Product Description
A sweeping and dramatic history of the last half century of conflict in the Middle East from an award-winning journalist who has covered the region for over thirty years, The Great War for Civilisation unflinchingly chronicles the tragedy of the region from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution; from the American hostage crisis in Beirut to the Iran-Iraq War; from the 1991 Gulf War to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.
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 A sparrow tells an uncaring world from a plaintive branch. ( davidchirko )
"...war is a security organization...because it succeeds...in inventing, real enemies to kill, and...if...not for war, society would...leave men defenseless before...a purely internal foe." - "The Psychoanalysis of War," Franco Fornari, 1974.
A scribe at Britain's "The Independent," English born Robert Fisk (1946- ), Ph.D., Political Science, LL.D., et al, has resided in Beirut, Lebanon since 1976. His compassionate book, "The Great War for Civilisation," 2006, is based on 16 years of eyewitness reporting on "The Conquest of the Middle East," culled from over 350,000 various documents. It is almost 1,400 pages, replete with 10 maps, bibliography, exhaustive notes and a chronology.
Fisk's coverage of Israel's influence here and the American invasion of Iraq is provocative, because nobody wants to "damage the peace process"... Arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, whom the author questioned, don't speak out against improprieties Israel commits with ordnances because they are a valued customer. And "The Independent" did a fortnight study of American military stocks, ascertaining that thousands of armour, tanks and planes were grabbed by Israel during two decades. Officers apprised Fisk that the omnipotent Israeli lobby doesn't tolerate captious politicians, who treasure their longevity in government, therefore allowing Israel to anytime snatch more than the minimum $14 million in arms required for congressional notification, uncontested and unreported because it is "classified."
The most powerful such lobby group is the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, which former doyen of, Denis Ross, plus three other Jews--if they were all Arabs, someone would've taken notice--became head negotiators of in the latter 1990's "peace envoy." The American press was reticent about this bias, but the Israeli press welcomed them.
Fisk pondered, not just the "how" and "who," but the "why," behind "9/11," the 2001 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Also, he says, just after this event, on September 16, no British or American newspaper "...would recall the fact that on that date in 1982, Israel's Phalangist militia allies started their three-day orgy of rape and knifing and murder in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. It followed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon...which cost the lives of 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all of them civilians...more than five times the death toll in the September 11th, 2001 attacks....No, Israel was not to blame for what happened..." The author explains that it was Osama bin Laden, whom he first met in 1993, and al-Qaeda, who were the perpetrators, making their statement regarding how they felt about America's involvement in the Middle East--not because "they hate our democracy." None came from Iraq, which U.S. President George W. Bush's aggressors invaded, seeking "weapons of mass destruction" which never existed, through their "war on terror."
Fisk documents America's pitiless sanctions and civilian killings--"collateral damage"--in Iraq. In Baghdad, citizens' looting is not precluded by U.S. forces, who protect only the Ministry of the Interior, with its intelligence info, and the Ministry of Oil--go figure. It is Israel, who dispossessed 750,000 Palestinians of their land--and "right to exist," in the West Bank, in 1948, who now dictates American foreign policy in the Middle East, weakening Arab voices.
Get "The Great War for Civilisation" by Robert Fisk, where a sparrow tells an uncaring world from a plaintive branch.
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Must Read stuff ( jamescarey4 )
Anyone with any curiosity about the issue of Islamic fundamentalism, Israels terrorist state etc needs to read this.
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Easily one of the best books I've ever read ( bostonmedia )
This book explains what's going on in the Middle East. It would be exciting to read even if it was fiction, but it's all true and very recent. After reading it I could understood events on TV news from the Middle East for the first time. Read the first chapter about one of his interviews and see what you think.
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well worth the weight
I opened this one Christmas, and thought, here's one that I'll never get to.
That is until I actually opened it and started reading. Like many "journalistic" histories this book does jump around a bit, and there were sections I "blip-read", but this is the first book I have read on this area and subject where I felt like the author had enough personal experience to talk about historical events and make it appear alive-- and deadly.
What an experience reading this book has been. I have been skeptical of Western intervention in the Middle East, and I knew a lot of nasty stuff was going on. I still got nauseous reading about Mossadeq in Iran and the Armenian genocide (which is to this day still in the headlines).
This book is also a strong argument for publishing fat books in two volumes.
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 Long read ( lars_townsend2 )
Normally it takes me maybe four or five hours to finish a whole book. With this one, I would read for four hours and discover I had read maybe 50 pages.
There is a lot of information in here. Fisk often rambles on and on, and he could have seriously used an editor, but when he writes from his perspective about something interesting, it is really interesting. He doesn't bother being polite or diplomatic about something. He is equally as hard and fair on the Iraqis, Iranians, Americans, Israelis, Palestinians, Soviets and British as he is on every subject. And in a lot of cases it is really interesting to read the different perspectives of certain events.
In any event this is a good read if you are interested in the Middle East. Robert Fisk is certainly opinionated. But anyone growing up post-911 has built up their own fair share of opinions and biases towards this part of the world. There is a certain kind of intrinsic value in reading books like this; books which provide different perspectives than the ones we hold.
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