The Age of the Warrior, by Robert Fisk

>From our correspondent in the crossfire

Reviewed by Frank McLynn
Friday, 23 May 2008
Independent.co.uk Web

Robert Fisk is probably the most celebrated foreign correspondent in
Britain, and rightly so. This selection of his journalism finds him at
full throttle as he inveighs against a host of familiar, but wholly
deserving targets: Bush, Blair, the Iraq war, the insane Western policy
towards the Middle East. His loathing of Blair, "this vain, deceitful
man, this proven liar… who has the blood of thousands of Arab men,
women and children on his hands", will strike a chord with millions.
Fisk has an equal detestation of "Dubya" Bush, but by now there is
nothing more to be said about a man whom history will surely judge as
the worst US president ever.

Fisk, who knows the Middle East backwards and is an Arabist, can find
almost no consolation when he surveys the area: 150,000 people died in
a civil war in Lebanon in 1975-90, caused by the West’s meddling, but,
since they were not Brits or Americans, no one cares. Another 200,000
died in Algeria when "our sonofabitch" government decided to ignore the
results of an election, but there is no pro-democratic regime change
there engineered by Washington. Turkey denies that its genocide of the
Armenians in 1915 took place, yet its aspirations to join the EU are
still taken seriously, again because of US pressure.

As Fisk scathingly remarks, Bush ("the David Irving of the White
House") can warn us that Iran is a possible cause of a Third World War
yet cannot tell the truth about Turkey in the First. Some of his
choicest invective is reserved for Israel: "When Israelis are involved,
our moral compass, our ability to report the truth dries up." It has
got to the point of doublethink that Webster’s Dictionary actually
defines "antisemitism" as "opposition to the state of Israel".

Fisk is brilliant at dissecting the clichés, bromides, stock phrases
and euphemisms the Western media use when cosying up to Israel. My
favourite is the nonsense whereby, whenever an Israeli soldier shoots
someone dead, the victim is always described as caught in "crossfire".
Fisk has been accused of exaggeration, but the Israel Defence Force
recently sought to justify the killing of the British film-maker James
Miller by an Israeli soldier, saying he should have realised the
dangers of "crossfire".

Fisk’s pessimism is not even tempered when he regards his own
colleagues. He has some good stories about the cliché-ridden "training"
of journalists in the 1960s, where drunken, cynical old hacks would
preach the virtues of "hard news" to callow trainees. Fisk makes the
valuable point that the ideology of the concrete so beloved by this
school of journalists always has the net effect of giving the status
quo and its supporters an easy ride. So far from achieving "balance",
the "just the facts" approach actually buttresses existing elites.

Fisk is accused of going over the top in his savage indignation, but my
main complaint is that he is not savage enough. He rightly sees the
humbug and hypocrisy of the Clintons, but does not really go for the
jugular. A strong case can be made that Bill’s sexual shenanigans cost
the Democrats the 2000 presidential election and lumbered us with
"Dubya". Yet in general, 500 pages of his truthful scorn left me
wanting more. O brave old world, that has such journos in it.

Frank McLynn’s latest book is ‘Heroes and Villains’ (BBC Books)