Police State

Despite knowing the Paris terrorist mastermind, neither police nor spies monitored his movements or communications.

"Few others have reported as openly on social media about their adventures in Syria as Abaaoud. In Dabiq magazine, an official propaganda organ of Islamic State (IS), he had boasted in January that he could “plan operations” and come and go as he pleased despite the fact that “my name and my picture have been all over the news.”"

He even bragged about it.

"It seems reasonably settled that many of the leaders of ISIS come from the disbanded Iraqi military, disbanded at the hands of the US government.  A disciplined bunch, rebuilding the state forcibly removed from their control."

Great.

"They seem to be after what many young, lost men seem to be after – albeit in a more violent setting:

Western recruits belong to the Islamic State elite. They receive privileged treatment and are allotted homes, women and higher salaries.

Sex, money, and adventure; nothing about the obligatory duty of Ṣalāh."

They want to be the government.

"The west collects trillions of bits of data on virtually every connected individual on earth; yet these terrorists openly use unencrypted social media to communicate.  The west has employed violence over all regions of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia for two-hundred years – and exponentially so in the last 25 years, yet many of the radicals are grown in their own back yard."

Rulers benefit from terrorism, but they fear the people.