A despicable attack certainly, but a cowardly attack? No.

Lat's get one thing clear. A man dying for what he believes in is not a coward. The 9/11 bombers were very brave men, misguided, duped even, utterly ruthless without any doubt, but courageous, by the standards most of us understand. One might call the bomber crews that flew over Germany and Japan in 1945 cowards, because by then defenses were virtually non-existent, and they were able to kill from a distance without any fear for their own lives.

The Ariana Grande bomber, as he will doubtless be known, died for what he believed in, whatever that was. Here are some speculations on what kind of a man he was, based on the demographics of other outrages committed in the name of Islam in the last few years: I'd be willing to bet he had a horrific childhood, flowed by a prison record, perhaps for crimes of violence. He probably travelled to Syria or Afghanistan to learn his trade, having been recruited in prison. He may have been ethnically Arab, though possibly not. He may have been of limited intelligence, making him fertile ground for the kind of hate-filled rhetoric peddled by the disciples of the Wahabi clerics in Saudi Arabia, mentors to IS, Al Qaida, Boco Haram and Al Shabbab.

When Donald Trump was in Israel yesterday, he wisely steered clear of any pronouncements about the problems in that troubled region and concentrated instead on the evils of Iran- which had just held democratic elections and voted in a political moderate. The day before he had been in Saudi (a land where there is little if any democracy) signing a $110 billion arms deal with a Saudi King so terrified of alienating those fundamentalist clerics he does pretty much anything they tell him to. If he loses their support there could be an uprising in Arabia- and the Royal family could be out on their ears.

The outrage in Manchester last night was terrible crime against humanity and must be condemned for what it is, but let us not make the mistake of thinking it was, as Teresa May insists on calling it: an act of cowardice.