The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East Reviews

• Cynical, tirade, good journalism, colorful

  
  By A2Z4KA3EFQWZOX on 2005-12-10
  This long winded Cynical tirade chronicles many years of Fisk's experiences in the Middle East. There is plenty of dislike to go around. He speaks about riding with the Muhadeen who fought the Russians in Afghanistan, tells us of the horrors of Saddam Hussiens prisons, the Lebanese sadness and of the `last colonial war' fought by Israel. He speaks with passion about Gaza and his experiences of having his car broken into while living in Abu Tor in Jerusalem. Here we glimpse the anger of Israelis after the Passover bombing and the follow up operation, we also see the anger of Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians.
  
  Probably the greatest, newest and most original part of this book is that it contains the only long description of the deportation of the entire Palestinian community, that numbered over 300,000, from Kuwait after the Gulf War. Fisk witnessed not only the Palestinians support for Saddam but also the subsequent killing of hundreds of Palestinians by Kuwaitis after the war. We hear for the first time this true and shocking story, one the UN never noticed and one the world never cared about. This story alone makes the book worth it because no other book on the Middle East dares speak of this saga, the Palestinians were invited as foreign workers into Kuwait in the 1950s, Arafat was even there, only to be totally ejected in 1990, and replaced by Pakistanis and Phillipinoes.
  
  Fisk uncovers many stories. He is rife with condemnation for all, especially Israel, but others too. He pulls no punches when speaking of Saddam or the Afghans. The view of this book is that the entire middle east has been `conquered' by the West. He speaks memorably of his father and recalls stories from the great war. He even speaks of the Armenians Genocide and claims that it too is a Holocaust and wonders why his editor wont use a capital H and then turns his tirade into a mildly anti-semitic outburst against who gets to have a monopoly on genocide. Rambling, brilliant, offensive. A worthwhile tome, a contribution.
  
  Seth J. Frantzman
  
  
  

• An amazing read!

  
  By AX8RIHQP9X47 on 2005-11-13
  A very informative book! A must read for anyone interested in the history of this important region. Some reviewers would have us believe that historical facts are biased, they exist independent of politics. To anyone who is serious about reading factual and a trully objective analysis of the how and why the middle east is as it is should buy and read this book.
  
  

• Outstanding book on the Middle East

  
  By A196W9YF78U26R on 2005-11-11
  I'm close to halfway through this title. Although the page count is somewhat daunting, I have never picked it up and not become immediately engrossed.
  
  Not a book for the faint-of-heart, as it describes many war scenes and tales of torture and mayhem. Perhaps the strongest parts of the book are when Fisk reports from his personal experiences in the Middle East. The writing is always superb, and my admiration for the writer grows by the page.
  
  

• brilliant historical analyses, moving memoir, and howl of outrage

  
  By AUM3YMZ0YRJE0 on 2007-01-12
  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.
  
  

• A Poor Production Job

  
  By A33ALOFWK986HV on 2005-11-13
  This is no doubt an important book by a respected expert in the subject matter. The problem is that the book is poorly manufactured and, therefore, extremely difficult to read. It runs to 1136 pages in only one volume. It weighs 3.4 pounds. To get it all in one volume, the publisher chose an extremely small type face, 10 or 11 point at most. The copy I received had two damaged pages which is not surprising since the binding is too flimsy to withstand the stresses of handling such a lengthy tome. The book deserved to appear in two volumes and in a readible type face with a strong binding. It is really a shame. Wiliam J. Potts, Jr.
  
  
• Fisk's definitive work
  By A2NR8VJ77QF9NN on 2005-11-18
  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.
  
  
• When journalism becomes polemic- to be read with extreme caution
  By AHD101501WCN1 on 2005-12-15
  Fisk is a veteran Middle East reporter whose knowledge of the area is almost as great as his prejudices about it. Reading this work is not recommended to those who do not have a quite deep understanding of the area, for the book is filled with both information and misinformation.
  Fisk provides information on the expulsion of three- hundred Palestinians who lived in Kuwait during and after the First Gulf War. He also provides information on some of the barbarities of Saddam Hussein and his regime of corruption in Iraq.
  But Fisk is a vicious anti- American and anti- Israel propagandist. He was one of those reporters who created the hysteria around an alleged 'massacre of Palestinians in Jenin' which even the U.N. later reported never took place. Of course he minimizes the background to the Israeli operation in Jenin, and shows little sympathy for the casualties Israel took there because of the special precautions taken to protect the Palestinian civilian population.
  Fisk is a moral barbarian who sides with the Evil against the Good. How else can one understand his wholesale condemnation of US actions in the Middle East, and his relentless effort to blame the West for civilizational failings of Arab- Islamic culture.
  As Andrea Levin writes in a 'Camera' critique of Fisk's reporting work on a BBC documentary about the Middle East. " Fisk parrots the standard cant that European anti-Semitism and the Nazi Holocaust resulted in the foisting of an alien people onto indigenous Arabs.
  
  Fisk is equally mute about the PLO's reign of terror in southern Lebanon to which Lebanese of all faiths were subjected, and omits completely the seven years Israel endured PLO artillery bombardment and attacks against her population. Thus the 1982 invasion is, in Fisk's inventive history, not an action taken after years of futile Israeli efforts to curb PLO assaults, but an apparently unprovoked aggression."
  Fisk that is not a reporter who is interested in supplying the total truth, ' all the facts and nothing but the facts'. He is rather a very biased observer whose agenda informs what he will and will not report upon.
  
  
  
  
  
• If you don't care about factual errors and hate Israel, this is for you.
  By AKGLOIEDXZP47 on 2006-02-03
  Here's a sample of the many factual mistakes in this book (taken from a review in Commentary Magazine by Efraim Karsh):
  
  "First there is the problem of simple accuracy. It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921, and both he and his younger brother, King Faisal I of Iraq, hailed not from a "Gulf tribe" but rather from the Hashemites on the other side of the Arabian peninsula. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein's rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was minister of defense, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth."
  
  Some basic facts anyone should be able to get right, especially from someone who thinks he's an "expert" in the area.
  
  
• Good versus Evil
  By ABLRWZA40GHJK on 2005-12-06
  I had great expectations for this work, after reading `Pity the Nation' some years ago. I was not disappointed.
  
  Damned by all sides in the Mideast (depending on his subject), Fisk stubbornly manifests the human price in what has all-too-often become a PR exercise glibly described in Orwellian phrases, soft euphemisms, or autocratic bombast.
  
  All while suicide bombers kill (terrorism), and hellfire missiles retaliate (collateral damage).
  
  Fisk provides a broad panorama of a century of western colonialism in the Muslim world. It's a tragic history in which we are now (with the help of a few ideologues and politicians) inserted. Indeed, we are the most recent contributors.
  
  What do the Iraqis think of us, now that they're `liberated?' Is it the `Cakewalk' Ken Adelman promised? Did they greet us with flowers? Has `bursting the terrorist bubble' yielded what Tom Friedman wanted? Is a 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths enough to satisfy Tom? Is `Iraqi Freedom' self-financing (as Richard Perle promised)?
  
  Fisk provides, as only he can, an impartial, human view of the dilemma. You decide.
  
  
• A View from Someone Close (Maybe too Close) to the Scene
  By A1M8PP7MLHNBQB on 2005-11-15
  In 1136 pages you have room for a lot of words to say things. And in this book Mr. Fisk says a lot of things. In part this book is a travelogue. There's a lot of where Mr. Fisk was and what he was doing. In part this book is a history. He has lived in the Middle East for thirty years and reported on what was happening there. In part this is an analysis of what went wrong in thirty, or maybe a hundred years, or maybe since the Crusades of interaction between the west and the Middle East. In part this book is Mr. Fisk's diatribe against Bush and Blair.
  
  In reading the book I am left with the feeling that he believes that the best thing for the Middle East would be for the westerners to pull out completely. It doesn't seem to matter that many of the problems in the Middle East are of their own making. The west did not create Saddam Hussein, we may have helped him but he came from Iraq. We did not help him gas the Kurds.
  
  The one big point I find missing in this book is a discussion on oil. He mentions oil only as a passing comment about the American invasion of Iraq. Should bin Laden take over Saudi Arabia and stop oil flowing, what does Mr. Fisk think would happen when people in America, in Canada, in Norway started to freeze?
  
  The Middle East and its problems are going to be with us for a long time. This book presents one view, and it's an interesting view, well worth considering. Maybe though, Mr. Fisk is just a little bit too close to the problem.
  
  
• Great Snapshots -- Flawed, Biased, and Incomplete History
  By AYHV1T7NJGIS on 2005-12-06
  The strength of this book lies in the many anecdotes that Fisk recounts spanning his journalistic career. They are almost like snapshots from a travel album, albeit a album of a often troubling and horrific journey through Middle Eastern hotspots. Fisk has covered a great deal of ground and has often interviewed participants on both sides of the various regional conflicts. There are scenes related here that you might not find anywhere else. This is the book's strength, and if Fisk had left it at that it might have been a much better book.
  
  Unfortunately, as an analytical history of modern Middle Eastern conflict, this book is very uneven. The problem is that a reader new to the subject may have little awareness of how much essential background Fisk is leaving out. Outside of the chapter on Afghanistan, there is very little discussion of the role of Soviet Union, or for that matter, any real analysis of the politics of oil. In turn, this renders any sort of balanced analysis of US policy impossible. Fisk seems to provide or withhold context as suits his own prejudices. He emphasizes what interests him, and ignores other points that a more objective historian would have brought to the reader's attention. He is frequently unduly dismissive of points that shouldn't be so summarily dismissed. He is sarcastic and at times even insulting. This is not careful, thorough, analytical history.
  
  I do not dispute the fact that many readers will find things within this book worth their effort. However, I would recommend that you read other histories so as to understand what Fisk isn't telling you.
  
  
• Spot on
  By A3FZT9H0WZGPAP on 2005-12-17
  I've been reading Robert Fisk for a while. This is a great culmination of his work. I can say a lot, but a recent Salon.com review entitled "Blood and betrayal" does it best. Some say he is only a propagandist; I say he is a counter to the existing propaganda that you can read anywhere and everywhere. This creates balance; you have to read Robert Fisk if you want to consider yourself well informed. The Salon review puts it best: "Fairness [contrasted with objectiveness], however, is quite another matter -- it is indispensable to a journalist. And like him or not, Fisk is fair. He presents both sides. Whether he believes both sides is something else entirely."
  
  
• A brave and honest book from a brave and honest man
  By A13BXXVG17WZ8P on 2006-03-10
  Robert Fisk's book is big, 1.5 kg big. It is his meticulously researched, and detailed exposition of what make 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.
  
  Reading this book, and it weighs one and a half kilos, is like being personally beaten over the head with it by Robert Fisk himself - the message is persistent and insistent, and it is painful. Take that, John, and that and that, says Robert - that's what happens when we keeping meddling in the Middle East. OK? John, Get it?  -  ok, OK -  Robert, stop hitting me like that - ouch-  do it to Blair or Bush, please  - ouch -  I agree with you, I've got the message -  the Middle East is a mess - Western meddling over many years has made it much more of a mess - we should get out of the region and leave the Middle East to sort its mess itself, if it can. OK. OK. Thank you, Robert. 
  
  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, 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, the tyranny of Sadam, the cruelty of the Algerian civil war, 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. He also shows 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. 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.
  
  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, Iran, 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 . When the generals talk of "colateral damage", Fisk talks of dismembered bodies, eyeless children and limbless victims, many of whom he names. 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.
  
  In the Iran-Iraq war (when the west supported Sadam Hussein, remember), over a million died. 500,000 Iraqi children died during the Iraq sanctions, 100,000 have died since the start of the Iraq war. Over 2,000 US servicemen and women have died. Over 200 billion dollars have been squandered on this pointless and illegal war, and still Bush wants more. This book is Robert Fisk's testament. He is a truly brave and humane person. I have been listening to Robert for some years, I just wish those in power in the West would have done the same.
  
  
• Journalism's Jiminy Cricket
  By AJDYDG7YZY9QL on 2006-01-11
  "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]
  
  
• Required Reading for all "Pundits"
  By A3OTXBRRHMK3YM on 2006-04-13
  Robert Fisk's "Great War..." is one of the most informative books on recent (and not so recent) Middle East history. The firsthand accounts of the Iran-Iraq war and it's aftermath are especially chilling. This book should be required reading for those who brush off anything other than the very broken "Party Line" of US and Western "foreign policy". After reading this book, you will be struck dumb by the West's indifference to the value of a living, breathing human being.
  
  
• a great firsthand account of conflict in the middle east (revised)
  By A2SATUXND62N8C on 2006-02-02
  This volume of writings from Robert Fisk provides some great first hand accounts of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq , Israel, the West Bank and other areas of the middle east. While there are strong condemnations of the actions of the west in these conflicts, that some readers will disagree with, he writes from a firsthand perspective getting up close with people involved in the conflicts and offering many portraits of protaganists and vicims of the conflicts.
  
  The best writing here is when he gives vivid portraits of people caught up on both sides of the conflict without passing judgement such as his experience of sharing a ride to Kabul in a Russian troop transport during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. After been seen interviewing some Russian soldiers, he fears that the Afghans will treat him as a collaborator so he ends up getting a lift in a troop transport. The driver shares some of his food and talks about his liking for the Beatles. He then hands Fisk a gun and expects him to act as lookup during the drive.
  
  Some of the analysis can be read as one sided although no-one is given a pass on their actions. For example in his commentary on the Hebron Massacre, he neglects to mention the Israeli reaction in condemning the massacre and outlawing the Hach party, but his point in that section about the different use of language to describe the actions of different groups is still a valid one.
  
  Critics, here and elsewhere, have have quoted the Commentary magazine article which criticizes the book's accuracy. However on checking for the relevant sections in the book where these inaccuracies might occur, I could not find some of the inaccuracies mentioned (at least for the cases I checked using the 1st American hardback edition) and some of the remaining instances may be more appropriately characterized as journalistic simplification rather than inaccuracies. Given that Oliver Miles points out some of the same mistakes in his review in the Guardian, it is possible that these reviewers used the British edition or a preview copies.
  
  For example:
  
  The Commentary review states "Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem"
  
  But on page 501, I find the following phrase:
  "If this was a war on terror, I wrote in my paper that awful spring, then Jesus was not born in Bethlehem". Here Fisk appears to be using the phrase as a variation on "if this is true, I'll eat my hat". Perhaps a poor choice of metaphors but its a stretch to use it as an factual error in Jesus's birthplace.
  
  The Commentary review states "Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected" as an example of inaccuracy.
  
  In The Great War on Civilisation, we find on page 356, "Archive pictures in the same issues show the Grand Mufti - the supreme religious officer and the most important elected Muslim leader - sitting proudly ...". Here Robert Fisk is referring to an issue of a political magazine, "Palestine", founded by Hajj Amin al-Husseini, so it is not clear whether the section within dashes is a quote from the magazine or if Fisk uses it ironically.
  
  Furthermore, we find on page 358:
  
  "Ironically it was the British - impressed by his family's status and his nationalist standing among Arab Palestinians - who engineered his election to the post of Grand Mufti"
  
  The review quotes another inaccuracy, "Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein's rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power".
  
  On page 101, Fisk quotes "Khomeini moved his exile from Turkey to the Shia holy city of Najaf in Saddam Hussein's Iraq". This is arguably inaccurate as Hussein was not officially leader at this point. Hussein held vice president position in the ruling Revolutionary Command Council from 1969 onwards and played a key role in domestic and foreign policy for many years before formally assuming power in 1979. Khomeni moved to Iraq in 1965 and remained there until 1978 (source: Encarta). Other online articles describe Sadaaam as being sole architect of Iraqs foreign policy during this period and defacto ruler in the later part of the '70s. Hence the description of Saddam's Iraq, can arguably be excused as journalistic simplification and later in the book on page 150, Fisk clarifies the timelines of when Hussein rises to power.
  
  The Commentary review gives another example, "Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968"
  
  In The Great War on Civilisation, on page 383, the footnote states describes "UN Security Council resolution 242 of 22 November 1967"
  
  The Commentary review quotes another inaccuracy "Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921, and both he and his younger brother, King Faisal I of Iraq, hailed not from a "Gulf tribe" but rather from the Hashemites on the other side of the Arabian peninsula."
  
  On page 145, there is a reference to the Hashemite King Feisal, but on page 148 refers to him as "a monarch from a Gulf tribe". There are several references to the correctly spelled Emir Abdullah throughout the book and use of the title King on page 801, without stating when he transitioned from Emir to King but I could not find anything stating that he became king in 1921. Specifically page 801 states that "Winston Churchill was to appoint King Hussein's grandfather Abdullah" as emir of Transjordan". Later it refers to "Abdullah - now King".
  
  Characterising the Hashemites as a gulf tribe does seem to be a genuine inaccuracy.
  
  While there may be still some inaccuracies in the American edition, much of these appear to have been corrected.
  
  
• A Mighty Tome From The Number #1 English Speaking Correspondent on the Scene
  By AAPA4KQWA7UXN on 2006-04-30
  Who will ever forget Robert Fisk's trenchant reports from Baghdad in the weeks leading up to the war and especially those in the first hours, days of the invasion? This reporting was courageous, first rate, and historic. Where would our knowledge of what was going on on the ground have been without these ground zero communications in those crucial hours of destiny? For this service alone, the book deserves our attention.
  For better or worse, few of us have the time to embark on such a demanding venture as reading this work presents - the life of a man, the blood of nations, the biography of large scale populations, and the fate of moral values. Perhaps, we all should stop and read it. What could be more critical to our lives that what is in this text? What is presented is the ultimate examination of the continued brutality of our ongoing assault on life. I cannot second guess Fisk - as others have done in their reviews. I wasn't there. He was. What I do know is that no one writing about the war has spent as much time on the ground in as many crucial situations - and few have such an elevated perspective.
  From the writing angle - one might wish the book was in several volumes - a procedure which might have tightened up some of the sprawling narrative. But this story has emerged as the central narrative of our time, and attempts to delimit it, in retrospect, seem artificial and paltry. And no English speaking journalist is in a better position to relate it than Fisk.
  And what is the content of this narrative? The horror - the horror which Fisk (who really is a primary standard bearer for integrity in journalism today) presents in meticulous detail.
  And why? What is shown here again and again is the brutality and madness of policies which utterly ignore the sanctity of human life - itself the pretense of civilization - and it's disregard, the grist of the hypocrasies of those who claim to base those policies on ideologies of human betterment.
  Fisk shows us with his usual adroit and accurate reading of events - the madness which is threatening the survival of humankind - not merely 'civilization' - and to his argument, gives us a massive 30 year historical justification in first-hand witness.
  Thus the book is signal - the most important work on the Middle East. Why? Nowhere else available is such an extensive first hand account combined with such a passionate and humane account of the ideological underpinnings of events - too horrible for most of to contemplate, no less to reflect on, analyse, distill, and report at the highest levels of insight and dignity. An achievement of Golgothan proportions.
  
  
  
• Robert's howl
  By A1OF0ZN9MVL2XL on 2006-02-15
  Robert Fisk's latest book The Great War for Civilisation" is 1038 pages of fine print. The UK version is a monumental 1300 pages. It takes dedication and strong reading glasses. I'm on page 700 and here's the way it looks so far.
  
  It's a shocking book and sure to become a classic in a category all its own. Fisk is a seasoned journalist who knows how to tell a story. I share his viewpoints so it's hard for me to put the book down. Yet at the same time, the gruesome nature of much of the tale makes me wonder why I continue. He's seen war for thirty years in the Middle East and it seems to have pushed him very close to the edge.
  
  The book is a long tortuous wailing rant against war and human depravity. It's not so much anti-Arab or anti-Israeli as it is anti-war, anti government and more generically, anti-ideology of any sort with ample passages substantiating his ample doubts about humanity in general.
  
  It's a turgid and oppressive examination of the limits of human depravity that seems to conclude there are none. Unbelievably horrible stories followed by even more excruciatingly grotesque ones. After 700 pages there is no end in sight. One wonders why they read on but there is a morbid fascination with a narrative that is so close to the momentous events shaping our times.
  
  He's not talking about an aberrant depraved mass murderer. He's talking about a depraved civilisation. He's talking about our government and all governments in the Middle East and all those governments that effect the Middle East. It's about the people that run them and the people that suffer from it all.
  
  And suffer they do, children, women, old men, young men. Gas attacks, rape, disembowelment, beheadings and unimaginable torture. With excrutiating agony of detail he again and again asks himself how people can do these things but, he never finds an answer.
  
  It's a magisterial exegisis that leaves one feeling like they have been run over and ground into the dust. Its reminiscent of the James Agee and Walker Evans classic "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". Fisk is not the meticulous documentarian that Agee was but the sheer length and literal weight of his book, as well as its oppressive contents, gives one the same numbing sense of ennuie, heaviness and unremitting weariness.
  
  He knows the big players. He seems to be on first name basis with the likes of Osama bin Ladin and Yassar Arafat. But he gives equal dignity, and often more dignity, to refugees, distraught mothers, embittered fathers, grieving sons, all the human detritus of incessant warfare.
  
  He's been at it a long time, knows a lot of people, and took copious notes. His massive storehouse of facts is hard to argue with. His outrage and blatancy will be easy to dismiss by most Americans who like a more santized "balanced" view of history. Brits in general, like to be blunt more than Americans. I doubt that Hollywood will want to make a movie of it.
  
  
• Imperfect but impressive
  By A1PN3R8DXRQ1C3 on 2006-02-07
  I wound up buying the UK edition of this book - a 1300-page hardback so heavy it had broken through one side of the cardboard box it was posted in. Robert Fisk's massive volume chronicling nearly thirty years of reporting from the mideast would easily go down as one of the great tomes in its class ... if there were a little less of Fisk himself in it. Nevertheless, as a physically and morally brave individual, a solid writer, an unbending critic of both Arab society and Western realpolitik, and one of the few Western correspondents who speaks fluent Arabic and actually lives in the region (not to speak of the unsurpassed number of journalism awards), Fisk remains the gold standard of middle east reporting. It's difficult to think of an equivalent reporter who could replace him. So, for all this, a new book by Fisk - much less a book covering the *totality* of history which he has witnessed for himself - is a must-read.
  
  Fisk's humanity in particular stands out - time and again he visits gore-bespattered hospitals in war zones, and when he describes the victims and their suffering he takes the trouble to name every one of them, often imparting some small frgament of personal information to make them stand out from the amorphous and dehumanizing casualty statistics. His unsqueamish criticism of the depradations of the the Israeli military and political elite is juxtaposed with his obvious disdain for Arab leaders and his uninflecting will to expose the various cruelties of the Arab/Muslim world - which makes him the bete noire of pro-Israel critics in the west trying to discredit him as a unipolar 'Israel-hater'.
  
  Herein the reader will find three interviews with Osama bin Laden; coverage of how the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan went wrong almost from the start; stories of ruthless Khomeiniite purges during the 1979 Iranian revolution; a revisiting of Britain's first invasion of Iraq; the vicissitues of Saddam Hussein's abortive invasion of Iran; the story behind the rocketing of the Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes; the Iran-Contra machinations; the slow-burning fiasco of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference; the betrayal of the Iraqi Gulf War insurrectionsts; the dual misery caused to Iraqis by sanctions and depleted urnaium; scenes from the arms trade, and so on and on.
  
  The best parts? His chapter on the Armenian Genocide is a tour de force for which he deserves full credit. (How many books on the Middle East even trouble to mention this terrible chapter of history?) And his three chapters on the Israel/Palestine conflict are solid, gripping, undeniably balanced, and unsparingly critical. Plus the few moments of mirth are truly - if darkly - funny. Fisk describes how during the Gulf War journalists must listen to the US brass dehumanize the conflict with such terminology as 'target-rich environments' and 'collateral damage'. Later, having accidentally bombed Iraqi civilians, a US General concludes his explanatory speech before a roomful of reporters and then - in Fisk's words - finds himself in 'a question-rich environment'.
  
  Flaws? They're there. The tracing of the middle east's problems back to the post-WWI carving-up of the Ottoman Empire is the titular hook upon which Fisk's chronicle is hung. But such a linchpin is too generalised, remote and weak to hold Fisk's narrative together strongly, and it leads to much irrelevant digression into his father's WWI military career (including one whole chapter). I have no problem with the book's length: I doubt even the most ruthless concision could have brought this tome under the 1000-page mark without skipping whole eras, but *some* concision could have improved the pace and made for a more solid, substantial read. Plus there are some factual inaccuracies - for example, Tariq Aziz was never Iraq's Prime Minister, just onetime Deputy PM; and it was not Napoleon who burned down Moscow, but rather the Russians who set it ablaze as he was arriving. (Other mistakes were listed by Oliver Miles in The Guardian in a captious review that concentrated on little else.) In the end, I would like to have been able to read more political/historical analysis than on-the-spot reporting, but that's just me.
  
  Overall, Fisk's mammoth tome may be bickered about but it can hardly be ignored. Personally, I don't think it's as focused and hard-bitten (nor even as well-written) as his earlier book Pity the Nation. But as a volume of first-hand middle east reporting, for a combination of sheer scale and some quality The Great War for Civilisation is an important contribution to the canon and is not likely to be outclassed for some time.
  
  
• The Most Completely Unbiased Work on the Middle East Ever Written!
  By ACYSFKB7WERH3 on 2006-04-23
  Others have dealt with topics covered in this book in great detail and for the most part in a phraiseworthy fashion that it deserves. It should be mandatory reading for all Americans who think they know enough about the Middle East to express an opinion, since it would enlighten them as to the perversion of historical fact promoted by agents and authors of the former colonial powers and present neo-colonialists and their supporters. In view of Fisk's very even handed apportionment of blame for the racism, terrorism, genocide and exploitation that is the hallmark of modern Middle East history, it is very revealing of Mr Altman's bias in accusing Fisk of hatred of the U.S. and Israel!
  
  
• Last Remaining Light
  By A26D35W2MWVZYP on 2006-03-25
  So many things happen by chance. Blessed be chance for introducing me to Robert Fisk and this great piece of work. He is an extraordinary writer and tells it like it is. You cannot go wrong with someone of such demeanor.
  
  The book is a laborious read, yet well worth it. Continually fascinating, it has opened my eyes. He provides evidence and describes the great hypocrises of nations and the inhumanity...all past actions which have led us to where we are now and what is happening in the world. History repeats itself. You will NEVER hear such truth in any US publication. I would pay $100 for this book! I have been inspired!
  
  
• This book should not get five stars; it should get six.
  By AR59N63XZV9P4 on 2006-04-12
  This book is the most brilliant and compassionate that I have ever read. Based on first hand research, and thorough investigation, Fisk gives us the benefit of having lived out in the Middle East for the past thirty years, and describes the horrors of war that he has witnessed, while other journalists stay in the relative protection of hotels, and report on what the military tells them. At last we have the opportunity to see the effect of the West's imperial adventures on the ordinary folk who live in the Middle East, and the resulting misery and pain that they endure while we in America live in blissful ignorance of the suffering that we are causing by our arrogant interference in other countries.
  If you want the real picture of what is going on Out There, read this book.
  Furthermore, Fisk not only has the courage to ask `why?' with respect to the crimes against humanity committed in the USA in September 2001, but also dares to provide us with the answers.
  This book must be the main textbook for all colleges and high schools on the Middle East. At last we can find out what it is like to be the one having bombs dropped on top of you, instead of the one who is dropping them.
  And we have the nerve to wonder why so many of them hate us.
  
  
  
• A MUST Read
  By A1H29QZUS8BMMO on 2005-11-26
  This book is an amazing (and disturbing) journey of politics and conspiracies in the Middle East. I recommend it for all readers who are interested in getting real accounts of events through the eyes of the most prominent western reporter in the Middle East.
  
  
• WAR IS THE TOTAL FAILURE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT
  By A15OZEIN9FM28O on 2006-02-19
  says author Robert Fisk in his famous speech at Berkely. In the author's own words the first 250 pages or so of this rather lengthy tome is the happy part, the rest is the sad and ugly part. What this book really is is a massive educational effort that puts between two covers for the first time a very complete history of why the Mid-East is the disaster it is today. He bangs a bit on just about everyone from Israel to the Western powers in general and shows how the windown of colonialism resulted in the arbitrary drawing of borders, primarily by the French and British that inexorably set the stage for the events leading up to the world that is the Mid-East today. He is appalled at the US invasion of Iraq and totally blind support of Israel. What is happening in the Islamic world today is much like what happened in pre-WWII Germany. The injustices against the Germans led to the rise of the Nazis just has injustice towards the Islamic world is leading to the rise of Islamic fundementalism and a hatred of all things "unIslamic". This book represents a great body of knowlege and experience that is not shared by the leadership of either the US or Britain, who operate from an impregnable bastion of ignorance. The book is a wonderful tirade against war and all of its suffering. He makes it very clear how such things as "The Roadmap to Peace" and demanding that Palestinians recognize Israel are complete and utter impossibilities. It should be required reading for all in the highest levels of the US Government (Brits too). I have lived and worked in the Mid-East for a number of years and this book made a lot of things click for me and it will for you too. Mr. Fisk knows of what he speaks.
  
  It is a long (1100 pages) work and if if you can get through it it will forever alter your view of the Mid-East. Highly recommended.
  
  
  
• Brilliant and factual
  By A2Z7FR2WDSPLVB on 2006-03-30
  Robert Fisk is a rare gem in the journalistic world because he really knows what he is talking about.He is one of the few journalists with a Phd and his work is absolutely of the highest calibre .This book is unbiased and honest.This book exposes the racist and neo-imperlialistic ,neocolonial policies of the US,British or Israeli goverments that have created the disaster in the Middle East.Most journalists like Thomas Friedman and Judith Miller are nothing but propaganda tools of the Israeli right wing and the US Neocons.You can only fight terrorism by building trust and honest relationships in the Middle East not through threat and violence.The one sided hypocritical policies of many US administrations that are blindly pro-Israeli have created alot of anger which can only be solved by a radical change in foreign policy where the US works as fair and equal partners between the Arabs and Israelis.
  
  
• A brilliant, comprehensive and exhaustive read
  By A1RDC0T7JKF6A0 on 2006-08-09
  Before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, most Americans, indeed most people living outside of the region that sits between the border of western China and Morocco's coastline were not interested about bespeckled patch of deserts, mountains, valleys, gorges that had been plagued with violence since time immemorial. However, as the United States' wild forays into Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 came into being, much of that amnesia and blithe disregard dissipated. With that being said, journalist Robert Fisk of the UK newspaper, the Independent, has written an enormous tome that chronicles the Middle East's history and its entanglement with the great "civilised countries" of the West. While many authors have painted the region with a thick brush that simply labels the entire Middle East as a terrorist haven, Fisk is much more sensible to get past the antiquated cliches and banal platitudes that often hamper the ability for many of us to have a clear understanding about a region many of us are quite, emotionally, indifferent to.
  
  Fisk's book begins with his trip to Afghanistan in 1996. After being led from checkpoint to checkpoint, Fisk is presented to none other than Osama bin Laden himself. He holds a cordial interview with him while bin Laden goes on about his latest criticism of the West as Fisk faithfully takes note of his posture, tone, and least to say, his words; the most chilling of which makes one's hair rise: "One of our brothers had a dream..." Fisk's book is essentially about his travels along the Middle Eastern countries and occasionally taps open the history book. His book is revealing and written with excellence and empathy. As he traveled to Afghanistan to cover the war, with the Soviets in 1979, not 2001, he captures the brutality of the Afghan rebels who mercilessly slaughter Soviet teachers, hanging them from telephone wires. Yet it was not all conquest and satellite states for the Soviet Union as Fisk notes, "a modern educational system in which girls as well as boys would go to school, at which young women did not have to wear the veil, in which science and literature would be taught alongside Islam...."It had been trying to create a secular, equal society in the villages around Jalalabad" (page 58).
  
  The next several chapters spans and chronographs the Iranian revolution and its subsequent struggles in fending off the invasion by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which was unconditionally supported by the West. Fisk documents the brutal torture methods employed by the United States' second greatest ally in the Middle East on its domestic population and how the US turned a blind eye against the atrocities. Of course, the author has no kind words to spare for the West's adored "Butcher of Baghdad", constantly and rightly so, castigating him and reminding us of his victims. The Islamic "tribunals" set up by Iran are also extensively mentioned with the US, bizarrely enough, condemning Iran. Yet the United States has no words of regret when it came to downing an Iranian passenger jet during the Iran-Iraq war despite the fact evidence proved an otherwise intentional attack.
  
  Perhaps Fisk's most emotionally driven part of the book is Chapter 10, entitled "The First Holocaust", known much better as the Armenian Genocide. Being an Armenian myself I was surprised to find an entire chapter solely devoted to the near elimination of the Armenian people in 1915, when the Ottoman Turkish government sought to cleanse its minority problem by systematic rape, mass murder, and deportations through the scorching deserts of Syria. Fisk's fervent arguments are seen most pronounced in this chapter as he lambastes the world media which often refers to the event with simple euphemisms: "tragedy", "massacres", and "deportations". He documents how even many Jewish leaders, notably Shimon Peres, refuse to acknowledge the plight of the Armenians as a Genocide. He condemns the present day Turkish government for giving its ridiculous excuses and for denying its own past and goes further to condemn those countries who refuses to do it because of their close relations with the NATO member. Fisk asks us what would happen if world leaders would similarly use those terms to describe the Jewish Holocaust and refer it to a disputed event...of course we all know what would happen if they did.
  
  Of course no Middle Eastern book can be written without mentioning the Palestine-Israel conflict. Three chapters are devoted and while Fisk acknowledges the brutality of the Palestinian suicide bombers he turns and asks why Israel's actions often go uncritcized by the media and by world leaders. He does an exceptional job in not only this section but the entire book by naming for us the once nameless, the victims who weren't famous partisan leaders or known diplomats but those who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. By doing this, he allows us to at least place some sympathy so that those who perished in a cell in Iraq's torture pens do not remain a statistic; only to be cited endlessly twenty years later as a rational for war. He doesn't allow us to forget Israel's indiscrimante military raids which lead to the deaths of thousands and notes the number of UN resolutions it has violated, including building illegal settlements across the West Bank and Gaza. He recognizes the violence committed by the Palestinians but also forces us to take a look and scrutinize Israel's questionable ethics in dealing with the Palestinians.
  
  Fisk's book also contains no praise for the George W. Bush administration, especially its botched invasions of not only Iraq but also Afghanistan. He records the US's reckless trampling of Iraq against its former ally, Saddam and the subsequent looting that took place after Saddam fell as the administration obliviously pointed to it as an example of new found liberty. His work chronicles the Middle East from the 20th century and its frequent interventions by the French, British, and Americans whom constantly change the region's political landscape each time it reconfigures itself to be incongruent with their interests. It is poigant, shocking at times, and he does not spare us from the bloody carnage that has been wrought upon the area for decades and which will most probably continue to do as years pass by as we idlely watch it change all over again.
  
  
• Excellent Book
  By A1J5N0JZIVP4DA on 2007-01-11
  I feel this is an unbiased book and its a must read for those who want to 'see the other side of the story', or to really know the truth. I did not know about the Armenian Holocaust during world war I. Also only after reading the book, did i realize the background of the Iran-Iraq war. Its a serious book, its emotionally disturbing and i would say many a times was painful for me. May I suggest to read the book with an open mind and then watch the 'news' about the middle east ( I am NOT from the Middle east) then you would appreciate the essence of the conflict which has been going on, has resulted in 9/11 and currently is threatening world peace.
  
  
• The Great War For Civilzation
  By A2H74W11FOVA9D on 2006-01-16
  I have just finished reading this long and detailed book. While it to some considerable time to slog through all 1038 pages it was well worth the effort. This book has reinforced my belief that Robert Fisk is the best and most unbiased reporter covering the Middle East.
  
  Do not be surprised or deterred from reading this book by the negative reviews that it is bound to attract. For those negative reviews will almost certainly be coming from people that don't like what he is saying and as such they will try to paint him as an anti-Semitic, anti-American journalist. He is neither. However he is extremely critical of hypocritical, foolish behavior that results in the death and injuries of innocent civilians, regardless of their nationality! This is the main reason why he is hated by his critics. He has the audacity to think that an Arab innocent civilian's life is just as valuable as that of an American or an Israeli.
  
  If you really want to know what has and is happening in the Middle East this is the book to read.
  
  
• A great book
  By A1S60W4KWFX1Y9 on 2006-02-06
  Robert Fisk, the Independent's Middle East Correspondent, has written a great book exposing the evils of colonialism old and new. He combines direct reporting of events with a deep historical understanding.
  
  The Turkish government was responsible for massacring a million Armenians during World War One. Turkish interior minister, Talaat Pasha, cabled to his prefect in Aleppo, "You have already been informed that the Government ... has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey ... Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either sex or age, or to any scruples of conscience." Churchill wrote of the Turks "massacring uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians, men, women and children together, whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust." The founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, denounced the `Armenian massacres' as a `shameful act'.
  
  Writing of Afghanistan, Fisk omits all mention of the prior CIA intervention, but he points out that the progressive Afghan government, which the Soviet Union supported, aimed to provide "a modern educational system in which girls as well as boys would go to school, at which young women did not have to wear the veil, in which science and literature would be taught alongside Islam." It "had been trying to create a secular, equal society in the villages around Jalalabad. It was not the government that was burning the schools and killing the teachers."
  
  Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states that "the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." UN Security Council Resolution 476 stated that Israel's 1980 `Basic Law' declaring Jerusalem its capital was `a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention'. Fisk writes that in the 1980s and 1990s, "Israel reneged on every single major accord and understanding that was signed ...".
  
  After Iraq's US-backed 1980 attack on Iran, UN Security Council Resolution 479 did not call on Iraq to withdraw from Iranian territory; it just called for a ceasefire. The Security Council only `demanded' a ceasefire in 1987. US and British warships supported Iraq by escorting its ships through the Gulf.
  
  At the end of the 1990 war against Iraq, the US government assured Iraq that its withdrawing troops would not be attacked. But, after the ceasefire, USAF and RAF planes massacred thousands of soldiers who had already surrendered, the infamous `turkey-shoot' at Mutla Ridge.
  
  The New York Times reported in 20 July 2003 that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval was required if "any planned airstrike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed and all of them were approved." This is clear evidence of war crimes guilt.
  
  
  
  
• A Journalist's Eye View of the Middle East
  By A3DXVAI08P00HD on 2006-03-30
  If we look back at history, there are two types of historian; those who were there, and those who write about an event based on records after it happened.
  
  Fisk, while a Journalist, is also a historian in the first category.
  
  Sadly, human history in all places is filled with the darkest brutality and torture as well as the brightest summits of beauty. Humans seem to have an equal capacity to kill and hate as to love.
  
  The Buddha said 2,500 years ago 'all is suffering' and the ancient Gnostics regarded the world as the creation of a demon. The terrible catalogue of torture, massacre and evil in this book would seem to convince one that this is true. However, the evil catalogued in this book has a very human face; those who perpretate the evil range from torturers who are tormentors by night and rather banal people when they return to normal life, making one recall Hannah Arendt's analysis of the 'banal' nature of evil. And indeed, the horror and suffering which occurs in each page of this book, from the insane massacres of the Algerian civil war to the bombing of Iraq, come simply from human greed, ethnic and religious hatred, and the quest for personal political power, motives which have remained unchanged in thousands of years of history. One should remember atrocities of similar scale have occured in much of Africa, where Western geo-political influence has been substantially less in the Middle East (given less self-interest is at stake) and also in Europe itself during the First and Second World Wars. Evil has complex social, psychological and political causes, and the human evil we see in the Middle East in my view, is to be blamed not just on the West or its political and military actions, but also on those who live there itself. The terrible massacres in Algeria for example, which claimed around 100,000 lives, were not done by Western bombs, but by the Algerians against Algerians. Sadly the same is true in much of the rest of the Middle East. This does not clear the West's indirect responsibility for much of this, but at the same time it is easy to lose objectivity and blame all the horrors on one side.
  
  Perhaps the terrible difference in the 20th and 21st century is the industrialisation, mechanisation and de-personalisation of war; the administrative machinery put in place in countries like Turkey, based on Western models and designed to bring the Islamic world from the 15th century to the 20th, along with western technology, were appropriated by the state to massacre the Armenians with industrial efficiency. This grotesque episode was later taken up by Hitler and also by Lenin and Stalin and Mao in their destruction of millions in the aim of political goals.
  
  Much the same occured in warfare and the formation of secret police, who were answerable to no-one. And the typical abuses which remind you of Europe's 'witch hunts' during the dark ages occur where people from all areas of society are taken or killed and there is utterly no law or due process.
  
  I am sure in Islamic civilisation, which after all gave the West so much in terms of philosophical, religious, and scientific knowledge, still has the capability to one day to regain its former glory. It is easy to dismiss hope but the same Islamic civilisation which seems to be so wrapped in war also produced Rumi, Al-Hazen, Ibn Arabi and Avicenna. We can only hope the darkness does not extinguish the light.
  
  Fiske then presents things as he sees them, as best he can; as a work of Journalism this book shines. As history it is somewhat weaker, as the close proximity to events and the short times involved make it hard sometimes for Fiske to draw a bigger picture, and while no doubt Western misuse of power is deeply intertwined with the bloody history of the Middle East, it does not entirely explain the terrible brutality of much of the wars and violence which have their roots lying much deeper in the historical currents of the region.
  
  We can only hope the history of the Middle East in the 21st century will be an brighter one.
  
  

• Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Nation Books)
• Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
• The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
• Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism