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The truth is that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq serve as bitter object-lessons in how not to conduct an anti-terrorist campaign. Washington must recognise that combating terrorists is essentially a job for special forces like the SAS, for the police or gendarmerie (or troops trained in a gendarmerie role) and, above all, for good intelligence (meaning, at best, spies inside al-Qa’eda cells) — and not a job for heavy-weight hi-tech firepower.

Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of ‘freedom and democracy’, we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of the peoples and culture we are dealing with — an understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington, especially in the Pentagon.

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