Here’s where the battle shifts to culture. Plan “C” depends for its success on the ability of al-Qaeda to create a permanent ghetto; to erect walls, not of brick, but fear around it, not just to keep the infidel out but the Muslim in. It’s a classic terrorist tactic. But it won’t work unless Western society maintains its unquestioning “multiculturalism”. In any self-confident society with its eyes wide open, Plan C would be laughed to scorn.

There will be some who prefer to in see resentful, seething and rancid extremism a kind of colorful faith tradition; one to be preferred over the dull, hard working immigrant who simply tries to blend in; and who is consequently dismissed as pedestrian and inauthentic by those jades who prefer edginess at all costs, even if the edge is a razor at their throats — until it is drawn across their windpipes.

The regular military struggle is over. Al Qaeda has admitted defeat. Even in Iraq. What they have not conceded is their ability to shelter under the wings of political correctness. In fact it is their only hope. Let’s disappoint them.