We may not think ourselves at war with ISIS but they are pretty sure they are at war with us.

John McTernan’s column in today’s Telegraph about Kurdistan – and our, that is the West’s, debt of honour to the Kurds – is a piece of which, I think, the late Christopher Hitchens would have been proud. The Kurds had no greater western defender than Christopher and he would, I believe, have been appalled by the pusillanimity on display in Whitehall and the White House alike in recent days.

Granted, ‘because Christopher Hitchens would have supported it’ is an insufficient justification for military action. Then again, the witless self-abasement of the so-called Stop the War coalition is no reason to oppose it either. (By Stop the War, of course, they mean let someone vile win the war.)

Nevertheless, some lessons can be absorbed too thoroughly. Why bother? It’s not our fight. Let them sort it out themselves. We’ve been down this road before and look where it led. And, besides, this is all our fault anyway.