Aylan is alone, as if suspended by the immense solitude of death, just as his family's dream of offering him a new life in a new continent away from death and destruction was about to be fulfilled. It's as if his lone lifeless body at the shores of a NATO beach was also about to prefigure the death of Europe – or the death of a once pan-European dream of solidarity and compassion.

Hannah Arendt once wrote movingly about the banality of evil, referring to the mechanism of fascism and Nazism. Aylan's lifeless body now illustrates the banality of an evil he was trying to flee: the "arc of instability", a Pentagon sel

We've had it coming when the "we're the new OPEC" Bush administration invaded, occupied and destroyed Iraq – creating the set-up for the establishment of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

We've had it coming when the Petraeus surge bribed Sunnis to half-heartedly fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq – which then took its time to reorganize in the heart of the desert, change its name to Islamic State and plot a comeback.