Since the fundamentalist ISIS militia took control of Mossul, Iraq's second largest city, on June 10th, the country has been sliding into open civil war. At the time of writing, the whole north-east of Iraq is in the hands of this militia, which is marching on the suburbs of the capital, Baghdad.
Not that civil war had ever really stopped in Iraq. But western leaders never admitted that their bloody invasion and occupation had resulted in political chaos. Instead they claimed that the "democracy" they "brought" to Iraq was just experiencing teething problems, with resulting "insecurity" .
But this "insecurity" is only the most visible part of the time bomb left by the occupation. Behind the scenes, rival militias still fought for political power, bombing, shooting and abducting "enemy targets" - in most cases, civilians, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The time bomb was bound to explode at some point. And today it has - and all hell has broken loose.
30 years of western power games
All the ingredients of today's situation in Iraq can be traced back to past western interference.
In 1980, following the downfall of their puppet dictator in Iran, western powers used Saddam Hussein to punish the new Iranian regime. Iraq's 8-year war against Shia Iran gave several ambitious Iraqi politicians a lever with which to set Iraqi Shia against Iraqi Sunni - despite the fact that these communities had lived side by side for so long.
In 1990, western leaders decided to cut Saddam Hussein down to size with the first Gulf War against him. Then they left him a free hand to repress a Shia uprising - thereby creating a wall of blood between the Shia and Sunni communities.
In 2003, when western leaders went on to "finish off" Saddam Hussein by invading the country and destroying his regime, a host of rival religious and ethnic-based militias, all vying for power, filled the political vacuum. The occupiers chose to lean on the Shia religious militias against all others to strengthen their stranglehold over the country.
Despite sanctimonious calls against sectarianism, they propped up a corrupt, sectarian regime, dominated by religious Shias. The Sunni militias were defeated in bloody battles and forced out of the country, together with hundreds of thousands of Sunni Iraqis who fled to refugee camps in Jordan and, above all, Syria.
When , in 2011, protests broke out in Syria, western leaders used the opportunity to render Assad's regime more pliable. They allowed their regional allies, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to supply anti-Assad forces with heavy weapons. This in turn enabled exiled Iraqi Sunni militias to re-arm themselves and train Syrian fundamentalist groups.
Thereafter, the boomerang which had been thrown into Syria by the western occupation of Iraq, bounced back: ISIS, now a fully-armed militia, returned to Iraq, to go on the offensive.
Imperialism is the only threat!
Today, Cameron is telling us that Britain is under threat due to what's happening in Iraq. But haven't we heard it all before? Wasn't that exactly what Blair said to justify the invasion of Iraq, with grossly fabricated "evidence" to back up his claim? And now the same Blair is coming back with more lies, claiming on TV that Iraq's present civil war has nothing to do with yesterday's western occupation.
But who has caused catastrophes over the past 30 years, across the Middle-East? Who has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, while destroying the economies of entire countries? Who has been driving whole populations to despair, thereby pushing tens of thousands into the arms of Islamic fundamentalists? And who has been sowing the seeds of the civil wars which are raging now, in Iraq but also in Syria?
Who, if not the great powers and their policy to enforce their imperialist order over the Middle-East? And what for? To secure the monopoly of the region's oil resources and markets for the western companies and for them only, thereby securing a steady stream of dividends into the pockets of shareholders in the rich western countries!
Because this is all that these wars are really about - in the Middle East and all over the planet. Their only purpose is to ensure an always increasing flow of profits for the handful of giant companies which dominate the world's economy.
So, yes, we are confronted with a threat today. But this threat is not what Cameron and Blair claim it is. The only real threat is that of a profit system whose hands are already stained with the blood of millions. The world will never be safe as long as this system is allowed to survive!