Perhaps the answer in our confrontation with militant Islam, and the only option that has remained uncanvassed is, as strange as it may seem, to leave the Islamists to their own devices, give them what they want, even to the extent of openly encouraging them to create their utopian Islamic caliphate — which would have eventuated in Afghanistan had the West not intervened to stymie their ambitions in 2001— and let the ensuing chaos, brutality, and misogyny, previously witnessed under the pious Taliban, become a salutary aversive lesson to those in the ummah who crave, and won’t be content till they achieve, their Islamic Xanadu. The 40% of disgruntled young Muslims in Britain, who declare a wish to live under a system of sharia law, might also be encouraged to relocate to a newly established emirate.

The Saudi rulers would be held to ransom by an obligation to pour even more billions than they currently do, into the radical’s coffers, just to keep them away, somewhere, anywhere, as far from the Arabian Peninsula as possible. A nascent Muslim state, in Afghanistan, with little other than heroin to trade—and even that could be negated herbicidally—being an unlikely magnet for Muslim entrepreneurial investment, would, from the outset, become a permanent drain on the oil Sheikhs finances and a bottomless pit of demand for the “charitable” donations of a sympathetic and supportive Muslim Diaspora.

If they attempted, as is highly likely, to use the country as a base for terrorism against the West, or to foment trouble elsewhere, the serious radicals would at least all be concentrated in one place— the flypaper strategy—and could be dealt with using "no boots on the ground", punitive air strikes from a very great height indeed.

When all’s said and done, Hassan Nasrallah’s belief that it’s "Better that all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them on a world wide basis" can cut both ways.

Should the militancy, in an attempt to expand territorially, happen to bleed over into neighbouring Pakistan or Iran, those nations would be entirely free, and unfettered by Western influence, to deal with the insurgents as best they could, and however they saw fit. Iran, in particular, would find a neighbouring Sunni salafist emirate, complete with Caliphal pretensions, intolerable, and no doubt the feeling would be reciprocated, due to the wahhabi’s eternal and acerbic contempt for the Shias as nothing but another variety of infidel.

China would certainly care little for applying the Western “hearts and minds” approach to its restive Uighur Muslim minority, should they became inspired and emboldened by the newly founded emirate bordering Xinjiang; even the Russians might find something more pressing and productive into which they could channel their energies rather than reviving their cold war posturing in eastern Europe. A completely new regional chess game would come into play, relocating the theatre of conflict away from the Middle-East proper, to an area requiring no Western involvement, as the locals would, for a change, be doing all their own heavy-lifting. The current bellicosity of the Iranians, preoccupied as they are with events to their west, would be diluted, due to the demands of a second front on their eastern borders. The Muslim mindset, with its compulsive need for incessant brawling, determines that in the absence of an infidel common-enemy, they must perforce turn on one another. It’s high time we demonstrated a little Machiavellian astuteness by exploiting the enemy’s cultural and religious proclivities and weaknesses, just as they have so very adroitly turned ours to their advantage.

The neighbouring countries, with so much at stake, may well find that Afghanistan’s borders are capable of becoming less porous than they have allowed them to be in the past. The lawless tribal badlands of North-West Pakistan would most likely throw in their lot with the emirate, but this would be Pakistan’s problem, not ours. The only reason Pakistan has any semblance of alignment with the West is entirely due to American largesse, and also, according to Pervez Musharraf, because they were given “an offer they couldn’t refuse”, from Richard Armitage.

Pakistan’s long standing face-off with India over Kashmir would suddenly become the least of its worries, and for once, all the region’s attention would be focused on the new troublesome kid on the block.

The notoriously fractious Afghan tribal warlords, famous for their intractable, internecine blood feuds, in which they frequently, opportunistically, and perfidiously switch sides, would find themselves at liberty to sort out their long-standing grievances among themselves, likewise with any differences of opinion they’re bound to encounter with the newly installed Emir of Afghanistan.

When one is dealing with a culture which demonstrates many of the qualities found in petulant adolescents, it’s better for all concerned— as is the case with any teenager going through that “difficult stage”— if they are kept occupied; and permanently occupied, the countries of the region would most certainly become.

Western nations have always been gullible dupes in responding to the pleas of so called “pro-Western factions” within foreign nations, to “come and sort our problems out”; many thousands of deaths later, and after much contempt and loathing for the “infidel invaders”, the status quo which has prevailed for centuries invariably remains intact. However, if we steadfastly refuse to become embroiled in the power-play, these wars of attrition, in a country like Afghanistan, could carry on interminably with only a minimal impact on the West. The ensuing barbarity should, hopefully, disabuse the broader ummah of their fantasy caliphate with its sharia rule, and a newfound appreciation for modernity and democracy might consequently spring forth and flourish in other Muslim countries.

By fostering a situation in which both sides are given the opportunity to do what they do best—i.e. Muslims get to establish an embryonic form of their long-desired caliphal state, and the opportunity to demonstrate how pure seventh century Islam really functions in a modern world.

The advantage to the West is that it would be finally able to exercise its ace-card, military superiority, without impediment or restraint. To date, the terror sponsoring nations have gone to great lengths to create and maintain a “plausible deniability” for their complicity in terrorist attacks. The charade of deniability would be impossible if a nation existed which was founded on, and committed to, worldwide jihad.

So, if Islamists should ever visit another September 11 on the West we would be in a position to make a tenfold repayment in kind, with "supreme arbitration”, against an identifiable and locatable target.

A few well placed MOABs in the unpopulated Afghani wastelands might prove to be impressive promissory notes for al Qaeda to ponder at their leisure.

Fighting Islamic insurgents on the ground, as is currently the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, merely permits the enemy to determine the where, when, and how of battle, in circumstances and terrain of their own choosing and to their own benefit. The fathers of military strategy, Von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, must surely be rolling in their graves.

Putting brave young men on the ground with hand-held weapons simply gives the enemy a sporting chance, and is no way to fight a twenty-first century asymmetrical war against a religiously fatalistic, determined, and ruthless enemy.

Our attempts to imbue the Muslim world with a desire for, and appreciation of, democracy is proving to be as futile a pursuit as trying to herd cats or nail Jell-O to the ceiling. Fourteen centuries of Islamic history ought to have taught us that Muslim forces have only ever capitulated after a “king-hit” rout, a thorough, and unambiguously conclusive, drubbing. Nibbling at the edges and treating Islamic terrorism as a law-enforcement matter is interpreted by the enemy as displaying a profound lack of resolve and commitment, and is therefore doomed to failure.

I see the foregoing scenario as the only alternative to the West becoming drawn, albeit as unwilling participants, into an endless war of epic proportions with Islam, where either a humiliating backdown—or a descent into a no-holds-barred "Magruder's Law" gutter fight— will emerge as the only two possible, though unpalatable, options.