live on the fat for a time and then spend more and more on security at home and accept more and more attacks and loss of life at home.

The premise of more attacks at home ("fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here") is the fundamental flaw of all these reasonings, like it is of the "War on Terra". There will not be "more and more attacks at home".

I'll repeat again my position on this:

• we are supporting corrupt authoritarian regimes in the region;
  
• the population is unhappy with the regime and associates it, dictature and corruption with the West which supports it;
  
• coincidentally, religious organsations provide local social support, collective solace and a tolerated outlet for popular expression. Political Islam becomes a legitimate political force, the only voice of opposition, and becomes associated with democracy and progress against the corrupt regime - and the West.

Let's stop propping up corrupt regimes in these countries and the Islamic threat will disappear in a generation.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes