Suicide is Painless

You’d be forgiven for thinking Iraq is a peaceful place. It rarely occupies the British media these days. Only a couple of years ago, whilst Afghanistan was taking a back seat, barely a day went by without headlines of dozens killed by suicide bombs. These days, suicide is painless. On the same day that every major media outlet was mourning the deaths of three British soldiers in Afghanistan, the British press was largely silent on the 17 civillians killed in double suicide bombings in Iraq. On Monday, 51 people were killed. But these things rarely gain much airtime anymore.

It is undoubtedly true that violence in Iraq has fallen recently. Only 275 people were killed in attacks last month. Only 275. That’s a 7/7 every week. If people were dying on that scale every day in Britain, no one could ignore it. The world’s media would be running reports every day. And it is, of course, a tragedy that yesterday brought the total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 199. But more civillians than that are  killed in Iraq every month, due to the situation Britain and America created, without a teary-eyed salute from BBC journalists. I don’t need to make a point about double standards. Everyone knows how the media works. This is just so we remember. The war in Iraq was a crime from the beginning. And ignorance is no defence.