london is not a battlefield

England’s Director of Public Prosecutions made some interesting remarks about the ‘war on terror’, reported in the Guardian here. Specifically, he observed that there is no ‘war’ in any meaningful sense, and described terrorism in criminal, rather than military, terms:

London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, ‘soldiers’. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a ‘war on terror’, just as there can be no such thing as a ‘war on drugs’.

The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement.

His other remarks are also refreshingly straightforward (particularly coming out of the mouth of a public figure in the UK), including strong statements that terrorism should be fought as a criminal enterprise, that the response must remain subject to the rule of law, and that there must be a culture of ‘legislative restraint’ amongst lawmakers when dealing with the issue.

On a similar theme the Law Council of Australia warns of the opposite culture developing in Australia in its submission to a Parliamentary inquiry into new laws which would allow secret searches of homes, warrantless searches of electronic devices (such as phones), and police witnesses testifying under false names in criminal proceedings.  The Law Council’s submission to the inquiry is here.