By Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem

Tony Blair is reportedly stepping down from his role as Middle East Peace envoy. This is probably good news for the peoples of the Middle East, peace and the tax payers who have paid millions of dollars of their hard-earned money for a mission that ought to be called "Mission fiasco" or "Mission Mendacity."

Indeed, for seven long years as Middle East envoy, Blair utterly failed to make any notable achievement for peace and justice in the region.

On the contrary, the erstwhile mass murderer (for his role in the occupation and destruction of Iraq) looked on passively if not gleefully as Israel was exterminating Palestinian civilians in Gaza (by the thousands) and stealing more Palestinian land in the west Bank. This Needless to say, this happened while the Zionist state was effectively completing the process of killing the very peace process Blair was supposed to save and promote.

During the seven years he has spent as Quartet envoy, Blair never succeeded in saving a Palestinian home from demolition at the hands of Israeli barbarians. He never succeeded in saving a Palestinian olive grove from obliteration by Israeli bulldozers. He absolutely failed to get Israel to end or suspend its murderous blockade of the Gaza Strip which thoroughly tormented ordinary Gazans, transforming their life into a ghoulish nightmare.

He actually failed to achieve much pettier tasks, such as getting the Israeli government to stop daily attacks and acts of vandalism and terrorism by Nazi-like Jewish settlers against Palestinians and their property, including mosques and churches.

And when the Israeli air-force was dropping one-ton-bombs on multi-story buildings, packed with terrified women and children in Gaza last summer, Blair remained silent, refusing to call the spade a spade.

Instead, he would either condemn the tormented victims for "provoking Israel" or just repeat the very same platitude we have been hearing ad nauseam from western officials since 1967.

I really don't know how this man has the audacity to look his face in the mirror after all the evil he has committed or caused to happen either directly or indirectly.

The amount of innocent blood shed as a result of his criminal policies as UK Prime Minister is so enormous, so much so that he can be compared to the worst offenders in history, figures like Adolph Hitler, Ariel Sharon, and Bashar al-Assad.

But criminals are not burdened by their sins.

According to reports from London, Blair has been trying to “absolve himself” of responsibility for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, which led to the present mess, including the appearance of the IS and similar extremist groups.

Blair repeatedly tried to distance himself from the Iraq disaster. A few weeks ago, he claimed in an essay that the 2003 invasion was not to blame for the current quagmire.

However, a small number of conscientious former British officials, including the former mayor of London, refuted his claims, saying in a letter published recently that “We believe that Mr. Blair, as a vociferous advocate of the invasion, must accept a degree of responsibility for its consequences.”

The letter, also addressed to foreign ministers in the US, Russia and the EU as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, adds that the former prime minister’s achievements as Middle East envoy are “negligible”.

Mass murderer par excellence

Blair is not a Western politician who inadvertently went astray. He is actually a "self-depreciating criminal," using the words of Independent columnist Matthew Norman

“Call it an atrocious strategic misjudgment, a dementedly misguided Neocon experiment, a war crime or whatever, it is perfectly well understood in these child-like terms.

"But Mr. Blair did a truly terrible thing, with unspeakably terrible consequences for the people of Iraq, the troops killed and maimed in prosecuting his folly, and those who died and were injured here in retaliatory bombings in July 2005, the morning after the 30th Olympiad was hereby awarded to the city of London.”

Norman continued:

“Tony Blair is no wrongly dishonored prophet but a pariah in his own land. He is a pariah because he colluded in an act of abundant wickedness, and untold hundreds of thousands died and millions more suffered monstrously in consequence.”

As such, this man deserves to be hanged. After all, he killed or caused the death of more innocent people than did Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Ariel Sharon combined.

But I know too well that Blair won't be hanged or even imprisoned. This world, especially the West, including Britain, is too morally unscrupulous to punish powerful criminals like Blair if only because doing so would be a condemnation of the entire western civilization and a recognition of its moral bankruptcy.

After all Blair's crimes were not carried out against Christians or Jews. They were committed against children of a lesser God, people who may be murdered with little or no compunction.!!!!

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Khalid Amayreh is a journalist and political commentator living in Occupied Palestine

http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=70689