[Media-watch] Interview with Bob Fisk

[David J McKnight]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/1447225

Monday, January 3rd, 2005
The Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities: Robert Fisk Looks Back at 2004

Veteran Middle East Correspondent Robert Fisk says, "Over the past year,
there has been evidence enough that our whole project in Iraq is hopelessly
flawed, that our Western armies - when they are not torturing prisoners,
killing innocents and destroying one of the largest cities in Iraq - are
being vanquished by a ferocious guerrilla army, the like of which we have
not seen before in the Middle East." Fisk joins us from Beirut, Lebanon.
[includes rush transcript] In a year-in-review article by veteran Middle
east correspondent Robert Fisk in the Independent of London, Fisk begins
his piece with a question: 
Who said this and when? 

"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 that the public
knows... We are today not far from a disaster." 

Those were the words of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame) in The Sunday Times
in August, 1920. 

"And," Robert Fisk writes, "every word of it is true today.” 

We turn now to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004 from Iraq to Palestine and
beyond. 

Robert Fisk, correspondent for The Independent


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
RUSH TRANSCRIPT 
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us
provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV
broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. 
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: We now turn to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004, from Iraq to
Israel, to Palestine and beyond. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk. 

ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you have been doing some reflection, as you also write a
book. You can talk about your observations of where we stand today? 

ROBERT FISK: Well, I think that the whole project in Iraq is finished. We
are not being told by Mr. Blair in my case and Bush in yours that this is
the case, and perhaps through their own misjudgment or their own fantasies,
they don't even accept this themselves. But the American project for
democracy or whatever its real purposes were, for oil, economic expansion,
Middle East fit for Israel, whatever it may have been, that project is
finished. It is hopeless. It cannot succeed. The insurgency in Iraq is so
great now that American troops, however enormous their technology, cannot
control it. The Iraqi so-called ministers, and I include Iyad Allawi, the
so-called interim prime minister, who was of course appointed by the
Americans as a former C.I.A. asset, they behave like statesmen when they
tour the world or turn up in Washington, but in Baghdad they're not even
safe inside their little Green Zone. They're not even the Mayor of Baghdad,
they have less power than the town clerk. So, we have reached a stage now
where insurgents control much of the country. The only safe part of Iraq is
Kurdistan in the north, which is effectively an autonomous region, outside
of the control anyway of the Iraqi government. And the elections, which are
coming up, appear doomed because already we're hearing that if the Sunnis
won't take part, the Americans are trying to persuade the unelected
government to appoint Sunni Muslims to make up for the voters who didn't
vote. This is not an election, this is a charade. And what has happened is
that the alienation of the Iraqis as a people from the West has been
brought about by lunatic policies by the State Department and by the
Pentagon, I'm afraid by the behavior of American troops and a lesser
expect, but nonetheless culpable British troops and by the fantasies, which
drove this war in the first place, the idea that we were going to suddenly
create democracy in the Middle East. One of the things I have been studying
for my new book on the Middle East, which comes out this year, is what
happened when the rebellion first occurred in 1920, the time of which
Lawrence of Arabia was talking, against the British military in Iraq. And
exactly the same pattern took place. The Sunni Muslims became
disenfranchised. The British laid seize to Fallujah, they laid seize to
Najaf. The prime minister, in this case Lloyd George rather than Tony
Blair, said if we believe there will be civil war and British military
intelligence in Baghdad claimed that the terrorists were arriving - in 1920
this is - from Syria. Same old sorry. So I am afraid that even if you look
at the pattern of history, there is no hope. If you look at the pattern
today there is no hope. We come back to the equation, which I think I have
set out on your program before, that the Americans must leave, and the
Americans will leave, and the Americans can't leave. 

AMY GOODMAN: As we move, Robert Fisk, from Iraq to the situation in the
occupied territories, to Mahmoud Abbas, to the death of Yasser Arafat, your
thoughts at the end of this year, at the beginning of 2005. 

ROBERT FISK: You know, I thought it was somehow perverse that the death of
the one Palestinian leader, corrupt, venal, and ruthless though he was, I'm
talking about why Arafat is immoral, the death of the one Palestinian
leader, who could more or less unify the Palestinians, was seen as a
hopeful sign, shows just how far from reality we are. Mahmoud Abbas, for
the second time in three years is being held out as the angel who can save
Palestine, who can bring about peace, who will be our new beloved savior of
the Middle East peace, courtesy Tony Blair. And I'm sure he will be
generous enough to include George Bush in the Middle East. Mahmoud Abbas is
a colorless man who has been never associated with real democratic
principles. He was one of the authors of the utterly doomed and hopeless
Oslo accord, in whose 1,000 pages the single word occupation, which is what
this colonial war is all about, does not occur once. Indeed, even
withdrawal - withdrawing of the Israeli troops - doesn't occur in this
document. It always refers to redeployment. This is the man, whom now, we
are supposed to believe, is going to bring the violent men to heal, is
going to make a real peace, is going to be a beloved of the west, which of
course is an essential element for any Middle East peace, and it going to
be a problem. It is a further extension of our self-delusion, our British
self-delusion, American self-delusion, Israeli self-delusion, to think this
can be the case. This is another of our men, like Hamid Karzai and Iyad
Allawi, another of the people, who we effectively are stepping up to a
subject people or an occupied people, and one who inevitably and
ultimately, will not be able to deliver the goods and we'll cast around for
more people to appoint or choose to someone else's political leadership. To
see, Mahmoud Abbas, who only a few months ago, when he resigned, was being
cursed privately by Bush as the man he wished he had never met, now blessed
the future Palestinian leader, when he was -- as I say, one of the author
of the whole vain Oslo agreement, which collapsed. It's a tragedy on our
part that we actually believe that this sort of person, as pleasant and
plausible though is he, can actually save the day for peace in the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. 

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who has been voted the best
foreign correspondent by newspaper editors and reporters in Britain for
many years. He is a long-time correspondent for the Independent, based in
Beirut for over three decades. Where are you speaking from to us now? 

ROBERT FISK: From Beirut during a wonderful winder thunderstorm, that
actually looks like Christmas. But I'm going to Iraq in a weeks time
possibly less, to enjoy obviously a much less peaceable environment. 

AMY GOODMAN: What do you see happening with this election? On U.S.
television, we repeatedly hear the story that the suicide bombings will
increase, U.S. officials saying this as well that the violence will
increase, because militants want to stop democracy in the elections. 

ROBERT FISK: Sure. I mean, you have got to realize that this is now a
constant sort of logo of American and British news-speak in Iraq. They
announce that something wonderful is going to happen, an interim
governments a new constitution, elections. And then they say that violence
is going to increase, that things are going to get worse the nearer we get
to it. In other words the better things to come, the worse things are. The
worse things are, the better things are going to become. This is part of
the self-delusional policy with which we tried to hide our total failure in
Iraq, our total failure even to control the country and allow the citizens
of that country to live in safety and security. We don't even give the
casualty figures. We don't know, we don't care about them. Even if the
elections take place as I say, which I doubt, still doubt, they will be so
hopelessly flawed by the absence of the Sunni population, so accompanied by
terror on the part of the U.S. administration, that the Shiites might wipe
the floor and set up an Islamic republic, even worse than democracy would
be an Islamic republic in Iraq. I don't think they will solve anything.
Ultimately, I think what we are going to see, as we have seen in all Middle
East wars of occupation, is the opening of some kind of contact between the
Americans and the insurgents. This is what the French did after years of
saying they would never talk to terrorists, they talked to the FLN. After
years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British talked to
the IRA. After years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, the
British talked to the militants fighting them in Aden and to EOKA in
Cyprus, and indeed, to both militant sides in Palestine that they tried to
escape from what Churchill called a hell disaster in 1948. The Americans
will soon, if they have not already, establish contact with the insurgents,
and that will mean the beginning of end. It means that the project is over.
That they have accepted, as I think, you know, they have already in terms
of soldiers on the ground. If you are going to talk to the colonels, and
they may -- the majors and the generals in Iraq, they know that the game is
up. But the generals back at the Pentagon and the Centcom and down there in
old Florida and the gentleman in the State Department and at the White
House, they don't accept this because this is a screen of self-delusion
between them and the reality on the ground. But it's over in Iraq. It's
finished. What we're going to see this year is the beginning of the
endgame, which is how do we get Americans out without losing face and
ultimately - I should say faith as well - and ultimately, how do you start
negotiation with the insurgents. I mean, that doesn't mean that some
American colonel is going to sit down with Zarqawi, though I wouldn't put
it past the realm of possibility. It means that we're going to have in
effect an understanding between the insurgents and the United States forces
that the project has failed, that at some point the powers behind the
insurgency or the resistance or the terrorists or whatever you would like
to call them, will move into place to control the country and they probably
will. In the meantime, I fear the Western powers will go on trying to
promote the idea of civil war as an alternative to their occupation and
oppression and I hope very much that that won't work. As I said to you
before, Iraq has never had a civil war. Iraqis don't want a civil war. The
only people who fear or talk about civil war are the Americans and British. 

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, you write in your latest piece, “A Mire of Death,
Lies and Atrocities, the Ghost of Vietnam,” of an American soldier, of
Jimmy Massey, a soldier who game back home and said he didn't want to
continue to participate in the killing, in the slaughter. Can you talk
about him, and as you see him from the other side of the ocean? 

ROBERT FISK: Well, the odd thing is, I think we're talking about the
soldier who turned up to give evidence in Canada aren't we? 

AMY GOODMAN: That’s right Jimmy Massey. R: Yes, you can tell me whether his
evidence gained any publicity in the mainstream American press or not. It
happened by chance that I was in Toronto when that case came up, and of
course, I immediately – you know I had just had come from Iraq and was due
to come back to the Middle East, and of course my eyes went straight on and
I read through his accounts and I thought, my goodness me, here we go
again. In evidence in a court in a not very powerful country, Canada, up
comes again the reality of Iraq. Had it not been for my reading it, it
wouldn't have appeared in the British press. Did it occur, did you read
anything about Mr. Massey's evidence in the American press, perhaps you did. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well of course we did a long interview with Jimmy Massey when
he came back 
 

ROBERT FISK: I didn't mean on your radio station, I mean the mainstream
media. 

AMY GOODMAN: Right, right, right. But I wanted to encourage people to go to
our website, democracynow.org, and also in our year-end review of last
Thursday, we included his descriptions, but in terms of the larger
audience, both in terms of what we have heard about what's happening with
Jeremy Hinsman and other U.S. soldiers who have fled to Canada asking for
political asylum there, and Jimmy Massey going up and testifying on their
behalf there is very little written about it in this country. 

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, of course, yeah. This is part of the self-delusion, not
only do our leaders suffer from this mania of deluding themselves, but the
press by their silence or by their complicity, assist in this process of
self-delusion. Indeed, they self-delude themselves. In Britain, we have,
you know, some newspapers, my own, The Independent, The Guardian and
increasingly, I suspect The Daily Telegraph, which is no longer prepared to
do this. They say, hold on a second, we have got to live on Planet Earth.
But when I read The New York Times and the Washington Post, I frankly
wonder, who is on Planet Earth. The real problem is - and this was the case
of course in Vietnam in the beginning - I am not making these comparisons
between Vietnam and Iraq. It's interesting that the Left wants to make the
comparison between Vietnam and Iraq and the Right wants to make the
comparison between World War II and Iraq, where of course we are playing
the role of Churchill, Roosevelt, Tito, you name it, not I noticed Stalin.
But the real problem is that, when you go to - I have said this to you
before, when I'm in Baghdad, and I read the American press or I turn on the
television and watch CNN, what I'm reading and what I am seeing bears
absolutely no physical, moral, political, or military relationship to the
place that I'm living in. When I come out, I'm sane enough to realize for
quite a long time that that remains the case. We are not - look, let me
give you the most basic example of the problem. In Baghdad now, we have got
one or two exceptions and I hope The Independent is one of them, though
even we are very circumscribed, journalists do not move from their hotel
rooms and from their hotels. They're in hotel prisons. Now, I don't object
to my colleagues doing this, if they want to, because after all, we all
want to preserve our lives. Nobody wants to turn up on a video and have
themselves seen around the world having their throats cut or having their
throats cut without being on video tape, but they don't tell their readers
and their viewers that this is the case. They still appear on television as
the courageous war correspondent in war-torn Baghdad or war-torn Iraq with
information, which in fact only comes from the occupational authorities or
from the government, which was apoirnted by the occupational authorities,
but which by not saying that they cannot witness and see what is actually
going on, they give the impression it is the product of independent
reporting. We are as usual in these circumstances, we journalists,
complicit in the self-delusion, which allows my country's people, Britons,
and Americans, to believe that things are much better, that things are
okay, when in fact they're not okay at all. You know, it's difficult to see
how you turn this corner, and I can see why journalists do not want to
admit that they're too frightened to travel, though they should. I
sometimes say in my report, I didn't go to this place, I thought it was too
dangerous to go to. Other times I manage to travel, 70, 80 miles outside
Baghdad. And it's getting worse all the time. But at least let us tell our
readers and our viewers that we cannot move. But the journalists don't do
this, and of course neither does Mr. Allawi, who cannot even move around
Baghdad. Neither does Mr. Rumsfeld, who for a long time wouldn't venture
into Iraq. So, an illusion is created of calm and progress and well, things
may get more violent, but that's because things are getting better, which
is the most ludicrous topsy turvy I ever heard. So, the weeks tick by and
we continuing to be surprised by the bombings and killings and the
executions. We have days now. When 20 Iraqis are lined up because they're
accused of collaboration for joining the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army and
executed. Incredible and we just accept it. 

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to thank you for being with us. Robert
Fisk, in Lebanon now, headed back to Iraq. We will continue to talk to him
there. Robert Fisk, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent of
London. 

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for
our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.

-- 

Whatever you Wanadoo:
http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/time/

This email has been checked for most known viruses - find out more at: http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/id/7098.htm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.stir.ac.uk/pipermail/media-watch/attachments/20050106/21cc58c1/attachment-0001.htm