IS IT safe to come out yet? Can we begin the rational, reasoned debate about the Paris terrorist attacks that is so desperately needed?

The media coverage and discussion over the recent shocking events in France has been predictably hysterical and evidence-free. 

For Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow the attack was a “brutal clash of civilisations. Europe’s belief in freedom of expression v those for whom death is a weapon in defending their beliefs.” 

The normally sensible Will Self labelled the perpetrators “evil.” 

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen tweeted: “I am shaking with rage at the attack on Charlie Hebdo. It’s an attack on the free world.” 

His frightening solution? 

“The entire free world should respond, ruthlessly.” 

Missing from the endless mainstream media coverage is any mention of the awkward fact that, as Noam Chomsky has stated, “traditionally the United States and Britain have by and large strongly supported radical Islamic fundamentalism.” 

The historian Mark Curtis details the link in his 2010 book Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. 

Citing British support for the “crazies” in Afghanistan in the 1980s and their BFF, the ruthless Saudi regime, Curtis notes: “British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called ‘national interest’ abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organisations.”

It’s important to remember all this is not ancient history. Just as the Western-backed jihad in Afghanistan gave birth to al-Qaida, by supporting those who wish to violently overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the West has helped to create the jihadi blowback of which Paris may well be only the beginning.

You don’t believe me? Let me explain. The West has been helping to arm the rebels in Syria since before May 2012. With its involvement initially covert and limited, the US gave a wink and a nod to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to support the rebels. 

This use of proxies has continued despite it being clear since at least October 2012 that arms provided by Qatar and Saudi Arabia were going to hardline Islamist jihadists. 

How clear, you ask? Well, as clear as a New York Times headline stating “Rebel arms flow is said to benefit jihadists in Syria.”

The US, Britain and, yes, France, have continued to provide arms and training to the rebels, despite experts repeatedly warning of the danger of such a strategy. 

In September 2012 the head of the UN monitoring mission in Syria said Western support for the opposition risked prolonging the conflict. 

Writing in the New York Times in June 2013, two former Nato secretary-generals noted: “Western military engagement in Syria is likely to provoke further escalation on all sides, deepening the civil war and strengthening the forces of extremism, sectarianism and criminality gaining strength across the country.” 

Experts from Chatham House, the Royal United Services Institute and the European Council on Foreign Relations all warned that weapons sent into Syria would likely end up in the hands of jihadists. 

William Hague, of course, said there was no risk of arms falling into the wrong hands. 

Who do you think has been proved right? Unsurprisingly, CIA-supplied weapons have been spotted being used by Isis to target armoured vehicles the US had supplied to the US-backed Iraqi government.

You don’t need to be a counter-terrorism expert to realise an increasingly militarised conflict, awash with weapons and populated by a burgeoning number of extremists, with no peaceful end in sight, is exactly the kind of conditions that encourage violent jihadists to travel to Syria. 

Terrorism analyst Aaron Zelin’s February 2013 warning that “the Syrian conflict is going to be as big, if not bigger, than Afghanistan was in the 1980s in terms of mobilising jihadi fighters” seems prescient today. 

However, it is veteran correspondent Patrick Cockburn who makes the key point about Western responsibility: “The West backed the uprising against President Assad, and still does, and this enabled Isis to develop, gain military experience and then use it back in Iraq.”

All of this information about our own responsibility for engendering radical, sometimes violent, Islamists is on the public record, having been published in widely read, highly respected newspapers over the last few years. 

And yet it has effectively been excluded from the ongoing debate surrounding the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the terrorist threat to the West. 

No overt censorship or terrorist intimidation was needed — just professional, career-minded journalists and well-educated commentators arguing feverishly within the narrow bounds of acceptable debate.