In the newspaper world we call them nibs, stories which merit no more than a few paragraphs. Thursday’s Independent gave the news that bombs in Baghdad had killed 40 people a 100-word nib on page 26. Had these murderous outrages been perpetrated anywhere else, they would have made the front page.
But not in Iraq. Day after day after day, dozens of people are killed and the rest of the world yawns. The situation in Iraq is akin to what the British referred to in Ireland as "an acceptable level of violence" - that which is insufficient to warrant any significant attention or action. In Belfast, tit-for-tat murders were deemed run of the mill after a few years. In Baghdad it is tit-for-tat massacres which have become par for the course.
It is testimony to the depth of the disaster in Iraq that the daily slaughter of dozens of innocents merits only the briefest mention. But it is also a damning indictment of our short attention spans. Our goldfish-like powers of concentration help those in Washington and London who bear ultimate responsibility for this mayhem.
While little is said about Iraq, there is much talk in Britain about Tony Blair’s coming political demise. The man who swept to power nine years ago is now a pathetic figure, visibly aged by the ravages of governing and inspiring only contempt from an ever-growing proportion of the electorate. One day, perhaps quite soon, Bomber Blair, one of the chief architects of the Iraqi hellscape, will be relieved of his office.
Perhaps with the burden lifted he will start to enjoy life again. He will certainly experience more of the material benefits of life. A gilded post-premiership on the US lecture circuit beckons as Blair sings for his supper from the stateside rich and powerful, one of the few groups who would still share a room with him. But as Blair feathers his nest, the impact of his and Bush’s policies will continue to be felt by the people of Iraq whom they so kindly liberated.
It is obscene to think of this man living the high life while Iraqi civilians continue to suffer daily misery. It would be some small consolation if, rather than touring the US, Blair was to spend his time on trial for war crimes. Some may find this attitude harsh. After all, British and US troops have done nothing in Iraq to rival the barbarism of the Nazi Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.
But this misses the point. While we think of war crimes in terms of genocide, it should be remembered that the initiation of war is itself a crime. As Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, said: "War of aggression is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
In other words Bush and Blair, as authors of the Iraq conflict, are ultimately responsible for all the dead which the war has created. By the Nuremberg standard they are indisputably war criminals and should stand trial for their belligerence. At the moment this seems a forlorn hope. Many western people have a psychological disconnect preventing them from seeing that their leaders are capable of the gravest of crimes.
Such an attitude is dangerous for everyone. Any system of justice, whether national or international, must operate on the basis that no person is above the law. To exempt some from the punishment which falls on others is to encourage further aggression. Ultimately, the failure to punish the criminals in Downing Street and the White House will instigate more war, more "pre-emption" and more violence, at whatever level is deemed acceptable.