@DavCrav. Sadly, I agree with just about every point you make. Despite your 7-1 thumbs down to up ratio, everything you said regarding the current situation seems 100% accurate. The only one I don't agree with is your solution. Creating a police state (and enforced monitoring is a firm step in that direction), might do the trick of stopping attacks, but by doing so you hand the perpetrators the exact victory they were looking for.
There is only one way to fight this kind of 'war'. It's been tried and tested for thousands of years, and looking through history books, I've yet to see a single instance of something else working.
That way is harsh, unapologetic, brutality.
I know this isn't what any right-thinking human being wants, regardless of political bent. It's the antithesis of just about everything we believe in. But the thing is, it's NOT what the radicalized believe in.
Despite our best intents, you simply cannot import a world view that was formed in the relatively luxurious west, to a region that doesn't have the same comforts and sensibilities.
How many of us loved seeing what happened during the "Arab Spring"?
How many thought, uh oh, maybe we shouldn't be removing the strong men who have been keeping all the religious nuts in line the past 50 years or so?
So, unless we are willing to emulate the Sadams and Muammars we helped boot out, we better get used to these attacks, because they have no reason to stop them.
You want it to stop? Once you've identified one of these monsters, emulate them. Make life a living hell for everyone they have ever known. Let them know that if they pull this sort of thing, we might just find their entire families and do the same to them.
Personally, I hate to think about it, and have hundreds of arguments against my own rant.
But it's been historically proven to be the only method that has ever worked against fundamentalism.
We need to stop pretending the attacks are just a passing fad that can be stopped be changing government policy. They aren't, and it won't.
If anyone has a better solution, that takes into consideration the global situation as it is, and not as you'd like it to be, then please enlighten me.
Because it sucks to think there is no other solution.