Mail on Sunday Comment: We must keep a cool head to fight fanatics

Published: 20:13 EDT, 27 June 2015 | Updated: 20:13 EDT, 27 June 2015

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A woman grieves at the scene where innocent holidaymakers were killed on a Tunisian beach

Rightly, we respond with grief and rage to the callous and savage murders of so many innocent people in Tunisia, a heartbreakingly large number of them our fellow countrymen and countrywomen.

Murder is a filthy crime, spreading misery into many homes for decades to come, and we would be inhuman if we did not react to it with our strongest feelings. To let it pass without deep mourning would be inhuman.

But we must also respond with deep thought. Our profound desire for justice is more likely to be satisfied by cool reckoning than by precipitate action. Our hope that we can be spared such scenes in the future is also more likely to be fulfilled by skilled intelligence and quiet, unspectacular hard work than by fiery gestures, troop deployments or airstrikes.

Politicians are inclined to resort to rhetoric at such times, and this is a proper part of their duty of leadership. We need a clear rallying voice, to comfort the bereaved and to strengthen the rest of us against a menace which we may now have to confront for many years to come. David Cameron spoke for the nation yesterday, well and calmly. But we also need a strategy.

Terrorists choose to attack the defenceless, a form of warfare especially open to the immoral and the evil. People in the grip of fanatical dogmas care nothing for the Geneva Convention or for any rules of civilised behaviour.

Despite the boastful bombast of ‘Islamic State’ and before them of Al Qaeda, many of these outrages are the work of lone killers or small gangs, and are not directed from some central command.

As a result, it is all too easy for them to kill us, and very hard for us to protect ourselves. However hard we prepare, however elaborate our security measures, such attacks cannot always be forestalled or prevented.

There simply cannot be an absolutely reliable solution to this problem. There will be unpredictable danger, and we should beware of any voices that suggest we can ever be entirely safe.

We should also be cautious of attempts to use such events as a pretext for more intense surveillance of our lives or renewed restrictions on civil liberties, such as those attempted by the Blair and Brown governments.

This is the man ISIS has claimed carried out the attack in Sousse - named by them as Abu Yahya Al Qayrawani

Instead, we need a judicious mixture of policies: the encouragement of a British Islam, loyal to this country and vigilant against fanatics in its ranks; cautious engagement with the Arab and Muslim world, accepting the need to deal with unattractive regimes rather than optimistic attempts to introduce Western democracy by revolution or war; realistic warnings to travellers abroad about the risks they may face; uncompromising border controls, able both to detect dangerous arrivals and prevent them from entering our territory.

All of these need to be backed by continuing efforts to build intelligence and security services which know and understand those parts of the world from which the threat comes. The scalpel is more effective against such foes than the blunt instruments favoured by New Labour.

None of these things will be easy. Some of them will be costly, and divert scarce resources away from treasured or popular purposes. But, as we survey the grief and carnage of Sousse, and as the survivors hurry home from holidays that turned in a moment to horror, can anyone seriously say that it will not be worth it?