The argument over the war in Iraq still rages and, as ever, tends to produce more heat than light. The responses to a report published yesterday by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a UK think-tank, are illustrative. This slim paper makes a number of unexceptionable and somewhat after-the-event observations about Iraq. But opponents in this debate resort to the familiar epithets - "warmonger" against "appeaser" - artfully avoiding the debate we should have had and should be having.

The false debate is whether Britain is (or was) more likely to be attacked because of involvement in Iraq alongside the US. The primary question of which countries were targets was settled a decade ago when Osama bin Laden published the manifesto of the International Front to combat Jews and Crusaders. Under this definition, while Britain and France, say, may have taken opposing sides on Iraq, they are equally complicit in the post-Ottoman carve-up of Arab and Muslim lands and, for varying reasons at different times, equally subject to jihad.