“You cannot win this war on the battlefield, because there is none,” said Gerges. “You’re facing an unconventional war. The more you rely on military might, the more you lose the war of ideas against al-Qaida and the militants.

“In Iraq, we fell into their trap, we gave them more ideological ammunition.

“So many Muslims all over the world are now convinced, and this feeling is so entrenched, that the war in Iraq is not against al-Qaida, but against Islam.”

Gerges detects a growing appreciation of this phenomenon “even at the heart of the American administration,” expressing his belief that a “new understanding” exists which casts the outgoing George W. Bush’s war against al-Qaida as “counter-productive”.

The echoes of Sun Tzu’s writings, produced at least 2,500 years ago, are everywhere, viz:

“If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

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