But it's much worse than that. The aim of jihadis is to shock Muslims in order to—as they see it—wake them up and get them to join their struggle. Bin Laden was explicit about it. One tactic to do that is to provoke an over-reaction from the West—and the West has been willing to oblige. Invading and occupying Iraq is the most obvious example, which led directly to the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq in 2007. But terrorist attacks also provoke increased government surveillance on all of us, the targeting of Muslim communities and social division. The jihadis' great allies are the politicians and journalists who shut down any attempt to understand this. The airwaves are full today of facile people saying that what happened in Paris is an attack on Western freedom and culture, so there's no point in thinking any more deeply about it. But on Thursday ISIS killed 43 people in Beirut with two suicide bombs—because they hate Arab culture?

I expect we'll carry on acting out the cycle that has worked so successfully for the jihadis since 2001. But personally, out of a sense of self-interest, I'd prefer it if we tried something different. Like: tackling the problem of Saudi Arabia, where the jihadi ideology comes from, and which prefers ISIS and the other jihadi groups to succeed if it means Shia Muslims can't live. Like: withdrawing support from Turkey while its intelligence agencies help the Nusra Front and turn a blind eye to ISIS, all because it hates the Kurds more than the jihadis and bombs them with NATO's blessing. Like: trying to refrain from destroying countries like Iraq and Libya, both now overrun by jihadis. Like: actually attempting to end the war in Syria, which is complicated and difficult, but Britain could help by at least not blocking negotiations as it did in the Geneva I and II peace conferences in 2012 and 2014, where British, French and American policy was to ensure the war continued by insisting that Assad stand down as a precondition to talks (why would he, when he hadn't lost the war?) and excluding Iran. Like: helping refugees who are fleeing from horror, mostly because we should obviously help people in need but also because it's not wise to have millions of people languishing in squalid camps building up resentment. The British, French and American governments thought for a few years that it was in their strategic interests for the Syrian war to go on, weakening Syria's ally Iran and knocking out an enemy of Israel. But it wasn't in the interests of us, the people, and certainly not of the thousands of Syrians who have died as a result.