Terrorism attracts disproportionate public attention and policy focus. As of December 2015, the death toll from jihadist terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11 was 45, and from white supremacist and other right-wing extremists 48, compared to more than 200,000 people killed in "conventional murders." U.S. President Barack Obama frequently reminded his staff that "terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than falls in bathtubs."
There are two key questions about the Manchester attack. First, what motivated the bomber specifically, and what intelligence evidence was missed or the dots not connected to prevent it? Second, why does the pattern keep repeating across the world, why are wannabe terrorists attracted to the cause, and what can be done to demotivate them to defeat terrorism?
Unfortunately, long-term strategy is held hostage to denialism as the default policy setting. Left and right politicians and public intellectuals alike are reluctant to speak truth to evil. Testimony by terrorists and scholarly research are brushed aside as inconvenient facts.