Let us not fret over the indignity of being arm-twisted into befriending the US again, or count the cost of another misadventure. Let us not ask the pointing fingers for proof, or point to Israel as the prime beneficiary of the slick operation that has deflected attention from its barbarity, demonised the Muslims and set the US on a collision course with them. Let us not even question the wisdom and fairness of the new crusade.

Let us, instead begin at the end. The year is 2011, and the comprehensive US strategy to root out "Islamic terrorism" has delivered the best-case scenario:

Afghanistan: Having rejected the Taliban's plea that Osama Bin Laden lacked the capabilities and communication facilities to cobble together such a sophisticated strike, and failing to coerce them into handing him over for a humiliating trial, the US finally struck ferociously. True to the word of their supreme leader, Mullah Omar, and the Pashtoon ethos, the Taliban leadership died with honour while defending their guest. The iron-willed Osama is also believed to have perished in big blasts suspected to be caused by tactical nuclear weapons. The devastated country is again a blessed monarchy.

South Asia: Pakistan's support for Kashmiri freedom-fighters was neutralised, India crushed the uprising and, then refused to concede any mechanism of self-determination for Kashmir. Instead, elections were held, a modicum of autonomy was granted and the conflict officially declared closed. India is now the regional arbiter.

Pakistan also suppressed its militant outfits. The country is being ruled by an elected government under the able guidance of its all-wise military. Relations with India have normalised and, thanks to continual handouts by the money-lenders, its restructured economy is successfully paying off its loans.

Palestine: Working with Israel, the Palestine Authority, Lebanon and Syria have neutralised the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Amal and Hizbullah. The dreaded suicide-bomber is a thing of the past. Some Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza were vacated for the Palestinian refugees allowed to return from Lebanon and Jordan, and the Palestine Authority won civic control of the Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. Sovereignty over the city was conceded to Israel, which formalised it as its eternal capital. Led by the US, all embassies moved there and all Arab-Muslim states recognised Israel. A US-sponsored peace prevails in the Middle East.

Muslim World: Thanks to the close support of the US-led coalition against terror, all militant movements have been crushed. From Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and the Aceh uprising in Indonesia to the Ikhwan in Egypt and the GIS in Algeria, Muslim militants no longer threaten the pro-West secular regimes. Turkey's dream of joining the European Union was, finally, realised and its Islamic revivalism eliminated.

Buoyed by the demise of the hated Taliban, Iranian moderates finally prevailed over the hardliner Ayatollahs. The country moved closer to the US, and is rapidly catching up with modernity where Raza Shah Pehlavi had left off. For bank-rolling the suicide-bombers, Saddam Hussain was liquidated by the CIA (President George W Bush having rescinded the 1976 executive order against assassinations). Iraq is now under a friendly democratic regime, like Egypt and Algeria.

In short, Uncle Sam is happy, oil flows freely and all is quiet in the Muslim world. But this rosy scenario excludes from the computation one crucial factor - the people. How would the events that led to this hypothetical paradise have impacted their collective psyche?

This is the great imponderable. The reason why the US-led West is happy to leave the Arab-Muslim states under pliable dictatorships is the unbridgeable gulf between the conveniences of their ruling elite and the worldview of the vast majority. This gulf was reflected in their divergent reactions to the calamity that befell the US. The overwhelming feeling among the people was that, now that it has felt the anguish of burying its own dead, perhaps the US would realise and atone for the barbarity being inflicted on the Muslims every day. The rulers, on the other hand, were hastening to be on the right side of the turning tide. Muslim militants are, in fact, a threat to them rather than the West.

The gulf is socio-cultural in that the people fear losing their identity to the Western cultural invasion, while the elite sees its salvation in it. It is politico-psychological in that, seeing their rulers bowing and scraping before the West, the people find their national interest and honour compromised. They yearn for rulers who would stand up and be counted.

The gulf is economic in that, barring the oil sheikdoms, the globalisation juggernaut is crushing the poor. As the wealth is being sucked upwards, into the rapacious oligarchies within and the money-lenders without, the people are becoming increasingly impoverished - and desperate in seeking politico-economic alternatives that are just and equitable.

These dichotomies will be fuelled by the unavoidable perception that the Islamic alternative, whatever shape it may have been taking in each society, has been snuffed out by force and, most crucially, at the command of the West. The defiant Taliban would then be remembered for the peace, equity and honour they had brought to the worn-ravaged and warlord-plundered Afghanistan. Mullah Omar would become a symbol of austerity, an upright Muslim ruler who lived as simply as his people. Imam Khomeini is already such an icon, and a revered Muslim revolutionary. If the US goes blundering into the new crusade without thinking the whole complex thing through, his stinging criticism of it as the Great Satan would find revalidation.

Osama Bin Laden will also be etched in public memory as a betrayed martyr to the cherished cause of true independence and honour of the Muslim world. If the stunning success of Black Tuesday is indeed placed at his doorstep, the awesome images of the crumbling twin-towers would become a tribute to - rather than an indictment of - his refusal to roll over and die.

If the ruler-ruled gulf widens further, as it will by an injudicious use of force, all the causes that have spawned Muslim militancy will not only remain but will also be accentuated. There can, in that circumstance, be no reason to believe that the real problem will have been solved - either for the West or the moderate Muslim majority which seeks a peaceful, but honourable, coexistence with it. The militants will mutate and reappear after fifty or a hundred years, if not much sooner.

Nowhere has a militancy been eliminated without eliminating the cause. The cause can be addressed by the West now, or it will have to be addressed after its new crusade has caused grief all around. In any case, tyranny and peace, as the poet Faiz reminds us, cannot coexist. If the red-faced US establishment can get over its failure, the saner minority will, hopefully, prevail over the yahoos and provocateurs who have monopolised the media and raised a jingoistic bedlam without an iota of credible evidence.

If time and sanity are given a chance, it might also be understood, in the West that, contrary to the facile and invidious mantra, Muslims are neither impelled by their religion nor their psyche to destroy Western civilisation or democracy. To the contrary, they wish to learn from both. Thus, if the deed was indeed done by a small Muslim group (on its own, or as an unwitting tool of a greater conspiracy), the symbols of US power were targeted to register a desperate protest. A protest that is echoed in every Muslim household every day that Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya bleed.

It was certainly not a display of cowardice and evil as the Western intellect and politics would have their ignorant and gullible populace believe. No one chooses to die out of cowardice, and to spread an evil - the crusaders didn't do so, Israel's founders didn't do so and the Muslim militants aren't doing so either. They simply find no other way of being heard.

Therefore, rather than creating and becoming captives of denigrating jargon, it needs to be stressed that Huntington's Clash of Civilisations is not a prophecy but a prescription. But if the West keeps acting on it, it may indeed become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Otherwise, all civilisations and worldviews can coexist with honour.

The writer is a freelance columnist