Robert Fisk's book is big, 1.5 kg big. It is his meticulously researched, and detailed exposition of what has made the Middle East the mess it is now, and which he has personally experienced in the last thirty years since first being posted to Beirut as the foreign correspondent for The Times in 1976. I have written elsewhere on my internet site about Robert Fisk, and I would encourage anyone reading this to visit Robert Fisk's own internet site.

Recently, I wrote to the Medialens editors, when they were taking Robert Fisk to task in regard to his criticisms of the American media in not reporting the reality of Iraq, without his apparently being aware of the same problems with the British media, including the paper for which he writes, The Independent. I thought the editors were being a bit hard on Robert, and I was standing up for him, probably rather unnecessarily, he is quite capable of standing up for himself. I mentioned that I had nearly completed reading his book, and this is part of my letter:



I read the book over several weeks, it is not one continuous narrative, it moves from place to place and back and forward in time in succeeding chapters, so it is perfectly possible to dip into each chapter as a separate item, without compromising the book's intention or worth. Although I have made fun about the size of this magnum opus, unlike most long books which are merely discursive or self-indulgent, the size is a logical and necessary result of the sheer amount of evidence presented in regard to the misfortunes of this region, and which in turn brings this book its irresistible force. As one reads, it becomes ever harder to argue against Robert Fisk's compelling and insistent premise, that the Middle East is a mess because, starting with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, the West's relationship with the Middle East has been one characterised by generations of meddling, betrayals, hypocrisy, aggression, war, arrogance, racism, greed and disdain. In country after country, year after year, generation after generation, this same imperialistic ethos is inflicted on those unfortunate citizens, it doesn't seem to matter if it is America, Britain, France or Russia doing the dirty, the methods are the same, the results the same. I doubt if any ordinary, but humane and sympathetic person, the father, the mother, the sister or the brother, or friend, or colleague, who's lifetime of experience is rooted in the ordinary matters of everyday life, its generally mild trials and tribulations but its mostly simple and contented existence, could, having read to the end of this book, come away from the experience without feelings of sadness, revulsion, anger, impotence, and shame. Shame from the fact that it is, in great measure, our greed for the land and for the oil resources of the Middle East, that has brought this area of the world to its present pass.




This is not to state, and Robert Fisk does not state this either, that there is no blame at all to people of this region themselves. The Armenian holocaust, for instance, which Robert Fisk covers, the cruelty and implacability of some strict Moslem codes, Sadam Hussein's tortured tyranny, the low place of women, the backward looking nature of so much of their society. But it might help to remember that it was less than two generations ago that black people in America gained some measure of equality and respect, but even now can hardly be said to be equal, and it is not much over one lifetime ago that women got the vote, and that many of the measures that went to making working life tolerable in industrial society were only gained after much strife during the years of the recently completed last century. There is little in Moslem society that can't progress as we have, if we encourage it (and not by using a big stick).

But what we have done, and what Robert Fisk amply proves (except to the ignorant, who won't read this book anyway) is that we, as representatives of the Western advanced countries, and here I also include Russia, have caused such grief, misery, hardship, resentment and abiding hatred, that a small number of Moslems, and recall there are over one billion Moslems worldwide, have felt compelled to take up arms and struggle against their enemy. It has been Robert Fisk's task in this book to demonstrate to us, again and again, why it is a logical position for a moslem in these countries to see us as an enemy. As he says, treating the 11th September attacks as merely the murderous intent of a few mad and mindless extremists and terrorists, and not even attempting to examine an underlying cause, is like a policeman investigating a murder and not being interested in the motive. There is no true understanding of the nature of extremism without this intellectual exercise being undertaken. Bush, Blair and Howard have not bothered to do this. The media too have not bothered to do this, even though it is their duty to do so. The result of this is that we are locked in a perpetual war with no possibility of it ending, just as Israel and Palestine have been locked in their conflict for the last fifty years.

I am not here going to attempt any sort of resumé of the book, you must read it yourself. But it is worth mentioning that Robert Fisk starts with the First World War, and his father's place in this, and the visits that he took to the cemeteries of northern France and Belgium, taking young Robert with him. On the back of one of Robert Fisk's fathers medals, was inscribed what is now the title of the book. A small, but significant, part of this book concerns Robert Fisk's relationship with his father, which gradually deteriorated over the years, as his father become unpleasantly right wing as he aged. However Robert does admire one specific action that his father took, when he refused to take command of a firing squad to execute an Australian soldier who had shot a gendarme. Whilst this part of the book is not directly related to the main narrative, it was obviously important to Robert, and this relationship seems to be the genesis of Robert's career.

But the First World War is important as Robert Fisk goes onto show how much the present problems in the Middle East relate to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and the imperial ambitions of France, the UK and other powers in this region. From the time that Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty ordered that naval vessels would henceforth rely on oil for their boilers, then the Middle East became an important strategic asset. One of the recurring themes of this book is how history keeps repeating itself, with the same tragic consequences. Robert Fisk quotes part of a proclamation by FS Maude, Lt. General in the Commanding British Forces in Iraq in 1917. "But you, the people of Baghdad, are not to understand that it is the wish of the British Government to impose upon you alien institutions. The British army came in peace, all 600,000 of them, but were to find Iraq a quagmire, in exactly the same way as the Anglo-American invasion of 2003 have now found. Laurence of Arabia said this in 1920 "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient then the public knows.....We are not far from disaster. . Unchanged, these words would now apply eighty-five years later. It has been Robert Fisk's mission to lift the veil of deceit that now applies in Iraq and the other unfortunate countries of the Middle East. In this he amply succeeds.

I have previously stated that Robert Fisk is one of my heros. His book merely confirms this status. Robert Fisk has over the years been to every trouble-spot in the Middle East, and other Moslem countries - so he has personal and distressing experience of the Lebanon, where he has lived for most of the last thirty years, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere. He has seen more death and destruction in his life than would have many soldiers in combat. Yet he seems to have had the mental toughness to deal with this; he mostly allows the description of the horrors he has witnessed speak to us through his words, and he sets them against a background of mayhem that arises from our intrusions and aggression, much more so than it is merely something tragic and cruel arising from the problems of Moslem society itself . However, I think it would be true to say that the polemical nature of this book becomes more apparent with each passing page, that the anger, the frustration and the horror become a more obvious part of the writing. The increasingly wearying despair that Robert Fisk develops is reflected in the reader's mood, because this book is not an easy read, it is indeed thoroughly depressing.




I have often heard Robert Fisk described as controversial - indeed this morning he was described thus on the radio, when the announcer was telling us that Robert Fisk would be interviewed on Sunday (he is coming to New Zealand). What must be understood if one is to make any sense of what is happening in Iraq, and all the other parts of the Middle East, is that Robert Fisk is almost certainly telling the truth. If you consider this is controversial, then your definition of controversial is different from mine. If you do read the Medialens site, then you would know that these sorts of adjectives (controversial, renegade, polemical etc.) are widely used by the main stream media, supporting as they do the political status quo, to subtly diminish the person they are used to describe, and the messages they are conveying. Why not call Robert Fisk "outstanding", "brave", "intrepid", all well earned descriptions, and much more accurate than "controversial"? But such descriptions would mean that Robert Fisk's work would have to be taken seriously, that the media would have to actually challenge their political masters, and they are all too ignorant or craven to do so. The media's failure to bring to account the political and corparate apparatus in this regard, as well as in global warming, economic disparity, and the host of such issues that presently blight the world, is this age's marvel. In future years, those looking back on these times will wonder how it was, in an age of omnipresent communications, from the traditional press to television and the exponentially expanding internet, that the whole world remained so happily, but so appallingly and destructively, ignorant.

For a bit more balance in this review, I here copy another, considered opinion of Robert Fisk. Taken from the internet, Joel had these few choice words to say:


Of course, many others share this opinion, including John Malkovich, who said three years ago in the Cambridge Union that he would like to shoot Fisk.

This book is Robert Fisk's testament. We can only trust that truly brave people like him will be able to educate us in time to avoid the tragedy that otherwise certainly awaits us, though as for Joel, and Malkovich, and all those others, I don't think I care too much.

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13/3/06 Interview by Chris Laidlaw, with Robert Fisk, from the Sunday morning programme, NZ National Radio 12/3/06. Covers matters in The Great War for Civilisation, and particularly Iraq. Well worth the listen. (Lasts about 50 minutes)

13/3/06. Iraq war. A British soldier, Ben Griffin, explains his refusal to return to Iraq: I didn't join the British army to conduct American foreign policy. Find the article in the Daily Telegraph here.. This experienced and thoughtful man says "I do believe passionately in democracy and I will speak out about things which I think are morally wrong. I think the war in Iraq is a war of aggression and is morally wrong and, more importantly, we are making the situation in the Middle East more unstable. It's not just wrong, it's a major military disaster. There was no plan for what was to happen after Saddam went, no end-game."