I trettio år har Robert Fisk bevakat Mellanöstern. Han har sett krig bryta ut och fred slutas, levt med flyktingar i lägren och på nära håll sett människor dö i Bagdad, Libanon och Jerusalem. Alltmedan ledarna och medlarna har kommit och gått. Det här är hans berättelse.

please read this book. it will hurt you, but you owe it to yourself to read this book.
my friend ryan mishap has said it all already, and better than i could, so look for his review here on goodreads (i'm not really sure how to link to it or anything, but look for it. really).
my only complaint is gross and frequent misuse of the word "anarchy." that seems like a petty complaint, but i am compelled to point it out.
there is apparently an updated version, i hear tell. look for it, read it, serious. ( )

You can see why Robert Fisk is controversial. He comes off as one-note, unceasingly ranting, venomous towards the West and obsessed with describing and lamenting the suffering of people in this very troubled part of the world. He is morally unmovable, and to a large extent his unyielding stance opened my eyes. So many figures that we've seen as fanatical and wicked actually tried to fight what they saw as the great evil facing their people, Western imperialism, from Bin Laden to the Ayatollahs to Saddam Hussein, and they were somewhat justified.

There were many memorable accounts in the book, enough to fill a 1000 pages (which they do.) His gruesome reporting from the trenches of the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War; his investigation into the origins of weaponry Israel used to recklessly strike civilians in Lebanon; his piercing interviews with Bin Laden; his fearless reports from the blood-soaked quagmire of the Algerian civil war; his historical forays into the Armenian genocide and the First World War. This was doubtlessly a tour-de-force, a lifetime's work of bravery and heart and representative of an inspiring campaign to push the world closer to what is right.

I did find some of his research and focus regrettably partisan, especially when discussing Israel/Palestine, which I've done much research on, being an Israeli myself. Fisk constantly returns to the Sabra and Shatila massacres as an exemplary motivation for revenge against the West, and he constantly refers to the occupation as a primary reason for 9/11, but taking these justifications at face value ignores the complicated web of responsibility that gave rise to the original crimes. Did the IDF know that Phalangists were massacring refugees? Is there not a significant push within Israeli society to end the occupation? With respect to the Israeli peace process, Fisk never discusses how the issue of refugee return has nipped in the bud any possible separation between two future Israeli and Palestinian states, choosing only to focus on settlements, or "colonies", as he calls them. And he also attributes US involvement in Iraq War to the Israeli lobby, something I've never heard before, that Fisk doesn't even go into detail about, that seems plainly wrong. These omissions definitely raise questions about the veracity and integrity of the rest of the book. ( )

But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.

It would be spurious to suggest that I'm not haunted by this book. Maybe it is a touch of American isolationism, perhaps a hint of xenophobia, that we -- meaning I -- don't peer more into these pages.

Robert Fisk has proven, amongst loftier achievements, to be an audible author. Dozens of times over the past three days I sighed and groaned under the spell of his vivid accounts. Whereas his devotion to the Iran-Iraq War was singular and crushing, his interlude revisiting the Armenian genocide was overly familiar given our reading last summer of Burning Tigris, a text Fisk cites on several turns. Yesterday afternoon I arrived at the plight of the Palestinians the expanse and compunction of the myriad Treaties and Accords, the all-too-familiar events which I recall so directly, the settlements, the Intifadas, the ultimate fall of Sharon and Arafat, who asked Fisk about Michael Collins’ fate.

All of these insights imprint themselves on the conscious reader. I hesitate to say accusations ring and that culpability adheres like the noisome legacy of an accident. I dare anyone to attempt otherwise.

( )

While his politics may or may not be agreeable, there is no doubt that Mr. Fisk is a first-rate storyteller. This collection of stories of the author's experiences in many conflicts over approximately 30 years is well worth the polemics. What keeps it from being a 5-star book is that several times Fisk will be telling a fantastic account and then drop off into a subjective, emotionally charged conclusion filled with allegations that do not follow from the story. I was so disappointed in the Algerian story which was great for all but the last 2 pages and then petered out limply with innuendo and vague, unsupported allegations. ( )

This is a massive book, but then it would have to be in order to even attempt to explain the current convoluted middle east situation. The depth of the emotions of the peoples of the region do not bode well for our own folly of intervention in the region. If you do not have time to read all 1200 pages, at least try to read the last four chapters. Btw, if you are a fan of Israel, you will not like this book. Israel comes off very badly. ( )

I imagine the editor of this book thinking once every two pages "hm... maybe we could cut this out?" and then the very next paragraph being a rant about editorial intervention/dilution/censorship, which leads the editor to think "hm... don't really want to be the subject of one of *those*. I guess I'll just let him ramble on. Which is too bad, because at 800 pages or so this would have been an amazing, amazing book. Without the subtraction of 500 pages, it's just really good.

It's also not really a book--it's a series of short books. There are great short books on Afghanistan, the Armenian genocide (um, I mean, 'random disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Armenians'), the Iran/Iraq war, the arms trade, and Algeria. There are pretty good short books about the first Iraq war and Israel/Palestine. There are very boring short books about Fisk's grandfather, Fisk's own massive sense of self-righteousness and self-doubt, and the invasion of Iraq (really? the 'willing' killed civilians? tell me more for another 200 pages!).

The problem for Fisk is that he quite rightly believes in bringing individuals to the reader's attention, so we don't get all abstract about the slaughter and carnage: these are real people. But when you pile on more than two or three names, the individuals become just as abstract, and my anger, at least, started to dissipate. Once we got back to narrative history, my anger picked up again. And surely that's the purpose of this book--to make Westerners angry at our governments and ourselves. Mission accomplished, as the President once said. ( )

Like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, this is the agonising tale of humanity bravely told. Fisk displays the full range of his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Middle East, knowledge gained by 30 years of first hand experience on the front line of pretty much every conflict the area has seen in that time. Many would struggle to write this even if we had the world’s greatest libraries at our fingertips. Fisk managed it without even using the Internet (something he despises).

I don’t want to give you the impression that this is an easy read. For a start, it is nearly 1,300 pages long. Secondly, and again like Wounded Knee, it’s crammed with the details of the worst we can do to each other. The torture and abuse, often in the name of governments who deny these behaviours, are often stomach-turning.

There are some amazing vignettes there. Fisk is a fantastic story teller. He grips you with this ability from the very first page. His near murder, his meetings with Bin Laden, assisting John Snow in a rescue operation – all of these are excellent. But the episode of him tracking down the very men who manufactured a missile used to kill innocents must rank among the greatest examples of investigative journalism in Middle Eastern reportage.

Along with the terrible historical descriptions and the spellbinding stories, Fisk also spends a great deal of time putting across his own point of view. And he is not a man who pulls his punches. I would estimate that somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the book consists of him releasing 30 years of anger. This bellicosity seems a natural reaction to the events he has witnessed. But it is a curious stance for someone who, I assume, would prefer peace after so many years of seeing to conflict. I’m not sure that his rage does him any favours although many of his arguments are forceful and backed up with much historical veracity.

At its worst, the book is simply wrong about many things that more judicious editing would have picked up. Jerusalem is not the birthplace of Christ: one example of many such errors. But I admire anyone who can edit a book of such length and for a writer of such hard-headed conviction. That must have been an even harder job than writing the book in the first place.

At its best, this is a magnificent achievement. It’s a book that will definitely challenge, if not change, your outlook on why the Middle East exists as it does it today. More importantly, there are intimate stories in here of people who have suffered almost anonymously and beyond our comprehension. Their tales should rightfully be told; they have earned more than a moment of our consideration. ( )

A series of articles on the middle east from a journalist who seems to of spent a life time covering the middle east; a man who met Osama bin Laden the resistance fighter against the Soviet Union before becoming Osama 'the terrorist'

Unashamedly journalistic and openly opinionated, still a great guide to the middle east and it's recent as well as ongoing problems. ( )

A series of articles on the middle east from a journalist who seems to of spent a life time covering the middle east; a man who met Osama bin Laden the resistance fighter against the Soviet Union before becoming Osama 'the terrorist'

Unashamedly journalistic and openly opinionated, still a great guide to the middle east and it's recent as well as ongoing problems. ( )

Noble-winged seraphs of the jury, look at this tangle of thorns.

See the eruption of this area in flames, see the piles of skulls disintegrating in the wind, see houses ridden with bullets and children torn apart in martyrdom, see trenches full of soldiers, dead of gas.

I would like to read his thoughts on current events, on new revolutions and civil wars, and faint hopes on democracy, but I doubt, after what he has seen and heard, he has any hope.

This is a fearsome history, scourging and lamenting, leaving none as the moral victor. Only war, and the failings of the human spirit.

Read it, damn you. ( )

This is a book every Israeli should read.

Robert Fisk is a British journalist who writes for The Independent. He lives in Beirut and has been reporting from the Middle East for decades, having witnessed many of the region’s conflicts firsthand. The West’s interest in Osama Bin Laden following the 9/11 terror attacks in the US propelled him to fame, because of his interviews with the bearded arch-terrorist during the 1990s.

In this book, Fisk sets out to explain the “Conquest of the Middle East” (the subtitle of this book). He borrows the name of the book - “The Great War for Civilization” – from words engraved on one of the medals his father received for participating in World War One (Fisk’s father features prominently in this book, with Fisk the son expending considerable efforts to reconcile his pacifistic ideals with the fact that his father wore a uniform and held a gun). The book covers many of the conflicts in the Middle East: the Armenian Genocide, Algeria’s civil war for overthrowing French colonial rule, the eight-year Iraq-Iran war, the civil war in Lebanon, the Soviet and West’s wars in Afghanistan, the two Gulf wars in Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Fisk was witness to many horrors in these wars. His prose is most masterly when he describes these horrors in great detail. We get to know many of the victims personally, and some get a “mini biography” several pages long, as Fisk traces their families and friends to reconstruct a life that has been brutally taken or shattered by war. Afghans, Algerians, Iranians, Iraqis, Lebanese and many other Arab and Muslim victims receive a passionate and compassionate treatment. In this respect, Fisk’s attention to detail and his aptitude for understanding human suffering are remarkable.

But given Fisk’s extensive experience and knowledge of the Middle East and the grandiose title of the book, one would have expected this voluminous tome (well over 1,000 pages in hardcover) to provide an insightful and well though-out perspective into the “conquest of the Middle East”. That was certainly my expectation.

Instead of a perspective we get a rambling, disordered memoir that is despairingly long and pompously self-centered. After a few hundred pages, the reader comes to realise that this is not a book about the Middle East conflict or even the victims of war; it is a book about Fisk and his terribly misguided outlook on life, an outlook that can be summarised in a few short sentences. Everything the West does is wrong, especially the US and Britain. The Arabs are blameless victims of the West’s brutal aggression. There is no such thing as “terrorism”, only the desperate acts of people who have been repressed and abused for too long. And, last but not least, we have a modern-day prophet who can open our eyes and expose all the lies: Robert Fisk.

As an account of the Middle East conflict, this book is a total failure. It reads like a collection of newspaper columns, shoddily lumped together with little thought given about what they all mean. There is no “big picture” perspective. The graphic detail of some of the war horrors are borderline war porn. Fisk’s shattered soul after decades of reporting these horrors is understandable, yet one is left with an uneasy feeling that it is Fisk we are really supposed to feel sorry about, not the real victims.

Now the reason why this is a book every Israeli should read.

Fisk’s commendable humanitarian approach to the victims of the “Great War for Civilization” in the Middle East is nonexistent when it comes to Israeli victims. The innocent lives of the hundreds of Israelis who died in senseless and barbarous terrorist attacks by Palestinian terrorists get only a cursory mention, and almost always in order to find some excuse to exonerate the terrorist and “explain” his motives. In most cases the Israeli victims have no name; none get the biographical treatment that Arab victims get in this book. Fisk is unable to mask his hatred of Israel and his bigotry is exposed in all its ugliness when he is incapable of feeling any compassion towards Israelis whose lives were torn apart by war.

It is important for Israelis to understand Fisk, because his attitude is representative of the outlook of many Europeans towards Israel. Fisk is not ignorant of the facts of the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet his selective and one-sided views influence those of many who are not as well-versed in the facts. This delegitimisation of Israel in the guise of pacifistic humanitarianism is a danger we should all be aware of, and Fisk is an excellent example of this danger. ( )

At 1,286 pages, a long and sometimes draining read, but a necessary and compelling one from a passionate voice of conscience. From the three interviews with Osama bin Laden in the opening chapter, to his closing-chapter anecdotes of sitting first in Saddam Hussein's throne and then his foxhole, Fisk has been there and seen it in the Middle East & Central Asia.

What I most admire about this book is the way that it puts the lie to the idea that you cannot be fully engaged both with history and with the contemporary moment. He sees each moment in its historical context without defensive detachment, and articulates the hypocrisy in every cruel, unthinking political decision and action.

Even the most hardened cynic may be shocked at some of his descriptions of violence and brutality. The chapter on Algeria, notably, is not for the faint of heart or sensitive of stomach.

A few published reviews suggest that Fisk, against his own intention, creates the impression that there is nothing more to the Middle East than unending cycles of horrific violence. To some degree I agree with that criticism, but I think that this is largely inevitable due to his his journalistic role in covering specific events.

For many in North America, 9/11 happened essentially out of the blue. Fisk attempts to document that long-term collective media crime by giving us 1,019 pages of lead-up to that event. There is no comparably thorough account. ( )

Thought provoking - a must read book, 16 Jun 2008


This is a mightily impressive book, though in no way an easy read. It's not just the size (nearly 1,300 pages) it's the unrelenting horror that Fisk decribes. Ongoing decriptions of the inhumanity and evil he has encountered either directly or from eye witness testiment makes it a painful read right upto the end of the book.
In the book Fisk takes through a history of the Middle East conflicts he has covered as a journalist in the past 30 years from the Soviet invasion of Afgahnistan through to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, including the Iran-Iraq war, Iraeli-Palistinian conflict, Algeria and also including a chapter on the Armenian genocide. Throughout there is a reference back to historical events that have shaped the conflict and this is interwoven with a personal history of his parents and especially Fisk's journey to find out more about his father and his service at the end of the 1st World War.
This though, is no straight historical account, Fisk is constantly giving his viewpoint. He pulls no punches and his utter contempt for the corrupt and despotic regimes in the region is only beaten by his ongoing contempt of the involvement of the West in the region (and specifically America's support of Israel). He expertly and consistently shows up the hypocrisy and the self serving power politics, and the awful results it has on the populations of the region. It is this that makes the book, giving it power and is what sets you thinking. At the end of it you cannot fail to have changed some of your views, or to feel more passionately about the issues (you'll listen more carefully to the next news bulletin from Gaza or the West Bank). I for one, though, cannot agree with all that he says and the arguments he makes. It is very easy to point out all the time where people have made mistakes, taken the wrong decisions (whether the motive was good or bad). It's altogether more difficult to praise people having to make difficult decisions when there can never be an bloodless outcome, or to suggest the best way forward. This is where I feel Fisk doesn't deliver. At the end of the book I knew the true horror of the conflicts, the problems and the suffering there is. What I didn't have any sense of was what's the best way forward. I would have hoped that a man of Fisk's integrity, intelligence and knowledge of the area could have given his thoughts and ideas on this. I think he could have given us some hope, but the end I couldn't find any.
Neverless, this beats an pure narrative account of the recent history of the Middle East, it draws you in, makes you empathise and feel involved. It makes you think and makes you care, and that is no small achievement.

also posted on www.amazon.co.uk ( )

First rate. 4 stars for the writing, another 1/2 star for the excitment. ( )

This is full of the amazing telling of random adventures and biting analysis of the author who has been a Middle East correspondent for English newspapers for most of his life and may never retire. It covers virtually all of the many Middle Eastern conflicts over thirty years including visits with Bin Laden and covers it all with insight if occasionally with undue obsession. The story of his near-death encounter in Pakistan is simply amazing and his reaction is incredible. I'm now a confirmed Fiskite as a result of this comprehensive and compendious work. It's worth every hour of reading it. ( )

Comprehensive (1300 pages!) detailing of the continuing insanity of US (Western) policy on Israel and the Middle East and how this has come to fruition in the Bush-led debacle of invaded Iraq. Confirms what I had thought all along, and adds details and facts to support the view. Particularly poignant in coverage of the Palestinians – who have so lost hope that they now grow suicide bombers. Until the West forces Israel to come to some lasting settlement with the Palestinians, they will never have the “security” that their retaliation to the suicide bombings is intended to deliver. Read March 2008 ( )

Nobody does it like Fisk. One to trust. ( )

Perhaps not as readable as Fisk's collection of opinion writing--Age of the Warrior--this is nonetheless a fascinating work of journalist history cum autobiography. ( )

This book was hard to classify--history? or current affairs? Nor is it about terrorism, but it covers the author's half century of reporting experience in the middle east. It includes important information as well as interpretation for those interested in the world of Islam and how it came to be the way it is now. I intend to reread a little slower and check out some sources, but I'll go for four start for now. ( )

I used to be a rabid Fisk-hater, and I like to think that few could touch me on that score. Then along came the debacle of Iraq, and I was foolish enough to actually read him. My problem now, is how to even attempt to do justice to this book.

If you want to know how the world actually is, instead of how you thought it was, read this book. Because he isn't just a theoriser or a commentator or a pundit. His own two eyes have seen it. The case he makes is ironclad and inescapable, because he was actually *there*, in the heart of the world, for fifteen years. But politics in itself can only engage the intellect; it can't move you to tears. Only human stories can do that. Not once, ever, does Fisk talk about politics - wars and systems and corruptions and what-have-you - in a vacuum. Always, the focus comes right in close to the resulting agony and loss inflicted on a single human being or a family. No book has ever made me shed so many tears as this. A propagandist? A manipulator? Hardly. He isn't a Chomsky sitting at a desk three thousand miles away. How do you put 'spin' on a burnt child you have personally witnessed writhing in a hospital?

It would be a superb book if it stopped at this, a summing-up of what he has learned and witnessed. But there is a good deal more in this huge and panoramic book; in keeping with the theme of politics being about individual human lives, he uses his own father, a WW1 survivor and a man he didn't like, as a kind of talisman for the history of the 20th century. Then again, there are some very funny stories included too, as one might expect to be accrued by a war correspondent on active duty. I wonder if there's another book in the world which can single-handedly remove as much ignorance as this one? I have to say, I rather doubt it. ( )

In a recent interview Robert Fisk concluded that his 30 years of writing and reporting on Middle East troubles had not led to any improvement so he regarded his work there as a failure. I would disagree, in that "The Great War for Civilisation" explores the Middle East conflict in a context of justice and fairness as a basis for peace. Fortunately it's a bestseller.

He doesn't spell it out but his conclusions are;

-Turkey admitting the Armenian genocide as the Germans have done with the Jewish genocide. This would be good for their EEC aspirations and the health of their democracy.

- Israel unilaterally removing all the West Bank settlements and wall, and offering support to a new democratic and viable Palestinian state.

- Arab states and the world community accepting the results of free elections even if they don't like them. Allow the Islamist democratic winners in Algeria to form a government. Accept Hamas as the democratically elected government of the Palestinians.

- Remove all government support from extreme Islamist and Jewish organizations. eg. Saudi support of Wahhabism, Pakistan's I.S.I.O. support of Afghani Taliban, Likud support for fundamentalist settlers and AIPAC manipulation of the US government.

- Make the Middle East a nuclear weapon free zone. i.e. Cancel Israel's secret nuclear weapons program and destroy its warheads + remove all nuclear development in Iran, Syria etc.

- Withdraw foreign troops from Iraq in the same way that the Syrains left Lebanon + the US and GB admitting that WMD was a lie.

He's saying that justice and fairness are the basis for peace (and growth) rather than traditional Middle Eastern power relationships. ( )

Although the thought of Noam Chomsky is amply represented in Fisk's journalistic Tour-de-Force of this work, he never acknowledges him and makes no reference to his ideas throughout. A reference to Chomsky does appear in the bibliography but this is a form of dissembling from an otherwise important and forthright journalist.
Fisk's work is a fascinating study which waves his personal journalistic odyssey, psychological makeup, and family history into a compelling conquest narrative. "Bill," his war veteran father, gripped the teen age Fisk by trampling upon the hallowed British battlefields of his father's WW I battle memories.
Will Fisk reconcile his liberal, journalist's aversion to the horrors of war with his father's crotchety, war-scarred experience?
We won't know for sure but as readers we are offered a rare glimpse into the mind of a journalist who will be interpreting chaotic Middle Eastern violence through his lens of Chomsky and as a journalist haunted by his father's wartime memory.
Chomsky--Paul Berman tells us in Terror and Liberalism--holds that corporations greedily command the press and governments, and with these institutions at their behest, "drench the world in blood and misery" (p. 146). The freedom instinct though animates the human spirit to resist and the freedom instinct battles the greedy instinct. The battle between the two instincts explain nearly everything we see in world events.
As the Chomskyan view has unfolded and interpreted American foreign policy since the 1960s, Chomsky's analysis does not admit that pathological mass movements exist (Berman, 147). As described by Berman, we are all seduced by the attractive belief that "people are bound to behave in more or less reasonable ways in pursuit of normal and identifiable interests. It was a belief that the world is, by and large, a rational place" (Berman, 153). It is as Berman states: "In this country, we are all Noam Chomsky" (Berman, 153).
On the contrary, pathological mass movements, especially those based on faith, do exist. Blinded by Chomsky, Fisk is oblivious to what "should now be obvious to everyone that Muslims have more than their fair share of the latter," i.e., bad beliefs (Harris, The End of Faith, p. 108). Fisk is left with the lack of explanatory power inherent in many commentators who attribute the roots of Muslim violence on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the collusion of Western powers with corrupt dictatorships, and the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity plaguing the Middle East. He usually can not see that he is also dealing with Middle Eastern elites and the `best and the brightest' of Middle Eastern society.
As Harris comments, the usual explanations do not account for the virulent theological hair-splitting that characterizes political Islam. Harris states:
"the world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of terrorism, indeed who would never commit terrorism of the sort that has become so commonplace among Muslims, and the Muslim world has no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women, suffering little more than their infatuation with Koranic eschatology, who are eager to murder infidels for God's sake" (Harris, p. 109).
Not only poor and uneducated are willing Islamic terrorists but the educated Muslim elites are ardent jihadists.
Islam is a religion of struggle and of conquest. If it were not, the bloodshed between the rival claimants to Mohammed's mantle, Shia and Sunni, would have reconciled long ago. But without the equivalent of a Reformation movement, the Koran is seen as a document as if wafted down the clouds from heaven, and all human actions are seen as subject to divine review. The Koran is beyond reproach or is not critically examined.
Indeed, one of the central propositions of Western thought is self-criticism (Paul Cartledge, Thermopylae, p. 205). The West is not beyond reproach but it is a tradition that reflects upon itself, criticizes the tradition, and re-applies and innovates with new ideas. Fisk describes Amira Hass, for example, the Israeli journalist who lives, voluntarily, though some might argue foolishly, in Ramallah in the heart of the Palestinian homeland. There is reflection and self-criticism in this valiant perspective.
Although the conquest, and the failure to grasp the futility of not criticizing received Islamic thought occurs before his eyes, Fisk only sees the conquest characterized by his psychology and his own private battle with inheriting British culture. Fisk sees: The West vs. Middle East, Christian vs. Muslim, Israeli vs. Palestinian, Power vs. conquest--all mediated as his conflict with "Bill," his father.
Fisk writes of "an arrogance of power" (p. xxi) as "the sins of fathers visited upon their children" (p. xxii). Indeed, Fisk is reporting "Bill" vs. Fisk. Fisk reflects that in 1992 he "stood upon the very paving stone"
where "Gavrilo Princep stood as he fired the fatal shot that sent my father to the trenches of the First World War. . . . That was the year in which my father died. This is therefore the story of his generation. And of mine" (p. xxii).
Fisk is reporting his personal struggle and conquest of his father.
The parallels continue in Fisk's odyssey. The British descend on Afghanistan resulting in a series of British-Afghan Wars (1838-42, 1878-80, 1919-21) only to leave their dead behind. During the period of British aggression Bill is dispatched to fight in WW I; and while reporting, Fisk surveys early British accounts of Afghanistan characterized by "British heroism" and "Muslim savagery" (p. 35).
This survey will in turn be undone by Westerners such as British soldiers. And, the West will get what it has coming to it as a result.
In an account such as this then, the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians, although related, is not seen as a Middle Eastern atrocity. Fisk describes it as the "First Holocaust." Haven't the Germans flagellated themselves over the Holocaust? Have the Turks?
Fisk does not equate Middle Eastern atrocities as in the same class as Western intrusions in his detailed presentation of material. For example, on 17 May 1987 the USS Stark was hit by Iraqi Mirage missiles in the Persian Gulf where 37 American sailors were incinerated (p. 215). In this tragic mistake no human details are provided about the American sailors. They barely seem to exist. They don't have names and we do not learn anything personal about them. The only voices that are heard belong to impersonal U.S. government officials and statements.
Yet, an almost exact parallel exists in the unfortunate and mistaken shooting of the Iranian Airbus on 3 July 1988 by the U.S. but according to Fisk has an "appalling human dimension" (p. 259). Fisk details the human aspect of the atrocity and describes the families, the horror, and the sickening maiming of limbs and the deaths at American hands.
This is by no means the only human atrocity committed by the Americans. Fisk tells us of Raafat al-Ghossain, who dies at the hands of an American bomb in Libya on 15 April 1986. The eighteen year old artist, on holiday from school in England, and the family, wealthy Palestinian refugees live and work in Libya. Yes, there is the photograph of Raafat taking part in several Palestinian demonstrations in England Fisk tells us, but never mind, we are provided with an insight into her hopes, dreams, laments, and the desire for her to return to the family's Palestinian homeland. In any case, she fell victim to American bombing.
What are we to make of this? In a world where there are no innocents, no one is innocent.
The possibility that Raafat was a more dangerous student radical, or someone simply at the wrong place at the wrong time does not occur to Fisk. The American bombing, or acts brought on at least as much by Libyan leader Khadafi's intransigence, as American hard-line bombing strategy, is not entertained.
Fisk seems to miss that human cruelty and atrocities are the monopoly of no one. There are many losers in the appallingly inhuman atrocities in the clashes of the Middle East. Arafat, the betrayer of Palestine, comes off easily in Fisk's account. Why?
However, the banality of atrocities, and the unflinching Middle Eastern cultural value of death seems to escape Fisk's grasp. He can lament the deaths of ordinary persons of any culture, and I believe rightfully so, but Muslim v. Muslim atrocities, regardless of how outrageous, fail to elicit a response.
Most troubling though is the discussion of post-colonial Algeria. Granted France performed horribly in Algeria but how long can France be held responsible for post-independence civil wars? The tricks of government, according to Fisk, were learned from the French during the colonial era. Its as if the 1990s Islamic internecine struggles were somehow immune from inventing their own diabolical means of destruction (p. 522-585). "The Plot" is Algerian paranoia which saw the U.S. behind every bush (p. 546). Dialogue with Islamists was thought to be suspect as well. If anything, the U.S. hoped the Islamic conflict could be resolved. Even when the Islamists and the Algerian government commit mutual, despicable horrors, even invoking the Koran's blessing, Fisk fails to criticize (p. 548). Though the U.S. was not present during the horror, according to Fisk, they can be criticized for arriving with too little, too late, along with the U.N. which should bear responsibility for human rights abuses (p. 585). Its damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thinking. The section on Algeria is not for the faint of heart. Do not eat before reading this section.
Why do Islamic societies produce such heinous abuses of humanity? I would certainly like to know. If there is no Plot, because we know the U.S. has no designs on backwater places like Algeria or Libya, why are the Islamists so brutal? Why is there so much killing and bloodshed? Fisk does not tell us.
At some level, Westeners, including Fisk, are profoundly motivated to act with integrity, compassion, and reflect seriously on their behavior. I fear Fisk is seduced by the same phantasmal (Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy, pp. 13-14) force that has clouded so many Western observers. He seems though to have no expectation of somewhat reasonable behavior by his informants, though in at least one instance he himself has to fear for his physical safety while under personal attack in Afghanistan.
I hope Mr. Fisk can resolve his issues of self-flagellation through which he sees the Middle East, or the Other, and in that way overcome how his father never accepted the basic humanity of the Other during his wartime experience. Fisk is filled with outstanding powers of observation, and he is an extremely important source because of his early access and interviews with Bin Laden (Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies Eyes, pp. 408-09), his journalistic relationship with Arafat, and his touching descriptions of ordinary Middle Easterners and their experience. His reporting though is tainted by a naivete about his subjects. The Middle East, as anyone will tell you, is a rough neighborhood.
Fisk defines war early on as "about death and the infliction of death" (xviii). Yes, Mr. Fisk, you got that right.

Il grande inviato di guerra inglese raconta cent'anni di invasioni, tragedie e tradimenti ( )

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