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THERE was Barack Obama, in his inauguration speech on Capitol Hill, talking of ending a decade of war – and David Cameron, bunkered in Downing Street, warning of decades of strife to come combating Islamic terrorists in their rekindled African habitat.

France's military campaign in Mali, was followed by the (perhaps previously planned) hostage crisis in Algeria, with two Merseysiders among the dead.

The bigger picture is now of instability from Yemen in the east to Mauritania in the west.

But Mali's ghost could also go on to haunt countries like Morocco and Tunisia – both popular destinations with UK holiday-makers.

Lessons have to be learned – and before there are even more irreversible consequences.

British troops invaded Iraq on false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, and then became ensnared in Afghanistan, on the dual premise of knocking out the Taliban and halting the heroin trade.

The frighteningly naive common factor is the self-belief of western democracies that they can pre-destine, engineer and regulate the politics of the Arab world to further their own economic interests.

As it happens, Britain had little direct investment in Iraq – only then Prime Minister Tony Blair's willingness to be the lap-dog of an unbalanced and war-warmongering American president.

With new leaders in place, we must hope that there's some joined up writing on how to handle a tsunami of resentment among Islamists at the finger-wagging moralising of the Christian west.

This is why we are increasingly back to the dark days of the crusades.

Until that cycle is demonstrably broken, then, as David Cameron warns on a time scale far greater than any domestic, European or American financial ructions, today's primary school kids could spend their entire lives in the shadow of more such wars.

A generation ago, British perceptions of the Arab world were limited to productions of Aladdin and concert performances of Scheherazade.

Now they threaten to engulf us.