170 of 173 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
brilliant historical analyses, moving memoir, and howl of outrage, January 12, 2007
This review is from: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Hardcover)
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.
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66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Journalism's Jiminy Cricket, January 11, 2006
This review is from: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Hardcover)
"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]
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83 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fisk's definitive work, November 18, 2005
This review is from: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Hardcover)
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.
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