AT risk of repeating everything that’s already been written: the Chilcot verdict is in, and the consensus is damning and damn near universal. There never was a case for invading Iraq; Britain’s power elite conspired to make it happen anyway; and the resulting bloodbath led directly to Daesh. Nothing new to report, really, except that the consensus now stretches from mercenary tabloid editors to Blair’s former deputy, Lord Prescott. And it only took (at least) several hundred thousand dead civilians to get us here – truly, the system works!

Lord Falconer, who admits the invasion was a disaster, appeared on Question Time the other night exonerating the Labour government of any blame. Hindsight is twenty-twenty vision, Falconer pleads. And yes, he admits, it’s clear that Blair was naïve to expect Iraqi children to shower sweets and rose petals over invading US troops, their rich kid cowboy president and his oil company chums. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe it all sounds a tad far-fetched. But everyone’s an expert with hindsight, aren’t they?

I mean, how could anyone possibly have guessed the disaster awaiting us in Iraq? Well, I marched in 2003 alongside 36 million people across the globe, and I remember the arguments we made at the time. Saddam Hussein is indeed a terrible dictator, we said, but an invasion in British and American imperial colours will be greeted as occupation, not liberation. America has little long-term interest in Iraqi democracy, we added; this is a war for oil, and once that oil is apportioned, there’s no plan for peace.

And, we howled at the television in exasperation, if there really are weapons of mass destruction, let the inspectors do their job and find them. But no. We didn’t stand a chance, because Blair had promised Bush his war.

And, it wasn’t just us 36 million protesters either. We also had, to name only a few, Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, the Archbishops George Carey and Rowan Williams, Pope John Paul II, the Arab League, the African Union, the governments of France and Germany, the leading Tory Ken Clarke, Robin Cook, every decent academic authority on the region and even the Liberal bloody Democrats! Who knows, we probably had Cliff Richard on our side too. All of them, every single one, warned that abandoning diplomacy for an adventurist “pre-emptive war” risked disaster. Or did I just imagine this, Lord Falconer?

There’s no exonerating New Labour. They should have known, but they’d only listen to the American neo-conservatives, who, with their well-publicised links to the oil and missile-building businesses, should have been treated with automatic suspicion. Trusting Bush had disastrous consequences, and we’re still paying the price.

Iraq has been a particularly awful disaster, according to every possible measure of success. Since nearly everyone barring Blair accepts this, the debate needs to move on. David Cameron is now pushing the line that, while Iraq failed, most British interventions overseas are successful. Others take a similar, often hysterical, view: Iraq was an isolated case, a terrible tragedy, sure, but in a long line of successful British military actions, so please, let’s not turn away from our duties!! That’s the big myth we have to confront: the real danger we face in the aftermath of Chilcot is the idea that only Iraq was a big mistake.

Recently, the UK has involved itself in four wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Every single one of these actions made bad situations worse. Afghanistan, for example, is a disaster rivalling Iraq. When the West withdrew from the country, it wasn’t a case of “mission accomplished, democracy restored”. It was a case of, “chaos is total, war is unwinnable”. Overrun by the Taliban, without any conceivable government, the humanitarian situation is now worse than at any time since 2001.

British intervention in Iraq, Syria, and Libya has spread death, destruction, chaos and panic and there’s no end game. In the power vacuum that our cruise missiles created, these countries are being overrun by Daesh-led warlords. Let’s take Libya, the least publicised example. A million Libyans now have no formal government, and 400,000 have been displaced by fighting. Britain has been considering invading Libya – again – after invading five years ago in the name of democracy.

Incidentally, the Scottish National Party supported two of these four disastrous wars, and Scottish Labour was even more enthusiastic about invading Iraq than their colleagues down south. The much-vaunted Nordic countries are some of Europe’s worst warmongers. While Scottish independence would be a huge step towards solving these issues, this isn’t simply a “Westminster problem”. There’s a broader failure to learn historic lessons here.

Noticing a pattern is the first step towards breaking it. So let’s notice. An evil is announced, an evil more diabolical than all the evils before. That evil is declared unspeakable; a humanitarian issue is observed. Liberals cry, “Something must be done!” Bombs are dropped, for democracy. Before long, when the dust settles, a yet-more-unspeakable evil comes forward, and we’re being dragged in again. Mostly, the evils we’ve been fighting – Saddam, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Daesh, for example – have been trained and armed by the West. Saddam and the Taliban began as “lesser evils” when we were fighting Communism, of course. Daesh was a “lesser evil” against Assad. And, as usual, the Saudi Arabian autocracy is always a lesser evil against the rest of the Middle East. Here’s a first principle: let’s stop funding and arming “lesser evils”.

Second, let’s break the idea that civilian populations will welcome former imperial powers as neutral players intervening in civil wars. They won’t. True, sometimes civilians welcome Western soldiers in the short run. But that always turns to resentment, fast. People in the Global South aren’t ignorant of history: they know that Britain, America and France have a dodgy record of suppressing democracy and acting in their own self-interest. Pretty quickly, when we conduct “regime change”, warlords exploit these fears. It’s a pattern – try to keep up, Lord Falconer.

Third, we must fight “something must be done” syndrome. Nobel-winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the broad War on Terror will cost between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. The cost of ending world hunger is $30 billion. We could eliminate malaria by 2030 for $8.5 billion.

Imagine we’d done that. Imagine we’d spent money on some development, rather than bombing shepherds to smithereens and promoting Daesh. Would there be a refugee crisis on Europe’s doorstep if we’d invested in people rather than firing bullets at them? Would we have anti-Western warlords and terrorists running rampant? I’m no expert, unlike the good Lord Falconer. However, I imagine the answer is no.

I don’t want to see inquiry after inquiry, into war after war. A pattern has already emerged: when we intervene, we destabilise nations and compound complex problems. British bombs create a vacuum for the next unspeakable evil and then, the cycle repeats itself. But then, lucky me, I’ve got the benefit of hindsight.

Alex Salmond: MPs must have courage to vote on whether Tony Blair misled the House of Commons over Iraq