What, at a guess, most people are thinking at the moment, is how awful it must be to be going about your daily business only to get blown out of an airport or a tube station by an ISIS explosion; or receiving a phone call to be given news that a loved one is missing, probably dead, because of the actions of extremist maniacs.

Take a second or two to digest how that must feel.

Someone, an MP, or security type bloke, said the following sentence on the radio yesterday.

“We must not fear these maniacs who are prepared to blow themselves up in order to kill and maim innocent people”. 

Nice Churchillian sentiment there mate; however, if I was unarmed and approached by a bloke who has no fear of blowing himself up in order to kill me, I would undoubtedly shit my sphincter inside out and so would most other people, so you can cut that nonsense out for starters.

The rhetoric is always the same when a western city is hit by terror. Show no fear, put up the affected nation’s flag on your Facebook page, watch in morbid fascination as EU leaders relish in statesmanlike behaviour, then forget about it until the next bomb that won’t have an impact on the armoured vehicles of politicians, but will tear the limbs off innocent commuters and wreck the lives of their relatives.

With every attack, ISIS get what they want and that is more people turning on innocent Muslims, making them more isolated and marginalised in destitute inner city areas across Europe. This in turn, makes them more likely to become vulnerable “to the cause”.

We have to try to eradicate our pre-conceived prejudices that are in entrenched in our DNA and start to look beyond what we are fed in the media, otherwise we are in danger of feeding that prejudice and expanding the very ideology that wants to kill us or anyone else who doesn’t conform to their fanatical ideology, whether they are Christians, Muslims, Jews or Catholics.

Here are some interesting statistics and I know there are lies, statistics and damn lies, but this is well worth a look.

80% of terror attacks across the globe occur in just five countries.

Those five countries are Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan and Nigeria.

78% or 25,000 of the deaths from terror attacks in these countries were caused by ISIS or Boko Haram.

So, to me, two things immediately stand out from those figures. Firstly, these are predominantly Muslim countries, so the overwhelming majority of people killed by ISIS will have been Muslims. Secondly and perhaps more tellingly, the two countries where terrorism is at its worst, were invaded and bombed by George Bush and Tony Blair as they attempted and failed to install Western democracy.

When you consider that global attacks across the globe have increased by a multiple of ten since the ‘War on Terror’ commenced in 2001, you could be easily forgiven for wishing that Tony Blair and George Bush Junior had never met.

However, they have never been held to account for their actions and personally speaking, and it is just an opinion, every time innocent people are blown up, I see blood on their hands courtesy of their irrational Middle-Eastern policies. I guess it is far too late to turn back time now, however, surely there needs to be a major overhaul of Western foreign policy in this region?

Bush and Blair Ideology: Terrorism has increased by a multiple of 10 since the ‘War on Terror’.

Presumably, the initial good intention of the west was to assist in stabilising these regions by teaching them the virtues of democracy and installing western style Governments that would allow us access to the riches that they are blessed with. I can buy that naivety and I can certainly understand the economic theory behind it; we need oil after all.

However, in multi-tribal states this was so misguided it beggars belief, as somewhere down the line you are going to upset one or more tribal groups whilst you attempt to support another. One man’s democrat is another man’s imperialist and then, as we all know, one man’s freedom fighter becomes another man’s terrorist and all hell lets loose.

The chaos we are engulfed in is about religion, of course it is, but it is also about tribal beliefs and territories that are so complex I would not dare to even attempt to unpick them and nor, it would seem, would the majority of geopolitical academics from any given corner of the globe.

If, for an example, you were to look at ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, understanding the arguments for terrorism and freedom is relatively simple, well, at least in comparison to the Middle East.

There is a region that is still under British rule, the Catholic Republicans want freedom and a United Ireland whilst the Protestants want to stay loyal to the crown, with the issues (at the time of writing at least) kept relatively under control by the way of power sharing.

There are two sides to the Irish argument and it has taken 90 years to get to a relatively peaceful point; so how on earth did the West think they could march into a region with hundreds of different tribes, some that are modern and western thinking, others that practice 7th century ideology, and literally hundreds in between, I just don’t know?

Every time an ISIS bomb goes off, more Western Muslims (many who have escaped repression by ISIS) get targeted and marginalised by ignorance and in turn they can become isolated, disenfranchised and rich potential for radicalisation. It’s an easy trap for us Westerners to fall into and currently, we are doing it with aplomb, allowing our prejudices to feed those who terrorise us with new members.

I bumped into a woman I regularly see dog walking when I was at Danebury this morning and one of the first things she said to me was;

“Don’t repeat this…but I don’t know why we don’t just get UKIP in to sort this out?”

“What would they do?”

“Deport them.”

“Who?”

“The Muslims.”

Like a tabloid reporter, I made my excuses and left her to it. I was filled with both despair and alarm at what I had heard from the mouth of a woman whom I assumed was a decent person. She probably is a decent person but what on earth has she been reading?

A security expert said yesterday that Britain avoided no fewer than seven attacks last year by a combination of luck and expertise, so, if nothing constructive happens with regards to repairing the damage inflicted by Middle-Eastern foreign policy, we probably have a terror attack in the post any day or month now.

Do you know what my fear is?

It is that privately, Western governments just see terror as the price we have to pay if we are to continue to extract riches from the Middle East as we continue to try to impose Western democracy in the region. They can walk arm in arm through Paris, they can offer their statesmanlike speeches, they claim they want to protect us as much they humanly can, but I do worry that they don’t really care as much as us mere mortals do.

The Bush and Blair ‘War on Terror’ was propaganda nonsense and if they attempt to claim it wasn’t, well, let’s just say it has been well and truly trounced, from Ankara to Lagos, to Baghdad to Brussels, it has taken one hell of a beating.

So, when I see a Muslim in the street, I am ashamed to admit that my preconceived prejudices do occasionally emerge from my sub-conscience. However, I have learnt that if I fall into the trap ISIS have set for us in the West with regards to terrorists, I might as well request the deportation of my friend Paul.

Paul is half-Norwegian you see and that’s where Anders Brevik comes from.