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The Roots of Rage

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  • The Roots of Rage

    Washington Post, DC
    June 3 2006

    The Roots of Rage
    An angry reporter blames a region's turmoil on local despots and
    Western meddling.

    Reviewed by Stephen Humphreys
    Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page BW06

    THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION
    The Conquest of the Middle East
    By Robert Fisk
    Knopf. 1,107 pp. $40


    This is first of all a book about war -- in particular, the wars that
    have scarred the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Algeria, throughout
    the author's long career as a correspondent for the London Times and
    then the Independent. It switches back and forth across the 20th
    century in a way that seems driven more by stream of consciousness
    than by any linear design, and, as befits its topic, it is a book of
    almost unremitting violence. The author presents himself both as
    unflinching witness and implacable judge of the events he recounts,
    for he believes that he is telling a story of unrelenting perfidy and
    betrayal -- in part a story of Middle Easterners being betrayed by
    themselves and their leaders, but mostly one of the Middle East being
    betrayed by the power, greed and arrogance of the West.

    Fisk has thrown himself into the fiery pit time after time, often at
    grave personal risk -- Afghanistan at the beginning of the long
    struggle against the Soviets, the bloodbath of the 1980s Iran-Iraq
    War, the civil war in Algeria after 1991, the second Palestinian
    intifada since the fall of 2000. When he is not personally in the
    midst of conflict and destruction, he evokes them, as in his lengthy
    discussion of the Armenian deportations and massacres of World War I
    or (in a different register) his treatment of the shah of Iran's
    prisons and torture chambers.

    However Fisk regards himself, he is at bottom a war correspondent,
    and the fabric of his book is woven largely from his battlefield
    reporting. Fisk's writing on war is vivid, graphic, intense and very
    personal. Readers will encounter no "collateral damage" here, only
    homes destroyed and bodies torn to shreds. At times, as one horror is
    heaped upon another, it all seems too much to absorb or bear.

    That intensity is both the book's great strength and one of its
    principal weaknesses. After reading it, no one can hide from the
    immense human costs of the decisions made by generals and
    politicians, Middle Eastern or otherwise. But Fisk portrays the
    Middle East as a place of such unrelieved violence that the reader
    can hardly imagine that anyone has enjoyed a single ordinary day
    there over the past quarter-century. That picture is a serious
    distortion. Life in the region is far from easy, but in spite of
    endemic anxiety and frustration, most Middle Easterners, most of the
    time, are able to get on tolerably well. Fisk says little about more
    abstract, less violent issues such as economic stagnation, the
    complexities of political Islam or the status of women. This gap is
    not a weakness in itself -- Fisk is writing about different themes --
    but readers need to be aware that, despite its staggering length,
    this book is not The Complete Middle East.

    It may well be The Complete Robert Fisk, however. It is full of
    autobiographical reminiscences about the author's troubled but
    intense relationship with his father, Bill; indeed, that relationship
    provides the book's title. The elder Fisk had been awarded a campaign
    medal for his service in France in 1918, and the medal (which he
    bequeathed to his son) was inscribed with the motto "The Great War
    for Civilisation." The bitter irony of that motto is underscored by
    another gift, this one from the author's grandmother to his father --
    a boy's novel, Tom Graham, V.C. , which recounts the adventures of a
    young British soldier in Afghanistan in the late 19th century. For
    the author, both the medal and the novel symbolize the West's
    arrogant and destructive intrusion in the Middle East throughout the
    last century.

    If this is a book about war, it is equally a book about the hypocrisy
    and indifference of those in power. Fisk is an angry man and more
    than a little self-righteous. No national leader comes off with a
    scrap of credit here; he regards the lot of them with contempt, if
    not loathing. Among the men in charge -- whether Arab, Iranian,
    Turkish, Israeli, British or American -- there are no heroes and
    precious few honorable people doing their inadequate best in
    difficult situations. Jimmy Carter is lucky to escape with
    condescension, King Hussein of Jordan with a bit better than that.
    Fisk is not fond of the media either (though he grants some
    exceptions); CNN and the New York Times are particular targets of his
    scorn for what he sees as their abject failure to challenge the lies,
    distortions and cover-ups of U.S. policymakers. Only among ordinary
    people, entangled in a web of forces beyond their control, does Fisk
    find a human mixture of courage, cowardice, charity and cruelty.

    Given the present state of things in the Middle East, one is tempted
    to agree with him. The mendacity and bland pomposity of the suits and
    talking heads, both Western and Middle Eastern, are infuriating to
    anyone who has any direct knowledge of what is going on there. Again,
    however, there is a problem: Fisk excoriates politicians for the
    awful suffering they have imposed on the peoples of the Middle East,
    but he never seriously asks why they make the decisions they do or
    what real alternatives they might have. It is all very well to flog
    Western and Middle Eastern leaders for their ignorance, moral
    blindness, lust for power, etc. That might instill shame and guilt
    (though it rarely does), but it provides no serious principles or
    criteria that serious policymakers might use to develop something
    better.

    In short, The Great War for Civilisation is a book of unquestionable
    importance, given Fisk's unmatched experience of war and its impact
    in the contemporary Middle East and his capacity to convey that
    experience in concrete, passionate language. Still, novices will find
    themselves both overwhelmed by the book's exhaustive detail and hard
    put to follow the author's leaps across countries and decades. The
    Great War for Civilisation is also a deeply troubling book; it may
    well confirm the conviction of many that the Middle East is incurably
    sunk in violence and depravity and that only a fool would imagine it
    could ever be redeemed. As tragic as the last three decades have
    been, there are different lessons to be learned -- one must hope so,
    at least. ·

    Stephen Humphreys is a professor of Middle Eastern history and
    Islamic studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and
    the author of "Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a
    Troubled Age."
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