In Europe, there's a pervasive idea that halting Islamofascist radicalism is mainly a matter "preventing incarceration" for illegal associations and activities and just talking young migrants and their confused, resentful offspring out of it.  Why wouldn't someone who goes from zero to hero in his own mind and has the mandate of heaven and the promise of eternal paradise change his mind when presented not just with the goodies of Western civilization, but its ideas as well?  That women are equal, that gay is OK, that tolerance of all lifestyles is desirable, that secularism is grand, and the state is all powerful – who wouldn't swap out the promise of eternal paradise and martyrdom for all those pro-offered ideas, just by talking to them through "de-radicalization" re-education.

Such is the delusion over there: that stone-cold Islamofascists with pillage and terrorism in their minds can be flipped into secular-minded, wholesome, tolerant, self-guilting uni-worlders with views not at all different from those of the average European Union denizen.  All nice people, it seems.

We saw it in Norway, where rape-minded migrants were expected to be talked into dropping their stone-age attitudes and loathing of the West all through the miracle of re-education, a highly touted re-orientation for the unassimilated migrants including the terrorists among them. Based  on what is read in the news, it's not working.

We know that even Saudi Arabian de-radicalization efforts have failed, too. We can safely assume that these re-education efforts are not populated by European Union-style re-educators who will advise their supposed charges about the importance of gay rights and women's liberation - because many of these supposedly deradicalized have used these schools and camps as conducts for returning back to the battlefield.

Now we read that France's effort to de-radicalize Islamic militants has been an abject failure, too.  Newsweek reports:

France's search for an effective strategy to combat extremism and prevent future terror attacks continues after the government announced Friday that the country's first center for de-radicalization is closing shop.

The Pontourny center, situated in the middle of the French countryside, near the Loire Valley, has sat empty since February. At that time, a prominent senator described the project as a "total fiasco."

France's Interior Ministry has now admitted defeat. "The experiment has not been conclusive," it said in its announcement of the closing of the center. 

France is the European country worst affected by radical Islamist attacks since January 2015, with more than half a dozen assaults claiming the lives of 230 people.

The country is battling the most serious case of homegrown extremism in the European Union, with around 15,000 suspected radical Islamists on the watchlists of French authorities, overseen by the country's Counter-Terrorism Coordination Unit, with some 4,000 individuals at high risk of committing an attack.

This is a pretty sorry record for trying to soft-hand the threat of Islamic radicalism, which in fact is a manifestation of war.  The only way, according to terrorism experts, to really get a shift in attitudes is to persuade the young malevolents that no, they won't get to heaven if they use a truck to mow down a promenade full of people or hotfoot it to Syria to join ISIS.  Their actions don't make them go from zero to hero; their actions make them despised.

The tactics are terrorism are hard and merciless. The only thing that can really break a diamond is another diamond.  Punishing radicalism, not coddling terrorists, is the only known tactic against terrorism that works.