The recently declassified findings of a US National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism have caused a furore by stating the obvious: the Iraq war has radicalised Muslims and rallied many of them to the terrorist cause. The findings are controversial only because George W. Bush refuses to entertain any second thoughts in the war against what he now calls Islamo-fascism. Not long ago Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said that raising questions about this “war” was tantamount to appeasing “a new type of fascism”. Newt Gingrich, former House speaker, says we are in a third world war.

This mindset is dangerous. The concept of an all-fronts war against Islamist extremism – and its conflation with the separate problem of Ba’athist despotism – was part of the intellectual trap that carried us into Iraq. That adventure has not gone well, yet the same illogic is now applied to Iran. There is no doubt that Iran’s thuggish regime poses a serious obstacle to Middle East peacemaking and, if it develops nuclear weapons, a potentially existential threat to Israel. The tools to contain that threat must include the deterrent power of US military force. But dismissing diplomacy with Iran or Syria as “appeasement” is not serious. And the idea that Israel’s recent battles in Lebanon were to be encouraged as part of a proxy war between Washington and Tehran shows ignorance – or indifference – to the narrative impact of the televised bombing of Muslim civilians.