No coalition of liberal western democracies can control all the poor people in distant regions of the Muslim Ummah, or even slums of western Europe, but we could go after the $$. That starts in Saudi Arabia with rich Wahhabis financing Al Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS and other non-Shiite Islamist terror groups. Western politicians prefer to go after the terrorists directly, even though it's murderous to do so and inefficient. The terrorists are too distributed, mobile, and hard to hit within the populations we bomb. But, it lets our politicians pretend to do something, while not upsetting big oil interests that pay their campaign expenses, allowing those same big oil interests to remain cozy and tight with the Saudis.
This has been building for over 100 years. With US and British foreign policy so heavily influenced by US and British oil companies, we've supported a long series of despots over people in the Middle East in order to get a steady supply of cheap oil.[1] If we're to be serious about going after the jihadi threat, we must stop financing from Wahhabis[2] in Saudi Arabia, which includes members of the Saud royal family (friends of the Bushes). For decades, Wahhabis have been allowed to set up madrasas in rural Pakistan and other far-flung places in the Muslim Ummah where learning is scarce and desperation high. In these “schools” children are taught to handle weapons, “kill the infidel”, and that Christians, Jews, and non-fundamentalist Muslims are the infidel. The madrasas produce jihadi shock troops, but so do the slums of western Europe, where disaffected youth are easy targets for recruiters. At base, still, the seed money is Saudi. NPR & FrontLine report Afghan soldiers are paid (by us) $300/mo while ISIS pays $700/mo, ensuring defection.
Why don’t we give the Saudis the same ultimatum we gave the Taliban after 9/11? ...deliver up the criminals or suffer the consequences. Because it interferes with Big Oil’s strategy which seems to be to blame and murder the peasants, soak US citizens for fake war costs, and keep making $$. Of course, the $$ ultimately comes from us, thoughtless consumers of cheap Muslim oil.
1. Remember Saddam was our man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakinghands_high.OGG
http://www.alternet.org/story/49864/how_george_h.w._bush_helped_saddam_hussein_prevent_an_iraqi_uprising
2. One specific indication of Wahhabi influence is the choice of Parisian targets: music, dancing and alcohol, all strictly forbidden by Wahhabism.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/wahhabism.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/saudi-arabians-support-for-wahhabi.html