terrorists who hope to paralyze Americans with fear, Los Angeles decided to close its entire 900-plus school system because of what appears to have been a single unsubstantiated threat contained in an email. It turned out to be a hoax.

The city and its backers sought to justify the move, asking how they could risk the lives of children in the face of potential threat.

“Even if there are no explosives-laden backpacks, no mysterious packages and no actual plan to harm children, the online threats that led to the closure Tuesday of every Los Angeles Unified school and preschool demonstrate for Angelenos what it means to be terrorized,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial.

Lesson for terrorists: Send an email.

Cortines himself acknowledged that the threat the district received is the kind that it receives all the time. But, the Times wrote, memories of the San Bernardino, California, shootings by Muslim extremists are still fresh.

“Yet what options do we as a society have — especially when the possible victims are children?” the editorial stated. “None, really.”

Lesson for terrorists: Target children.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also said he was not going to criticize the decision.

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“I’m not going to stand here at this podium and second-guess the decisions that are made by local law-enforcement officials in any community across the country,” he told reporters Tuesday.

So, the police cannot be second-guessed for overreacting?

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They sure are second-guessed for other mistakes — everything from the way officers treat suspects or confront threats of violence against themselves to how officials conduct investigations involving allegations of brutality. The Justice Department second-guesses local police departments every time it opens an investigation into law-enforcement practices.

The closure affected more than 900 schools and 187 public charter schools, and nearly 650,000 students. Authorities called the measure a precaution after receiving an unspecified bomb threat. New York City received the same threat and did not close its schools.

Authorities pointed out that the “A” in Allah was not capitalized in the email. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., told the New York Times that the person who made the threat also claimed to have 32 jihadi friends as well as bombs, nerve gas and rifles. The number of attackers and the reference to nerve gas should have raised doubts, he told the paper.

The emails sent to New York and Los Angeles were nearly identical, with a supposed student claiming in both missives that he had been bullied.

Reuters quoted an anonymous law enforcement source, who told the news agency that Los Angeles authorities failed to consult with the FBI — which normally takes the lead in domestic terrorism cases — before canceling classes to allow a school-by-school search.

New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was blunt.

“To disrupt the daily school schedules of half a million school children — their parents, daycare, buses — based on an anonymous email with no consultation — if in fact consultation did not occur with law enforcement authorities — I think it was a significant overreaction,” he said, according to the Daily News.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck fired back.

“It’s very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based on (factors) the decider could never have known,” he told reporters.