Breivik was an isolated incident, deadly but isolated non less. There is no correct response to terrorism. All terrorists are different. The IRA isn't the FARC or this or that palestinian groups or Al Qaida or Daesh. Sometimes there is a political solution, sometimes there isn't. There is no political solution with Daesh, these people want to exterminate their enemies, the only solution is to exterminate them before they do.
The only way is to try to insulate oneself from these radicals by not letting them immigrate, or if it doesn't help pick an area controlled by the most vicious of these radicals (ISIS territory comes to mind) and give them a taste of what armageddon could look like so they'll learn an important lesson.
This has worked very well in the Chechen wars. The Russians tried negotiating, then they tried having a series of smaller military operations in order to take out their leaders. Then the Russians even conceded and gave them defacto independence, but It all didn't work. They instead went on to attack neighbouring Russian states and then even killed hundreds of Russian children in the Beslan terror attacks.
What did help though was Putins response completely levelling the Chechen capital Grozny. And I mean that literally because that's what they did. After that 99.99% of them became cooperative, in fact today most Chechens in Chechnya consider themselves fierce Russian patriots. I wonder why!
Edit: It is hilarious to me how the leftist are trembling about Putin, Trump, Le Pen and so on. What you guys don't get is that you are witnessing a massive, popular shift to the right throughout the West with a right wing ideology that is indeed partly influenced by Putin. Why? Because it is successful. This doesn't mean that they are controlled by Putin, they just share some ideas. You will by the way also experience this political shift in the Netherlands pretty soon.
Haha touché :-)
And they proclaimed the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus that was very similar to ISIS.
Also they didn't stop aggression after Russia lost the first Chechen war and they got their independence. They instead started attacking other non-Chechen territories in Russia that were peaceful until then.
The Russians were right to bomb the hell out of them. And we should do the same if these people don't stop attacking us.
Notably I do not mean to get involved in the American election debate.
The more power and attention Trump gets, the more Muslim youths in the West feel repressed and despised. This helps ISIS and similar organizations. It's not a stretch to imagine that more radical Muslim terrorism in the West, should it occur soon, will benefit Trump, and thus the cycle is complete. This is the kind of dynamic that moves people to the fringes, away from tolerance and moderate political opinions.
The awful acts that you mention that Obama and Bush were responsible for were not accompanied with a similar anti-Muslim rhetoric and that breaks this cycle, somewhat at least. This is why I did not bring them up. Note that strictly seen, only one side needs to actually do violence for a cycle like this to spin out of control. It's most important both sides need to commit to a powerful anti-the-other-people rhetoric.
So if you run an extremist organization looking for more power, all you have to do is pick and then provoke an enemy whose leadership you know will make your target audience / electorate feel very uneasy. This is what ISIS is doing and Trump, more than other American politicians, is helping them do it. It's been done many times before, think Rwanda or how Hamas got into power in Gaza.
I don't completely care about the exact definition of terrorism in this case - it's more the observation that acts of indiscriminate violence against people from a certain group puts people from that group up against the group the violence doers are from. Terrorism is one such kind of indiscriminate violence and usually the easiest to apply unless you're a nation state.
911 happened during Bush administration, but i m sure Bin Laden spent years during Clinton administration to plan. Point here being, who leads the supposed free world doesnt matter, Radicals will hate you. Its in their blood, flow though their veins though generations of unfair treatments from western world.
Look back how western world treated them, ever wonder why there are so many countries in mid east, and wonder why there are so many conflicts happens there every year?
I guess my points are that at this point, your simple existence is enough to provoke the radicals, regardless who is head of govt. Bangazhi didnt happen cause whole world like Obama better and Bush less. Hands of Jesus Christ are just as bloody, he sent just as much people to meet their maker.
More generally put: Virtually any organization has as its own survival as a high priority goal. Organizations on the extreme ends of ideology, any ideology anywhere, will benefit from increased hostilities in a population. It pushes more people to the fringes.
Terrorism is a time-honoured way to increase hostilities. The moderates lose, the the extreme ends on all sides win (whether you're Trump or ISIS).
Look at recent history and see how well it worked. American bombs on funerals, ISIS bombs on French crowds, it's all terrorism and it works wonders to keep the perpetrators powerful.
When Anders Breivik killed an island full of people, then-prime minister of Norway responded to like this:
"The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation"
This is the correct response to terrorism and we need a lot more of it. Once you see terrorism for what it is, a recruiting scheme, then it is obvious that "powerful language", "bias to action" and all that shit that politicians usually do, is very counter-effective.