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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Fisk takes it as a virtual given that the invasion was doomed from the beginning to turn into a classic war of attrition between an occupying power and a guerrilla army. He advances some original and compelling reasons why the Iraqis turned against the Americans and proved such effective guerrillas. Describing the effect of the Iran-Iraq war, Fisk writes that the endless war and the terrible U.S. sanctions created an entire generation of Iraqi men filled with hatred of Iran, Saddam and the U.S., men who had come to "regard war -- rather than peace -- as a natural element in their lives. If ever the day came when Saddam was gone, what would these lieutenants and captains and their comrades from the trenches do if they ever faced another great army? What would they be capable of achieving if they could use their own initiative, their own imagination, their own courage -- if patriotism and nationalism and Islam rather than the iron hand of Baathism was to be their inspiration?"
Fisk's predictions of a broad-based Iraqi insurgency, which he issued within days of the American conquest of Baghdad -- and which seemed tendentious, even offensive, at the time when many Americans, including this writer, were celebrating what seemed to be a "liberation day" -- proved accurate. And yet, even for those of us who were bitterly opposed to this war, it is hard to escape the impression that Fisk's justified anger at America, and well-founded skepticism about its motives, has prevented him from seeing the Middle East in general, and the Iraq war in particular, in their full complexity. History does not follow a moral chart. And dubious intentions can sometimes have unexpected results.
For example, one can accept the legitimacy of all Fisk's charges, acknowledge American hypocrisy, callousness and self-interest, and still argue that the war could have ended well. What if we had sent 200,000 troops, as Gen. Shinseki recommended before he was unceremoniously retired? What if we prevented the looting that destroyed Iraqi confidence in U.S. intentions and competence? What if we had not disbanded the Iraqi army? Perhaps none of this would have made a difference. But Fisk never even considers it, as if even to imagine a positive outcome would be to confer approval. Fisk aspires to be both a polemical journalist and a historian. But the mode of analysis is not always the same. The polemicist is allowed to have his thumb on the scales. The historian is not.
Another example of how Fisk's ideological slant can distort his analysis is his coverage of the Iraqi insurgency. While he acknowledges its multifaceted nature, he tends to treat it as a classic nationalist guerrilla war against an occupying army. Yet, as Paul Starobin has argued convincingly in a detailed analysis of Iraq's civil war, this view is reductive. "[B]y the end of 2003, close observers of Iraq were seeing in the conflict a localized, sectarian element that was separate and apart from Arab or Iraqi nationalist stirrings against the United States as occupier," Starobin writes. Fisk is not unaware of the sectarian dangers facing Iraq -- he lived through a hellish sectarian war in Lebanon -- but his view of the U.S. as quasi-colonialist occupier leads him to paint the opposition in overly simplistic colors.
"The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East"
By Robert Fisk
Alfred A. Knopf
1,107 pages
Nonfiction
Fisk's account of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan also suffers from ideological rigidity. Fisk clearly regards the invasion as unjustified. As with Iraq, he focuses on U.S. misdeeds, on failure: civilians killed by U.S. bombs and bullets, refugees, starvation, the return of opium production, the rise of brutal warlords, etc. Indeed, Fisk does little to distinguish between the two wars. Yet there are compelling arguments that this war, unlike the Iraq disaster, was necessary. Fisk never even addresses the possibility that police action, apparently his preferred mode of fighting al-Qaida, would have been ineffective against the Taliban. (It is difficult to know exactly what Fisk would have recommended: Throughout the book, he is better at criticizing than coming up with solutions.) And although he unflinchingly reports on the Taliban's barbarism -- to his credit, Fisk never makes excuses or tries to ameliorate horror, whoever perpetrates it -- he seems too quick to posit that the U.S.-backed Karzai regime represents no improvement on it. Again, Fisk's crystal ball may prove to be correct -- Afghanistan is in a fragile state, and things could collapse there. But simply because the U.S. is an arrogant superpower with a bad record of meddling in the region does not make that outcome inevitable -- or this war necessarily evil.
In fact, Fisk has difficulty accepting the concept of the lesser of two evils. Yes, war is dreadful. But there are times when war is necessary to prevent other, worse wars, or to prevent massive injustice. It is true that few of the wars that have wracked the Middle East fall into that category: "The Great War for Civilisation" is a record of appalling, pointless loss of life. But Fisk is so averse to pious official cant about "great wars for civilisation" and other such lofty phrases that he tends to flatten out moral distinctions.
Yet Fisk's weaknesses are inseparable from his strengths. His evil eye for "the arrogance of power" leads him to courageously report on issues that governments -- and sometimes the media -- want to cover up. His account of the U.S. cruiser Vincennes' shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet over the Gulf in 1988, killing 289 innocent people, is a masterpiece of reporting -- and one that resulted in Fisk's resigning from the Times of London. The paper's editor ripped apart Fisk's story without his consent, removing the reporting that proved that U.S. incompetence was to blame for the tragedy. Rupert Murdoch had taken over the Times, and did not want to print a story critical of the U.S. Fisk left and went to work for the Independent.
Of that sorry episode, Fisk writes, "When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner -- because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of the newspaper -- then we contribute to the very prejudices that contribute to wars in the first place."
These are words that should be read by every "embedded" reporter and every "patriot" working at Fox News. Perhaps a few journalists at the New York Times -- which Fisk blasts as "gutless" -- could profit from them as well.
Critics have accused Fisk of not being objective. It's a valid charge -- but it's equally valid to note that no reporter, editor or historian is objective. Why is one story written and not another? Why does one appear on Page One, another on Page 18? Why does the New York Times have a reporter in Jerusalem, but not in Ramallah? Why are "anonymous government officials" acceptable sources in stories about Saddam Hussein's WMD, but not other stories? All too many "balanced" pieces are simply covers for intellectual laziness, for an unwillingness to challenge conventional wisdom. Fisk would argue that such pieces are not in fact "balanced" at all: They are de facto apologies for the status quo. The letter of "objectivity" can kill.
Fairness, 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.
