The events in the Middle East and Africa that were so aptly misnamed as the ‘Arab Spring’ , can now easily be seen as the stage managed events they mostly were.

Those with political ambitions at the time, were funded and supplied, to varying extents by different sources, including the U.S. under Mr Obama.

So what looked to all the world like genuine popular uprisings, like the Tunisian revolt, (which to date has not succumbed to Islamists), quickly became overtaken by Islamist designs.

The Libyan revolt was popular as well, but has degenerated into clan divisions and sectarian conflict.

All across the region, with notable exceptions, the populist revolution ticket became the key to unseating incumbent administrations, and replacing them with Muslim Brotherhood approved nominees or their equivalents.

Methods and results have not been completely uniform, but the pattern of Brotherhood backed, supplied and funded Islamic counter-revolution overtaking cross-border and region-wide popular revolt, is clear to see.

Such a strategy makes all the more sense* when viewed through the (necessarily distorted) lens of the Kilahffha (Caliphate restoration movement).

They believe that if the brotherhood can enable a region-wide bunch of pro-fundamentalists to gain power, through ‘elections’ or by brute force, then their fantasy about the restoration of the empire of the old Caliphate may look more realistic.

This has certainly been a real headache for the rest of the world, even if only ever manifested as the localised fantasies of sadistic and outwardly puritanical maniacs.

Maniacs who immiserate every society they touch, and whose signature is the wholesale destruction of all non-Islamic culture and art, music, philosophy, the destruction of all literature except their approved version of the Qur’an.

We cannot just abandon civilised society to these barbarians, that is completely unconscionable.