I suppose I would say that even if there is considerable money and privilege involved in some of these networks, they are also fed in some places by feelings of marginalization and despair–both al-Shabab and Boko Haram, for example. But there is something bigger here. I really, really do not think it is Islam. I think instead that there’s a kind of sensation of alienation that is spreading worldwide even in ostensibly liberal or wealthy societies, a sense that nothing we do matters, that the powers that rule the world are no longer responsive to their own people or to anything principled. That feeling of despair is expressed very differently in different places and has different consequences within different local and regional histories. If I argue that Somalia etc. need a different political dispensation as an outcome of a “war” against terrorism, I do not mean in the simple sense of a chicken in every pot or freedom from want. What they need are communities that feel that they matter, elites who are part of the wider society, a government which is responsive to its people and has a genuine vision of a better future. They need it, we need it.

The “war” in some sense may need to be the next campaign in what William McNeill referred to as the endless struggle against “macroparasites”. I’m edging uncomfortably close to Negri and Hardt’s Empire here, a book that I really do not agree with, but their diagnosis of the global moment has some things to recommend it.