The subject of America's intervention (military, cultural and otherwise) is one of those imponderables. The whole subject was explored 50 years ago in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American -and the kind of apparent naivety that believes you can intervene for the better in everybody's lives.

Of course in England, we have plenty of reason to be grateful for American intervention in our affairs. But the countries of Europe, whom America helped in 1941 were, by and large, mature democracies.

There are plenty of fundamentalist Muslims around in England, and for the most part, they seem pretty decent people. However they are a bit like fundamentalist Christians, when you talk to them. You know what I mean, the conversation veers off at a crazy angle when you get on to certain subjects.

I am not sure democracy is really relevant to people like this. Someone once said, you can go through life believing that world is made of green cheese, but it is probably inadvisable. Face it, they ain't listening to our advice.