Last week some time, the BBC news led with their usual story; a UK soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. The second story was that a strike in that country had "accidentally" killed 12 civilians.

Today it gets better. A strike yesterday killed 33 civilians and no fighters. The only mistake here was that there were civilians found dead after the strike, not that there were lots of people killed. Quoting from the BBC again:

The Nato commander said in a statement: "We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives.

"I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.

"We will redouble our efforts to regain that trust."

Assuming he speaks for our country, are we as saddened by these 33 lives as the 56 killed in London two and a half years ago? It's to be expected that we're unlikely to reach the level of news saturation reached then: pictures of buses ripped open, closed underground stations, blood soaked rags, stretchers. But are we likely to ever hear about this again?

Let's raise the stakes. If the London bombings had been carried out by an official government, say of Iran, would we have been satisfied with a "full investigation" and efforts to "regain trust?"

We don't have the trust of Afghans. We haven't had it for a very long time. Launching airstrikes at convoys without checking who is in the vehicles, followed by putting it as the third story for a day or so on our news, depicts perfectly why we will never again have their trust.

If even one of the types of atrocities committed in Afghanistan were committed by a foreign government on UK soil, we would be more likely to talk about invasion and occupation than allowing them to "regain our trust." And that sentiment would not fade for several generations.