Philip Johnston
The Government will tomorrow launch a new counter-terrorism strategy, called Contest 2. For those who missed Contest 1, a brief explanation is in order. It has four strands: to protect, to pursue, to prepare and to prevent.
Which of these would you consider the most important? I would hazard a guess that most of us would suggest preventing a terrorist attack happening at all is the most crucial aspect of such a strategy. We should be ready, of course, to resist them; and we should track down those who perpetrate them. We should also protect people with straightforward security measures and with good intelligence. But, if we can stop them happening, that would be best.
So it was somewhat odd that when Gordon Brown outlined this updated approach in a newspaper article yesterday, the "prevent" bit seemed less prominent than one imagined it might be. There was talk about "murderous agents of hate" and of "core al-Qaeda" – spook-speak for the central command that is based in the lawless borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Read more ...
The Government will tomorrow launch a new counter-terrorism strategy, called Contest 2. For those who missed Contest 1, a brief explanation is in order. It has four strands: to protect, to pursue, to prepare and to prevent.
Which of these would you consider the most important? I would hazard a guess that most of us would suggest preventing a terrorist attack happening at all is the most crucial aspect of such a strategy. We should be ready, of course, to resist them; and we should track down those who perpetrate them. We should also protect people with straightforward security measures and with good intelligence. But, if we can stop them happening, that would be best.
So it was somewhat odd that when Gordon Brown outlined this updated approach in a newspaper article yesterday, the "prevent" bit seemed less prominent than one imagined it might be. There was talk about "murderous agents of hate" and of "core al-Qaeda" – spook-speak for the central command that is based in the lawless borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Read more ...
Source: Telegraph
H/T: FSM