Posted on 11/26/2005 9:30:14 PM PST by Pikamax
Every good reporter knows that prediction is best left to astrologers. But Robert Fisk -- legendary war correspondent, three-time interviewer of Osama bin Laden, witness to Middle Eastern intrigues for three decades -- has a confidence that would make the Oracle blush.
In 1991, he scorned the "myth of a short, sharp victory" over Saddam Hussein in the coming war to free Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. Victory came in just six weeks.
In 2001, he doubted Afghanistan's Taliban would throw down their arms in the face of the U.S.-led assault after 9/11. Five weeks later, the Taliban abandoned Kabul.
In 2003, he warned that the invasion of Iraq was "going wrong" and the battle for Baghdad could be another Stalingrad. Two weeks later, the capital fell with little resistance.
Advertisements
But on one important count, the British author and journalist has been proved right: The aftermath of the invasion has been a mess. He now calls the U.S. policy doomed. "They have to get out. They will get out. They just need a mechanism to go without humiliation."
He is equally gloomy about the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace, saying Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bold decision this week to bolt his hard-line Likud party will change nothing. As long as there are Jewish settlements in the West Bank, "I don't think there's going to be a serious peace agreement."
With his past mistakes behind him, Mr. Fisk is riding high. Praise for his rants against American arrogance and brutality echoes around the Internet, where he is a hero to Bush bashers. He lectures to adoring university students around North America and the world. At the University of Toronto this week, a packed hall hung on his words.
His new book, a 1,366-page toe crusher called The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, is coming out in Norwegian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, French, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Turkish, Urdu, Persian, Japanese and even, he marvels, Slovenian.
In Toronto on promotional tour that takes him from France and Australia to Japan and Brazil, the 59-year-old veteran is full of boyish spirits and happy to share his sweeping opinions.
The reason for the Iraq war? "It's obviously all about oil, isn't it? If the major export of Iraq was asparagus, do you really think the 3rd Infantry Division would be in Baghdad?"
Western hopes for democracy in the Arab world? "I don't think we want democracy in the Middle East. We want to keep our dictators and soften their image."
On the American empire: "Superpowers have a sort of visceral need to project military strength. To stay behind frontiers makes them look neutered and impotent."
On the sanitizing of war: "Television is very complicit, They won't show the scenes of torn-up bodies being eaten by dogs that I see. If you saw what I see, you would never, ever support a war again."
The Fisk formula mixes vivid reporting on the horrors of war with wild denunciations of those who are to blame -- often, in his view, the Unites States and its allies. The atrocity story (American bomb levels Afghan village; Israeli missile kills Palestinian civilians) is his stock in trade. He has traipsed through hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and bombed-out ruins from Beirut to Baghdad.
No one doubts his courage. He stayed in his Beirut base through the Lebanese civil war. He was in Baghdad when the bombs started falling in 2003. He is one of few Western journalists who still venture out in Iraq, avoiding the safe, U.S.-held Green Zone and travelling in a beat-up car with no guards, so he won't attract attention.
His daring has won him a shelf full of awards (he has been named British International Journalist of the Year seven times) and made him one of the world's more famous and controversial journalists, loathed and loved with equal heat.
No one doubts his story telling skill, either. His new book begins with a riveting tale of his trips to the wilds of Afghanistan to interview Mr. bin Laden.
Over tea in a canvas tent, the terrorist mastermind tells "Mr. Robert" that a bin Laden follower has had a dream about him. In it, a bearded Mr. Fisk rode a horse and wore a flowing robe.
"This means you are a true Muslim," Mr. bin Laden says. Fearing his host wants to recruit him, he replies: "Sheik Osama, I am not a Muslim. I am a journalist. And the job of a journalist is to tell the truth."
But does he? Critics say his fame has grown, he has become less reporter than polemicist, a thinking man's Michael Moore who chooses only the facts that fit his world view. In the Fiskian universe, Arabs are almost always the victims, their plight almost always the fault of Western colonialism, American greed or Israeli brutality.
In a review of The Great War for Civilization, Ethan Bonner of The New York Times writes that "for all the awards he has garnered, and despite his rare combination of scholarly knowledge, experience and drive, Mr. Fisk has become something of a caricature of himself."
In one widely ridiculed article, Mr. Fisk wrote about feeling "self-disgust" when a mob of Afghans beat him about the head with rocks near the border with Pakistan during the U.S.-led attack of 2001. "If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah," he wrote, "I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find."
His critics have even invented a new word: fisking. Popular among Internet bloggers, it means refuting an argument by pointing out its errors of fact or logic one by one. His critics believe that his own journalism always needs a thorough fisking.
He, however, shrugs off such attacks. In person, the renowned prophet of doom is open, energetic and quick to laugh, a round elf of a man in the uniform of a middle-aged Brit: corduroy trousers, blue cardigan and old duffle coat.
He makes no excuse for having opinions. Anyone who reads history, he insists, must see that "we've been involved in assisting this curtain of oppression that lies over the Middle East. We've appointed many of the kings and presidents. We supported Saddam right through the Iran-Iraq war."
He insists that many of the region's problems spring from Western powers' colonial machinations. "In the 17 months that followed the First World War, we, the victors -- Britain and France -- drew the borders of Ireland and Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East, and I've spent my entire professional career watching the people in those places burn" -- a ringing quote that matches, almost word for word, a sentence in the book's preface.
It also happens to match the historical analysis of Osama bin Laden, who delivers jeremiads on the damage Western "crusaders" have done to the Muslim world.
So it's understandable that Mr. bin Laden did Mr. Fisk the dubious honour of mentioning him by name in a speech last year, advising people to read "my interviews with Robert Fisk" because, said the world's most wanted man about the world's most opinionated reporter, "I consider him to be neutral."
Robert Fisk -- legendary turd.
He would have told us all in 1946 that Japan could not become a self-governing entity either and that we just wanted our own emperor there with a softer image.
that's just as bad.
So, THAT is why gas was over $3.00 a gallon a few weeks ago! It also explains beautifully why the price of gas, on average, has gone UP since 9-11...
Sounds like he's wrong almost all the time.
Libs never let something as simple as facts get in the way of their talking points...so what if he's wrong, he has talking points to spew out!
If footloose and fancy free, Fisk could marry Galloway. It's legal over there ain't it?
I don't know if you are a muslim or not... But you are definitely not a 'journalist', as the word is understood in modern parlance... You are an 'opiner'.. and not a very good one at that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.