I propose that he openly admits failure to do much about this sort of attack in the little window of time remaining between the activation of some terrorist cell and their actual attack.
The effect of that admission would be that he would be replaced by someone who would claim the opposite, that it is of course possible to do something.
The whole problem lies in the timing and the fact that our societies are extremely easy to attack by a bunch of cowards with machine guns. That there is no simple last minute defense - a silver bullet if you wish - is a harsh reality but one that we're going to have to deal with if we really want to solve this problem.
So my suggestion - also made elsewhere in this thread - is to concentrate on the formative years of these people, rather than on the last two days of their lives. I suspect (but obviously can not prove) that that would be a far more fruitful, if less spectacular and less financially lucrative, avenue. Once someone has made up their mind to harm society it is extremely hard to stop them.
I agree that we should "concentrate on the formative years of these people".
But the thing is, it comes with the disclaimer that, it will take 15 or more years to work, and we don't really know that it will work at all. And nobody will get elected on the 15-year promise when there is a boatload of other candidates that promise an easy fix.
Anyways, my point is, that government official has this, damned if you do, and damned if you don't, position. It is not clear at all what he (rather, we) should do.
> But the thing is, it comes with the disclaimer that, it will take 15 or more years to work, and we don't really know that it will work at all.
It's the best plan I have, and I'm not even in a position to put that one into practice but most of the other stuff I hear seems to mostly revolve around either killing people or nabbing them on the way to the venue and those don't stand a chance. Hence my assertion that we'll see a lot more of this before we can put an actual stop to it. Even stopgap measures are going to be very hard to come by.
The effect of that admission would be that he would be replaced by someone who would claim the opposite, that it is of course possible to do something.
The whole problem lies in the timing and the fact that our societies are extremely easy to attack by a bunch of cowards with machine guns. That there is no simple last minute defense - a silver bullet if you wish - is a harsh reality but one that we're going to have to deal with if we really want to solve this problem.
So my suggestion - also made elsewhere in this thread - is to concentrate on the formative years of these people, rather than on the last two days of their lives. I suspect (but obviously can not prove) that that would be a far more fruitful, if less spectacular and less financially lucrative, avenue. Once someone has made up their mind to harm society it is extremely hard to stop them.