Because all the clues are already there. It's just that nobody has spotted them yet.
Somewhere out there is a nutter, or a bunch of nutters, intent on causing maximum devastation. They're amongst us now, silently plotting and scheming. Their plans are evil, and their target is carnage. Maybe they're organising a suicide bombing campaign, or maybe they're conspiring to poison our water supplies, or maybe they're stocking up for a random killing spree. We don't know yet. But it'll definitely be something immoral and wholly reprehensible. The bastards.
But there are clues. There are always clues. Big obvious clues which hint at Armageddon to come, plain as anything for everyone to see. Taking a sudden interest in religion, for example. Making visits to unsavoury websites. Purchasing large quantities of industrial solvents. Being friends with suspected insurgents. Writing university essays full of rage and anger. Looking at people in a funny way. Being foreign. Clues which, after the event, everyone will agree were absolutely blatant. But which nobody spotted at the time. It's inexcusable.
Because there are people out there whose job it is to protect us. They tap our phones and film us in the street. They intercept our mail and track our movements. They spend vast amounts of money snooping on our lives and curtailing our privacy. And for what? So that they can completely miss the one person or group of people they're actually looking for, that's what! How deplorable is that?
I mean, it can't be that difficult, can it? I've seen lots of articles in the media recently which show just how obvious these plots are, even in their early stages. If tabloid readers can spot these links, then anybody can. That friendless sex-obsessed loner is definitely a serial killer in waiting. That bearded bloke on the tube is almost certainly a radical fundamentalist with a bomb factory in his shed. Those foreign-born friends on a camping trip are doubtless fanatics plotting the overthrow of Western civilisation. Any fool can jump to these conclusions.
The telltale signs of evil are all around us. Trained security professionals need to be able to put these clues together and follow all the correct leads, ignoring any red herrings. They need to distinguish, with 100% accuracy, the difference between crucial facts and baseless speculation. They need to home in relentlessly on conspicuous enemies of the state and bring them to justice before innocent citizens get butchered. But no. It turns out that our police are bungling incompetents and that MI5 are atrociously inept. It's just not good enough.
We demand that our security services are infallible, especially with the benefit of hindsight. But when they slip up, as slip up they do, the nation demands a scapegoat. We insist on attaching blame to those whose job it is to protect us, because they've failed to predict the unhinged actions of a madman. Somebody must be at fault. Somebody must take responsibility. Somebody needs to be named and shamed for not spotting the bleeding obvious. Because it is obvious afterwards, isn't it? It's always blindingly obvious afterwards.
