In my years and travels, I've settled on the fact that the only solution to those "assholes" that destroy community fabric is overwhelming force. You cannot reason with someone who has nothing to lose.
Making sure everyone has something to lose means making sure everyone has fulfilling lifes they'd rather not jepordize with hostility.
The us and them mentality being used to "combat" terrorism is so harmful because it puts people in a position where they have nothing to lose - they're already being discrimminated against etc.
I agree that a few assholes can ruin things for everyone but the reason they can is because they can ruin the trust people have in each other thereby leading to a situation like I described above. The solution is therefore counterintuitive (since they exploit intuition).
This was actually successfully done. I'm having trouble finding the article, but basically a terrorist group (perhaps in Palestine) had trained some men specifically to be some of their most dedicated and zealous terrorists. However, the situation changed and they found that they no longer needed these zealots and had no idea what to do with them. So they held a mixer where the terrorists got to meet potential brides, and basically said that if they promised to live a normal life, they'd receive some financial compensation to get started on that normal life. All of the trainees ended up getting married and having families, and lost all desire to commit terrorist acts.
A very brief NPR commentary from 2005 was, I thought, remarkably prescient -- it draws many parallels between terrorists and gang members in the US (backgrounds of poverty, no job / life prospects, encouragement of elder males, etc).
There is nothing ominous about it. A person that is happy, has a life and a means of self-support as well as a family is likely not going to be easily turned against society. On the other hand if every door you try to open is closed and you're being pushed into the corner of having 'nothing to lose' then you might be influenced in a negative way. So better to make sure people have plenty to lose.
This will probably never happen, though. Opening doors to people in any way like those who just committed acts of terrorism is far too much like giving in to the terrorists to be politically viable. And so, we'll keep on making sure that there are plenty of people with nothing to lose, and that the recruiters keep on finding plenty of willing recruits.
