The act was obscene. President Hollande’s description – “monstrous” – was adequate so far as it went, but created the old problem. What happens when three or four hundred innocents are killed by a murderer? Or five hundred? Does that become “really monstrous” or “very monstrous indeed”? But the political reaction to this crime against humanity in Nice was mundane to the point of lunacy. Hollande – or “General Hollande” as the French press dubbed him when he sent his legionnaires to fight against Islamists in Mali – announced that France would “reinforce our action in Syria and Iraq.”

Sure, I get the point. If Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel of Tunisia had anything to do with Isis or Nusrah (and when he spoke, Hollande would not have known if this was true), then firing more French missiles into the burned sands of Mesopotamia or the desert around Raqqa in the hope of striking Isis would have no effect other than to reinforce the old “feel good” factor of biffing “world terror” for the sake of it.

Tunisia, of course, is well over a thousand miles from Syria, let alone Iraq, but one bunch of murderous Arabs is much like another to our foreign ministries and if Bouhlel turns out to have “Isis roots” – no matter how self-declared – then the bigger the bombs the better.

In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts near bouquets of flowers near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A woman arrives with a toy and a bouquet of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A woman reacts as she places flowers in front of the memorial set on the 'Promenade des Anglais' where the truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice EPA In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack People gather to view the floral tributes near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts near bouquets of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday, in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Floral tributes are laid out near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A child's toy is placed among the floral tributes laid out near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Investigators continue at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Crime scene investigators work on the 'Promenade des Anglais' after the truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice EPA In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A forensic expert examines dead bodies covered with a blue sheet on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera city of Nice Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A forensic expert evacuates a dead body on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera city of Nice, after a gunman smashed a truck into a crowd of revellers celebrating Bastille Day Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts as he sits near a French flag along the beachfront the day after a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Discarded items are left on the beach, not far from the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Bullet holes in the windscreen of the lorry that was driven into the crowd at high speed Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man walks through debris on the street in Nice, France, the morning after a lorry ran into a crowd, killing at least 84 and injuring 50 Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Rescue workers help an injured woman to get in a ambulance AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Authorities investigate a truck after it plowed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice, France AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Celebrations of Bastille Day were targeted by the lorry driver AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack People cross the street with their hands on thier heads as a French soldier secures the area after at least 84 people were killed along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A paramedic attends one of the dozens of people injured in the Nice Bastille Day attack In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Soldiers march on street where the lorry crashed into the crowd REUTERS In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man sits next to a body seen on the ground after at least 84 people were killed in Nice, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Bodies are seen on the ground after at least 84 people were killed in Nice, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Children were among the 84 killed in the atrocity, with around 50 more hospitalised Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (2nd L) speaks to the media in Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man walks with his hands up as police officers carry out checks on people in the centre of French Riviera town of Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack With injured people laying in the street police and onlookers react near to a truck in Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police officers, firefighters and rescue workers are seen at the site of the attack AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police officers speak with a soldier after a truck that ploughed into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police shine a light into the cab as they approach the driver's cab of a truck, in Nice AP

Everyone who dares to point this out – and European leaders are always threatening Isis, just as Isis is always threatening the West – is immediately cast out of society as a “friend of terrorists”. There is, in fact, a whole vocabulary of abuse for anyone who says that there are reasons for these acts of mass murder which we need to know, however crazed they are. At present, the Isis/Western hate mail to each other is almost identical with King Lear: “I will do such things…what they are, yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth…”

Of course, I fear we are going in the coming hours to be inundated with painful repetitions of atrocities past: relatives who had "no idea" their son/brother/nephew/uncle might be a violent killer, neighbours who will attest that the attacker was always a quiet man (who probably “kept himself to himself”, as they say), Muslims who will again insist on the peacefulness of their religion. In addition to this, we will have politicians who will promise to stamp out “terror” and cops who will praise their brothers-in-arms for their courage (even when the Nice attack was not exactly a triumph for the French security forces).

Nice Attack: Witnesses speak

And we will forget France’s fraught colonial history in Algeria and Tunisia, the 125th anniversary of its Tunisian “protectorate” this year – and the 70th anniversary of Tunisia’s independence – and the Islamist presence that has grown frighteningly within the body politic of Tunisia since the 2011 revolution. It is no good holding up this painful history as some sort of excuse or “root cause” of the mass murders in Nice. But at some point, we in the West are going to have to learn that if we intervene militarily in Mali or Iraq or Libya or Syria or interfere in Turkey, or Egypt, or the Gulf, or the Maghreb – then we will not be safe “at home”.

It’s an old story now. In the past, we could go on foreign adventures in Korea or Vietnam without worrying that North Koreans would blow up the London Underground or that the Vietcong would attack New York with airliners. Not anymore. Foreign adventures come at a terrifying cost. Claiming they do not – or pompously declaring that “their” bombs in London or Paris have nothing to do with “our” bombs in Iraq – is dishonest.

At some point in history – though how far into the future, when we will have cut away the foundations of our own freedoms with our own new laws – we will probably have to re-think our relationship with the Middle East and with history. Yes, and with religion.