But a year in London does not necessarily engender enlightenment - after all, both Mohammed Atta and Pol Pot studied in the West.

Still, a long queue of dignitaries called in at Assad's palace before Hariri joined the long list of assassinated Lebanese. The US had sent at least five high-profile delegations to Damascus, including the then Secretary of State, Colin Powell. As for Europe, the traffic was even more intense. EU Commission President Romano Prodi visited Damascus in 2001, followed by Commissioner Chris Patten in September 2003. This is hardly isolation.

How did Damascus respond to engagement? It kept the flow of jihadis to Iraq going through its borders and its airport. For a police state, this can hardly be dismissed as "porous borders". It sheltered the terror masters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It supplied Hizbollah with weapons in Lebanon while meddling in that country's internal affairs. It did not hesitate to send its hitmen to kill whoever stood in the way of Damascus's imperial ambitions - Hariri was just one of many. And it cemented its 30-year-old strategic alliance with Iran just as Tehran's nuclear programme was becoming Europe's headache. Which is why, as Hariri's smouldering corpse was removed from the wreckage, someone in Paris said: "Enough is enough." The former French President Jacques Chirac was a close friend of Hariri. His friend's death showed him the hollowness of the case for engaging Syria.