'War on Terror' - Bit Like World War II, Innit?

My head nearly couldn't take the latest rant from Melanie Phillips. There's nothing I can add to this incredibly stupid remark, so I will just let the words sit here and you can judge them for yourselves.

More frustratingly, he failed to give a proper answer to Humphrys’s repeated assertion that Britain never had any terrorist attacks until the war in Iraq and that it was much less safe now as a result. There are two very clear and obvious points to make in answer to this. The first is that a number of al Qaeda terrorists who have now been jailed for their plots against Britain — such as Dhiren Barot who planned synchronised atrocities including blowing up the Tube under the Thames —started plotting these attacks on Britain or were recruited into the jihad well before 9/11, let alone the war in Iraq. And the second point is that it is as stupid to say we are ‘less safe now’ as it would have been to say in the Blitz that Britain was less safe then than it was in 1939. We are in the middle of a war. The alternative to suffering the attacks of a war is pre-emptive surrender. Which is the line that Humphrys has been pushing since before Saddam fell. It’s a shame the Prime Minister did not say so.