It's a problem. It seems to me that a self-declared theocracy (and, worse, one that has the fundamental tenets of Islam badly wrong) is a bigger danger to the world than the entrenchment of a Russian client state in the Middle East, so on balance I'd favour working with Putin to remove Daesh, even if that also removes other opposition to Assad.

To my mind the problem is how to achieve that goal. Raining bombs did not work in Vietnam. Boots on the ground and the creation of an even more failed state area has gone badly wrong in Afghanistan Iraq and Libya.

So history teaches that a military "solution" will fail.

Is the best bet to keep pumping fleshly propaganda for a secular (and better still atheistic) political model in the best forms to reach the smartphones that now seem universal?