This has not prevented the Obama administration from effectively declaring that the war is over – at least, for the US. Whatever mopping up there is to be done of the anarchic franchise that al-Qaeda left behind, it will be for the old colonial nations to settle. France – with the help of Britain – was left to deal with Libya, trailed at a safe distance by the US, which offered only minimal assistance. Again, in Mali, France – with some help from the UK – is intervening at considerable cost financially and politically, to protect a sitting government from a violent Islamist uprising. And again, the Obama White House is making it clear that there will be no involvement of US forces. To the charge that this ought to be America’s moral business too, that it is the only global superpower and that it alone possesses the military force to defeat international terror, there is only one stony-faced reply: we killed Osama. We settled the score. We are no longer the world’s bodyguard.