They're making me laugh again over at the Guardian.
This time it's Jonathan Freedland, writing a rather strange comment piece entitled, "It's easy for dictators: these days the world lets you carry on killing". This is in the wake of the UN report into human rights atrocities in North Korea by a retired Australian judge, Michael Kirby.
Freedland writes that "the Kim dynasty has been inflicting agony on the people it rules for nearly seven decades . . . But how confident can (Kirby) be that action will follow (publication of his report)? . . . It's a similar story in Syria. Less than a month has passed since a report laid out comprehensive evidence of the suffering of detainees at the hands of the Assad regime . . . Yet did that report spark a worldwide demand for action? . . . It did not . . . the chief response was a global shrug".
"Maybe", Freedland continues, "this is what is means to live in the post-intervention era. Few even call for action - in North Korea or Syria - because we know it's not going to happen. In the 1990s, those outraged by the Balkan war could believe that, if they only shouted loud enough, they would eventually get the international powers to act . . . Now, after Iraq and Afghanistan, that belief has vanished . . . Few speak now of the notion that once seemed set to reshape international relations, the 'responsibility to protect'. It makes today a good time to be a dictator, a butcher or the torturing head of a brutal regime. The world will let you carry on killing - even when it knows exactly what is happening".
I described Freedland's piece as rather strange, and I find it so even as I think it is absolutely spot on. Why? Because if any organ in British public life is responsible for fostering the culture of the "global shrug" it is the Guardian, for which Freedland has written weekly columns for over a decade.
It is taken as read at Farringdon Rd that the Iraq invasion was a bad thing, a view which has gone unquestioned in the newspaper since the departure of David Aaronovitch, even though the invasion got rid of a horrible dictator and opened the way for Iraqis to create their own future (unbelievably, there are still people who think that issue of whether British politicians lied is one which trumps the removal of the Butcher of Baghdad).
Of the columnists who have promulgated the Guardian's view, none has been more energetic than Freedland himself. A search on the Graun's website under "Jonathan Freedland Iraq" produces more than 8,000 hits. You can take your pick from Freedland's dozens of articles excoriating the invasion. I quite like this one from 2004.
You're right Jonathan. Today is a good time to be a dictator. And no UK journalist I can think of did more than you to create the climate of opinion which has made that possible.
