The shocking news that the city of Mosul in northern Iraq has just been overrun by ISIS Sunni extremists exposes beyond dispute the disastrous policy that is being followed by the British government in the Middle East, and more broadly the pressing need to hold the original authors of the ongoing disaster in Iraq - specifically Tony Blair - to legal account.
For the past three or four years the chaos that has swept Iraq without interruption had slipped off the radar screen, due to the focus on the Arab Spring and its fallout in Libya, Egypt, and most of all Syria. However the level of sectarian violence in the country has matched if not exceeded the carnage that has engulfed parts of Syria in recent years. According to the UN, Iraq suffered its bloodiest month this year in May with around 800 people killed in sectarian violence, revealing the extent to which it has descended into an abyss from which it appears unlikely to be able to escape any time soon.
The blood that has flowed in every part of the country as a direct result of Bush and Blair's madcap military adventure back in 2003 surely renders any notion of Britain and the US as being anything other than a scourge on the rest of world redundant. The extremism that has proliferated across the Arab and Muslim world over the past decade is the direct result of the extremism that has emanated from Downing Street and the White House over the same period. It entitles us to ask the question: When are these rich, privately educated sociopaths who practice statecraft like gangsters in Western chancellories going to learn that this is not a game? Daily - in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and eastern Ukraine - they are responsible for the slaughter of men, women, and children as a result of their fixation with a hegemonic agenda that unless rolled back will inevitably redound in the form of increasing incidents of terrorist attacks and mindless violence against innocent civilians at home.
In Britain the Muslim community has never been more demonised, isolated, and used as a scapegoat for the ills of society - citing the dangers of extremism - while in Syria really existing extremism is being heroically resisted by a people, army, and government whose destruction we are supporting.
It is sheer and utter madness.
As these words are being written, half a million people are fleeing Mosul, Iraq's second city, in a humanitarian crisis to add to the litany of same that has bedevilled the region in recent years. It will undoubtedly be met with the usual handwringing, denials, and obfuscation on the part of Western ideologues and their bag carriers in the media whose depravity is only outweighed by their stupidity.
When we hear Education Secretary, Michael Gove, boasting of the need to teach British values in our schools one word springs to mind: Iraq. As such, let's hope that when Tony Blair's head hits his pillow in whichever of the multiple mansions he chooses to sleep in tonight, his dreams are those of a guilty man.