The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk (Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon) has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet. The book opens with a deftly juxtaposed account of Fisk's two interviews with Osama bin Laden. In the first, held in Sudan in 1993, bin Laden declared himself "a construction engineer and an agriculturist." He had no time to train mujahideen, he said; he was busy constructing a highway. In the second, held four years later in Afghanistan, he declared war on the Saudi royal family and America.Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent, possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description—he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years—that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death." Though Fisk's political stances may sometimes be controversial, no one can deny that this volume is a stunning achievement. (Nov.)
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From The Washington Post

This is first of all a book about war -- in particular, the wars that have scarred the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Algeria, throughout the author's long career as a correspondent for the London Times and then the Independent. It switches back and forth across the 20th century in a way that seems driven more by stream of consciousness than by any linear design, and, as befits its topic, it is a book of almost unremitting violence. The author presents himself both as unflinching witness and implacable judge of the events he recounts, for he believes that he is telling a story of unrelenting perfidy and betrayal -- in part a story of Middle Easterners being betrayed by themselves and their leaders, but mostly one of the Middle East being betrayed by the power, greed and arrogance of the West.

Fisk has thrown himself into the fiery pit time after time, often at grave personal risk -- Afghanistan at the beginning of the long struggle against the Soviets, the bloodbath of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, the civil war in Algeria after 1991, the second Palestinian intifada since the fall of 2000. When he is not personally in the midst of conflict and destruction, he evokes them, as in his lengthy discussion of the Armenian deportations and massacres of World War I or (in a different register) his treatment of the shah of Iran's prisons and torture chambers.

However Fisk regards himself, he is at bottom a war correspondent, and the fabric of his book is woven largely from his battlefield reporting. Fisk's writing on war is vivid, graphic, intense and very personal. Readers will encounter no "collateral damage" here, only homes destroyed and bodies torn to shreds. At times, as one horror is heaped upon another, it all seems too much to absorb or bear.

That intensity is both the book's great strength and one of its principal weaknesses. After reading it, no one can hide from the immense human costs of the decisions made by generals and politicians, Middle Eastern or otherwise. But Fisk portrays the Middle East as a place of such unrelieved violence that the reader can hardly imagine that anyone has enjoyed a single ordinary day there over the past quarter-century. That picture is a serious distortion. Life in the region is far from easy, but in spite of endemic anxiety and frustration, most Middle Easterners, most of the time, are able to get on tolerably well. Fisk says little about more abstract, less violent issues such as economic stagnation, the complexities of political Islam or the status of women. This gap is not a weakness in itself -- Fisk is writing about different themes -- but readers need to be aware that, despite its staggering length, this book is not The Complete Middle East.

It may well be The Complete Robert Fisk, however. It is full of autobiographical reminiscences about the author's troubled but intense relationship with his father, Bill; indeed, that relationship provides the book's title. The elder Fisk had been awarded a campaign medal for his service in France in 1918, and the medal (which he bequeathed to his son) was inscribed with the motto "The Great War for Civilisation." The bitter irony of that motto is underscored by another gift, this one from the author's grandmother to his father -- a boy's novel, Tom Graham, V.C., which recounts the adventures of a young British soldier in Afghanistan in the late 19th century. For the author, both the medal and the novel symbolize the West's arrogant and destructive intrusion in the Middle East throughout the last century.

If this is a book about war, it is equally a book about the hypocrisy and indifference of those in power. Fisk is an angry man and more than a little self-righteous. No national leader comes off with a scrap of credit here; he regards the lot of them with contempt, if not loathing. Among the men in charge -- whether Arab, Iranian, Turkish, Israeli, British or American -- there are no heroes and precious few honorable people doing their inadequate best in difficult situations. Jimmy Carter is lucky to escape with condescension, King Hussein of Jordan with a bit better than that. Fisk is not fond of the media either (though he grants some exceptions); CNN and the New York Times are particular targets of his scorn for what he sees as their abject failure to challenge the lies, distortions and cover-ups of U.S. policymakers. Only among ordinary people, entangled in a web of forces beyond their control, does Fisk find a human mixture of courage, cowardice, charity and cruelty!

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Given the present state of things in the Middle East, one is tempted to agree with him. The mendacity and bland pomposity of the suits and talking heads, both Western and Middle Eastern, are infuriating to anyone who has any direct knowledge of what is going on there. Again, however, there is a problem: Fisk excoriates politicians for the awful suffering they have imposed on the peoples of the Middle East, but he never seriously asks why they make the decisions they do or what real alternatives they might have. It is all very well to flog Western and Middle Eastern leaders for their ignorance, moral blindness, lust for power, etc. That might instill shame and guilt (though it rarely does), but it provides no serious principles or criteria that serious policymakers might use to develop something better.

In short, The Great War for Civilisation is a book of unquestionable importance, given Fisk's unmatched experience of war and its impact in the contemporary Middle East and his capacity to convey that experience in concrete, passionate language. Still, novices will find themselves both overwhelmed by the book's exhaustive detail and hard put to follow the author's leaps across countries and decades. The Great War for Civilisation is also a deeply troubling book; it may well confirm the conviction of many that the Middle East is incurably sunk in violence and depravity and that only a fool would imagine it could ever be redeemed. As tragic as the last three decades have been, there are different lessons to be learned -- one must hope so, at least.

Reviewed by Stephen Humphreys
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1136 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st American edition (November 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400041511
• ISBN-13: 978-1400041510
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #339,207 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant historical analyses, moving memoir, and howl of outrage, January 12, 2007

By	Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

If you are like me, once you've established your basic opinion on something, you tend to skim the newspapers on the subject, often only reading headlines and maybe the first few paragraphs. So it has been with me and the Middle East conflicts over the last 30 years. However, every so often, a book like this comes out that is so deep, so excellent, and so challenging that it will wipe out all my cozy assumptions and ignite an interest that will carry me for several years at a minimum.

I read this over a period of months with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. It is in my opinion a literary masterpiece by a courageous reporter who is also a true intellectual, steeped in history as well as the stories of people that great journalists seek like air or food. There are so many levels to this book that a review cannot do it justice, but I will try.

First, there is the autobiographical side of this, where Fisk explains his obsession with war and injustice and man's inhumanity to man - it originated with his conflict with his father, a WWI veteran, which leads to his search for the truth and the need to document the lives of those who suffer. At times very moving, always vivid, this in many ways is the core of the book's theme.

Second, there are the historical analyses of conflicts starting with WWI and its aftermath - the Balfour Declaration - that saw the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire and the beginnings of the modern Middle East. This covers a huge range of countries, from Algeria to Turkey and Iran. You can see the roots of where the conflct started with the end of Turkish authority, how it got complicated by decolonization and the establishment of Israel, and how it has evolved into an increasingly murderous direction. Because of the superficial grasp I had of the history, I learned a tremendous amount from this, including from the first systematic account of the Armenian genocide, to the civil wars in virtually all the rest of the countries covered. Not everything is covered, however, only what Fisk investigated on assignment. In a sense, he is showing how similar the recent actions - even the rhetoric - of Bush are to the first forays of European imperialists in the 1920s.

Third, there is a political analysis of the root of the current crisis that increasingly pits the US and Israel against the Moslem world. In a nutshell that badly oversimplifies, Fisk argues that the US has always taken Israel's side uncriticially and unequivocably, which Moslems have taken as unfair and inimical to their causes and civilization; the West always makes expedient promises that it never intends to keep, while allowing the Israelis free rein to be as brutal as they wish with the Palestinians. This, Fisk argues, has contributed to their hostility to the West, even to terrorism. Fisk also laments how this cannot even be questionned - he recounts how often he is often accused of anti-semitism for opinions contrary to the pro-Israeli view. Agree or disagree, this gets you to think more deeply than one is accustomed to about this conflict, if your major source is American newspapers, that is.

Fourth, this book is a critique of his profession, which now largely has been "embedded" with US soldiers in the Irak conflict. Here he sets a high standard indeed, recounting his adventures and near death experiences while doing his job - he was attacked by a mob in Afghanistan, which the Wall Street Journal said he deserved for his "self hatred", that is, his critical comments of Bush's policies! I was shocked to learn that CNN now requires its experts on the scene to submit all comments in advance for "approval" by editors in the US, though had suspected it was like that given how canned CNN has come to sound. While praising a few, Fisk also takes many to task for laxness and sleazy intrigues to their own advantage. In particular, he is very hard on American journalists, most of whom he sees as uncritical and even tendentious in their coverage.

Fifth, there are trenchant analyses of recent events that are as provocative as they are shocking. For example, Fisk believes that the Rabin-Arafat Oslo accords were so slanted in Israel's favor that it was doomed to fail, which really shocked me as it had been universally hailed in the newspapers I read as the best peace possible, etc. But there is also the Algerian revoltes of the 1990s, Beirut, of course, and the many wars of the lsat 30 years. In one section, he gives a fascinating analysis on the relation of Saudi Arabia's brand of conservative Islam, Wahabism, with the Taliban's ideology. It was all a perspective new to me and exactly what I was hoping to find. This includes an analysis of the language and rhetoric used to describe events, which Fisk argues shape not only the way we see things but policy options. For example, in labelling people "terrorists" they become totally indefensible, deserving to be killed by military means; however, as he shows over and over, this label is not consistently applied and used as a substitute for thinking and ends any possibliy of negotiation or conciliation.

Finally, there are amazing personal stories he finds, which make it into mainstream news, from interviews with Bin Laden to a fascinating inquiry to find who manufactured the missiles that killed innocent Palestinians. The book is packed with stories like these far too numerous to count. They can be tragic and cruel, meaningless deaths at the hands of those who are rarely punished.

All in all, reading this was wonderful. He covers the last 30 years in detail, roughly coinciding with the time that I became an obsessive follower of current events. So it is like a review of everything I read about - too quickly - in the Middle East over that time. Every page made me think more deeply on the area than I have in a long time, food for thought that will last me a long long time. Now I will have to read more....much more.

Warmly recommended. Fisk in my view is equally hard on everyone from an ethical point of view and is not biased as he has been accused of being. I will add his newspaper, the Independent, to my list of daily must skims!

Note: I have learned that Fisk is unpopular with his fellow journalists. Several of them who know him - and admit there is a lot of professional jealousy about him - have told me that he is known for making things up or embellishing. While I cannot prove this one way or the other, my sense is that his writing rings true.

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Journalism's Jiminy Cricket, January 11, 2006

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Always let your conscience be your guide", sang Disney's dapper little bug. Robert Fisk adopts this theme in this monumental history of the modern Middle East. Prompted by a World War I soldier father's actions and admonitions, Fisk's sense of justice outweighs that mighty rock sitting at the gate to the Mediterranean Sea. As he travelled from "the Med's" shores to Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine and other states, he watched the growing unrest and resentment as the last world empire retreated to Downing Street and a new one emerged from the shores of the Potomac. With rising anger and no little resentment of his own, he records the sufferings of ordinary people as these empires played nations and their leaders as pawns in what the British Empire deemed "The Great Game". In graphic, and sometimes disturbing prose, he portrays how fear became the catalyst to inflict pain without reason or justice.

It would have been easy for Fisk to simply stack up his notes and have them bound as a volume of essays. Instead, he approaches his task by depicting the recent history of a locale. Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine - the list is a detailed tour of a land deemed by history "The Cradle of Civilization" - hence his derived title. Each nation's recent history is reviewed. It's a sorry tale of interference from "outsiders", whether Christian West or Communist North. Centre to the tale is the imposition of the State of Israel on Palestine by the Balfour Declaration following the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The continuing presence of British and French "mandated" authorities remained a festering irritant to the Muslim populations. An uprising in Iraq in 1920 against the British presaged another, much later, "insurgency" which Fisk recounts in vivid detail.

The journalist in Fisk mostly kept him away from "leaders" except when necessary. Instead, he travels among the general populace, recording their fears, hopes, and all too often, griefs. That close and direct contact nearly cost Fisk his life when a refugee Afghan child identified him as "Mr Bush". That brought rocks, fists and kicking feet. Fisk was saved by an Afghan "Good Samaritan" who took him to a police truck. His reporting of the event was typical of a man who'd spent so much time recording the impact of selfish policies and mindless actions by the Western Powers. Like his rescuer, he forgave his attackers. He knew well what the Afghans had endured during the Russian occupation, Taliban domination and now the bombardment of villages and farms to rid their nation of "terrorists".

The response to his account regrettably typified what journalism had become at the beginning of the 21st Century. Instead of applauding his escape and his willingness to risk violence for a story, Western commentators jeered and vilified Fisk. Mark Steyn of "The Wall Street Journal" typified what Western journalists had become. By absolving the Afghans who resented the American presence in their country, Fisk, according to Steyn, had by association absolved the men who'd crashed airliners into the World Trade Centre on 2001-09-11. Fisk had been among the few writers who'd tried to explain what feelings might have led to such an act, while condemning it as a crime against humanity. Readers and other journalists didn't want explanations, they wanted revenge. The cost of that vengeance, Fisk contends, is the killing and maiming of thousands of innocent civilians - far more than died in the collapsing towers.

Fisk is clear on the fallacies and fabrications underlying the "Bush Crusade" into Iraq. He's even more vivid on its likely enduring results. The Iraqis, once victims of a Baath Party rule he vigorously condemns, now suffer a foreign occupation they neither wished nor will tolerate. He describes how manipulation of the words "terror" and "terrorist" has given the United States and Britain their excuse to commandeer the rich oil reserves under Iraq's deserts. By describing anybody who opposes their intrusion as "terrorist", in the same way that Israel could label Palestinians objecting to the colonisation of their lands, any act of suppression in justified. If air strikes or tank attacks kill civilians, whether armed or not, the dead are quickly deemed "terrorists" - even the children whose mangled bodies are part of the "body count" no "coalition" official will make. The media, he argues, not only fails to challenge these tactics, but willingly adopts them into their own accounts, furthering the deception and transforming it into common language.

It is the accounts of these innocent dead that inflate this book - giving it the size bemoaned by some reviewers. That plaint can only remind one of the Director of the Vienna Opera on Mozart's work - "too many notes". Are there too many words in this book? What would you excise: Fisk's account of his father's impact on his life? The stories of the dead or wounded in the Middle East resulting from ideological conflicts or repressive governments? Should we not read of Israel's standing aside while refugees are slaughtered, or US jets razing Baghdad streets? There is clearly nothing here deserving deletion. Indeed, it is among the most important "must read" books to appear. Do so and learn what has been kept hidden. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

69 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fisk's definitive work, November 18, 2005

By	A Lump Of Green Slime (In a Swamp) - See all my reviews

I think this mammoth but absorbing book will eventually be regarded as the definitive journalistic work on recent Middle Eastern history and politics. In it, Fisk comes across more as a Wilfrid Owen of prose than some left-wing ideologue. What I also like about his writing is that it shows up all the main protagonists (Bush, Blair, Sharon, Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah,Islamic Jihad, Shin Bet, Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Khomeni and so on) for what they are or were: as bad as each other. And that's what infuriates the different supporters of this motley bunch, isn't it? Nobody gets to claim the moral high ground.