London, Melbourne, now Tehran. There is something undeniably true about British Prime Minister Theresa May's declaration this week that "enough is enough". Whereas terrorism once seemed isolated, each attack hitting us like a massive thud, now it is a drum beat: steady, regular, some whacks heavier than others, combining to form a relentless sound track to our time. The exasperation is thorough, real and pervasive. That's why you probably said those words to yourself well before you heard May say them.

But they're also misleading. "Enough is enough" implies a level of control. Like the thing aggrieving you is something that exists only because of your indulgence. It's what you say to a misbehaving child just as you decide it's finally time to impose a punishment. It's what you say when you decide to quit the job you hate. But terrorism is nothing like that. It does not exist merely because we haven't yet decided to extinguish it. It does not end simply because we decide it's time.

Illustration Andrew Dyson

To see this, consider that we've been saying this kind of thing more or less since the September 11 attacks. That, you will recall, was meant to be the moment that changed the world, that ushered in a new war unlike anything we've seen. "There was before 9/11 and after 9/11", explained a former CIA director of counterterrorism. "After 9/11 the gloves come off." So we rushed off to two interminable wars. The US government opened black sites around the world and tortured people on the flimsiest evidence. And we've been taking gloves off ever since, introducing new counterterrorism legislation to a drum beat of our own, steadily expanding the power of the state, and its ability to gather intelligence. Still the attacks come. Indeed, they increase.

So, I guess it's no surprise that we've finally reached the point that commentators are now openly mooting the possibility of internment. "We do need internment camps," declared British columnist Katie Hopkins on Fox News, a mere fortnight after she called for a "final solution" of some sort in response to the Manchester atrocity. Australian counterparts haven't quite got to the point of adopting Nazi terminology, but we're flirting with the internment idea. Here it takes the form of proposing special courts for terror suspects in which they can be held indefinitely precisely because we lack the evidence to convict, as both Tony Abbott and retired army general Jim Molan did this week. To be fair, Molan refused internment as a description of this, accepting the "appalling back story" that word implies. But we are talking about incarcerating people on suspicion and without trial. With respect, I'm not sure what else to call that.