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How come this happens again without anyone having seen it coming?

But they did see it coming. From what I gathered from the response of many Brussels residents and airport personnel, the question was "when", more than "if".

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That's really easy to say about any capital city, but not what the parent means at all.

Not any capital city - Brussels specifically. There was a lockdown of nearly a week after the Paris attacks. People were really bracing for an attack, in a way that London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna, etc. weren't.

My point was that it is really easy to say that any big city will have a terrorist attack. So it's never if, but always when. Yet with all the surveillance and lockdowns they have, they didn't see this coming, which was the point of the parent, that more surveillance is not going to solve anything.

Yet, they had no idea of "who".

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