The name Robert Fisk was new to me when my friend Chris dropped this weighty-in-every-sense book on me many weeks ago. A reporter for the UK newspaper The Independent for several decades, Fisk has his own unofficial website. This is an advocacy site, though not affiliated with Fisk himself. Why does a reporter who lives in the Middle East and has covered its conflicts for three decades inspire people to come to his defense? Because he also knows how to rile people up, by speaking truth (as he sees it) to power.
The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East is a well-edited collection of his reports from every battlefield and conflict in the Middle East (and extending to Algeria) since the early 1980s. It’s a devastating, depressing view of how history repeats itself, and extraordinarily well written. Otherwise, plowing through 1,286 pages of death, hypocrisy, torture and other happy stories would have really been hard. As it was, I am both more educated and ever more depressed about the foundation the last 100 years — and especially the most recent 40 — have created for fundamental and violent disagreement in this crucible.
Much of the broad sweep of his reporting is known if you’ve been paying attention, but the details and the anecdotes matter. And the perspective matters. Fisk was shredded for this September 12, 2001 article, where he connected the dots between America’s role in the Middle East and the 9/11 attacks. With the raw emotion of that day now in the past, the brief article is remarkable for its perception and understanding of the root causes. Fisk does not defend the actions; he does attempt to describe the sequence of events from a point of view that’s hard to achieve in the West. And he laid the attacks at Osama bin Laden’s door earlier than most anyone, as far as I know.
I don’t know if Fisk is always right, but he’s certainly made me think. The repeated stumbles of our entry into Iraq in 2003 and ongoing occupation (5 years!) make me wish more people were forced into thought. I’m curious whether James Fallows and Robert Fisk have spoken. At least when it comes to Iraq, they’ve often taken the same close look at the reality of the situation. Fallows, though, has reviewed the American (especially Washington DC) perspective, where Fisk is capturing the raw reality in Baghdad.
I try to remain optimistic as a general rule. On these topics, though, realism carries more weight. Fisk’s volume is more than a dose of reality: it’s a scouring flood, leaving me wondering what’s next.
Fisk has his own section in the Independent and his own RSS feed. Subscribed.