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All across the media, so many asking the exact same question: how to defeat the militant scourge.

Who dares recall that in living memory, Western intelligence agencies supported many of these militant groups, providing them with arms, training and finance.

All of this is well documented in authorative sources for those who care to check. We witnessed this in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and beyond.

True, in great debates on Radio 4’s Today programme, these groups would be described as “moderate rebels” but only for as long as they proved useful.

Soon enough they would transmogrify into an evil affliction to defeated by coalitions of the world’s most powerful armies, relying on the attention deficit disorder of a compliant press and disinterested public.

So of course we have come full circle. Back where we started, asking ourselves how we can defeat militants once thought useful in undermining a different enemy.

So convincing is the narrative that military strategists seem to believe their own lies, pretending that all of this has come as a great surprise. But the only real surprise is that so many get taken in by this.