In this interview, Britain's leading foreign correspondent in the Middle East lays out what he thinks the west needs to do in the Middle East, and why.
Robert Fisk writes for The Independent. He has lived for decades in Lebanon, and wrote with vivid detail and insight about its excruciating civil war which took the lives of 150,000 people in the years 1975-1990 as well as on a host of other areas where US engagement or indifference has not enriched our reputation around the globe.
Fisk speaks from experience about the idiocy of 50-50 balanced journalism - he feels journalists should be unbiased on behalf of those who suffer. Dispassionate reporting of a terrorist bombing, or a concentration camp? No. Even worse, journalists who risk their lives to get the reality of war documented are refused by the home office who don't want to risk disturbing stories and video. War is not a bloodless sand pit.
His latest book The Age of the Warrior is witty and wise and covers the map of issues inside the Middle East and in the US – shedding light on areas and issues which remain in the shadows of mainstream media coverage or cloaked in platitudes and prejudice.
I highly respect Robert Fisk. Thank goodness for his reporting about what has really taken place in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the middle east. Because here in the states the MSM is down to reporting “2 minutes, per week, per network” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fisk knows most Americans and our leaders do not want to think about the death and destruction that the Bush administration and the American public is responsible for.
No one wants to think about it. Frightening is it not Robert? Do you think the states is completely spiritually and morally bankrupt? I do.
Americans do not want to see the death and destruction
http://www.robert-fisk.com/ira…..page19.htm
By Leen on October 27th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Fisk “we in the West have got to withdraw our military forces from the Muslim world because it not our land”
By Leen on October 27th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
As Gandhi once asked: “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
By Leen on October 27th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Thanks Leen; I’m going to use that Gandhi quote as my email “signature”.
By DavidV on October 28th, 2008 at 8:24 am