A decade after ‘shock and awe’

Ten years since the fabrications that led to the invasion of Iraq, burning skies over Baghdad, the murder of Fallujah, the barbarism of Abu Ghraib. The ‘withdrawal’ of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan signal not (as US president Obama has cynically claimed) the “tide of war receding,” but the re-deployment of military and resources for even greater interventions elsewhere. War continues in Afghanistan, is running ruinously in North Africa and in the Sahara, in Syria, and is threatening Iran.