Since the deaths of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar on Saturday night, every leading politician in Northern Ireland has pledged allegiance to the peace process. Protestants and Catholics have gathered in “spontaneous prayerful expressions of unity”. The indignant have inundated web forums to insist that no one will rekindle old hatreds in their name.

These expressions of hope and anger are important, and their unanimity would have been inconceivable ten years ago. But words alone are not enough to guarantee the Province's security or the survival of the peace process. If they were, it is hard to imagine Saturday's murders happening in the first place.

The murders happened less than a week after the official terrorist threat level was raised from “substantial” to “severe”. Despite that threat, soldiers emerged unarmed from their barracks as part of a routine that appears not to have changed from week to week. They were gunned down by men who had time to walk up to their victims and fire extra shots before escaping, unpursued. Members of the Northern Ireland Security Guard Service (NISGS), who were guarding the barracks, may eventually have responded “with courage and professionalism”, as claimed. Even so, when Brigadier George Norton, the Northern Ireland garrison commander, asserted yesterday that “our response level was entirely appropriate on the day”, he was clearly wrong.

The principle of delegating army base security to non-military personnel is sound, in Northern Ireland as on the mainland. It frees up soldiers to train for the overseas missions that have been by far their most important assignments for the past eight years. Furthermore, it should (still) be celebrated that until last weekend NISGS personnel had not faced live fire in more than a decade. But that is no excuse for complacency.

Brigadier Norton acknowledged that “there may be other ways we can be going about doing these things”. His challenge is to find them, quickly and discreetly. He might consider insisting that NISGS guards are present with their weapons ready whenever off-duty troops pass in or out of barracks on foot. He should also recommend varying daily routines to deprive terrorists of predictable targets. Neither tactic would amount to a provocative return to those of the Troubles. Both would fall squarely into the category of common sense.

The Real IRA has struggled to find soft targets even under existing security arrangements. It boasts perhaps 100 members and has been foiled more often than it has succeeded thanks to sophisticated surveillance and human informers. That these strategies failed on Saturday does not make them fundamentally wrong.

Every main party agrees there is neither the pretext nor the prospect of flooding Northern Ireland's streets with troops. Even so, Gerry Adams has repeatedly invoked that spectre to deter disenchanted republicans from drifting into the arms of dissidents. He is entitled to do so, but he was wrong yesterday to criticise Sir Hugh Orde a second time for enlisting extra surveillance experts from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Their expertise is vital. Mr Adams may be “the best judge” of how to address radical republicans, as he claims, but the people of Northern Ireland as a whole need to feel safe. Sir Hugh has been praised widely for his efforts to address that need, and should delay his planned departure from the Province.

Gordon Brown has accurately attributed Saturday's attack to the success of the political process, not its failure. That process has gone far towards depriving Northern Ireland's terrorists of their grievances. Intelligent new security measures will be needed to help to finish the job.