John le Carré on War on terror

“There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.”

“There are some Arabs who think that the Germans did the right thing by the Jews. This makes it easy to recruit Arab terrorist.”

“Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be.”

“On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.”

“We were not faced (in the cold war) in a conflict with people who are prepared to die for their cause. We weren't in conflict with people whose idea is to kill as many as they could.”

“You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.”

“To operate an intelligence network against the Islamist terror is terribly difficult because they don't have a central command and control center such as we would understand. Therefore you cannot penetrate at the top and find out what will happen on the ground.”