Root Causes Remain Unexamined

Five years too late, Howard finally acknowledges there are "root causes" of Islamic terrorism:

Yesterday the Prime Minister, John Howard, not only used the phrase but embraced it.

"We have to fight [terrorism] on two fronts," he told Sky News. "We have to protect ourselves, we also have to attack a number of the root causes of it."

Hugh White:

Hugh White, head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, said the $8 billion spent on bolstering intelligence, policing and security at critical sites was beneficial, but only to a point. "We are better prepared to catch a person who is a terrorist but are we better prepared to stop someone becoming a terrorist?

"The starting point for a person who will end up as a terrorist is a sense that the West is systematically hostile to the Islamic religions and way of life … In five years we have done nothing at all to reduce that sense."

In fact, we have spent five years poking Muslims with sticks.