Graham Matthews, Sydney
"War represents a total failure of the human spirit", declared renowned journalist Robert Fisk at his packed-out Sydney university lecture on October 5. "If you could see what I've seen, you would never support a war."
Fisk's lecture, organised by Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, was part of a whirlwind visit to Australia last week to present the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Adelaide University. He also addressed packed-out meetings at Melbourne University on September 30 and at the ANU with Amin Seikal on October 4.
Fisk captivated the audience with his moving observations and memories over almost 30 years of the Middle East. He spelt out his opposition to the US occupation of Iraq, and its horrendous impact on the Iraqi people. This was a theme he also took up during his interview on the ABC's Lateline on October 4.
"America invaded Iraq not for any mythical weapons of mass destruction, which had long since gone, but to change the map of the Middle East", Fisk argued. "Yes, this war was about oil. Fuelled by folly, arrogance and desire. But also the visceral need of the US to project power."
Fisk criticised the "hotel journalism" of the majority of Western journalists "covering" the US occupation in Iraq from their protected hotels in Bagdad while limiting their interviews to US military personnel. But he was even more scathing about the Iraqi government. "From their castle all they can see of their new country is what you can see from the gun-slits", he said. He went on to compare the Iraqi government and bureaucracy to medieval crusaders.
Bush, Blair and Howard "claim that the war is going well, yet suicide bombers attack at the rate of up to seven a day", Fisk said. "In the month of July alone there were 1100 violent deaths [of Iraqis] in Bagdad alone. Add the other cities in Iraq, and you come up with a figure of something like 36,000 for the whole of Iraq in a year. Is the figure of 100,000 Iraqis dead since the invasion an exaggeration? I doubt it."
The US occupation had meant that Bagdad was becoming "a city of walls", Fisk continued, while Iraq's cities had "become hunting grounds for rapists and thieves". Of the 15,000 artefacts looted from the Bagdad museum after the fall of Sadam's regime, only 4000 had been recovered despite assertions by the US government that most had been recovered.
Fisk gave details of the atrocities committed against dissidents by Saddam Hussein's regime, mostly in the Abu Graib prison. "The Americans have benefited from the torture carried out by the Saddam regime", Fisk said, arguing that the Americans' abuse of prisoners paled in comparison. "And thus it came to pass that the symbol of Saddam's shame was the symbol of our shame <197> Abu Graib."
He said he admired those Iraqis who voted in January for the new Iraqi parliament. "In the polling stations many told us they were voting for power, but also for an end to the occupation. They wanted democracy, but they also wanted justice."
While he condemned the methods of the Iraqi insurgents, Fisk pointed to the US, British and Australian occupation of Iraq as a central underlying cause of the violence.
"We can go on trying to distance the wickedness done to us from the events on the ground by saying, like Tony Blair does, >Oh, it's nothing to do with Iraq. It is evil ideology. They are against our society. They are against our democracy. They are against our freedoms' ... But we have major problems in the Middle East and, somehow, we've got to deal with them and bring some justice to the Middle East", Fisk said on Lateline.
AAs long as we [are involved] in various military operations in the Muslim world, as the British have done, as the Australians have done, as the Spanish did <193> we are going to have problems@, he said on the program.
Asked to comment on the new terror laws, Fisk said that, ADraconian legislation will not protect Australians, or British, or Americans. We've got to deal with serious issues here.@
The only way the West could stop terrorism was to deal with its underlying causes, Fisk argued. AYou have to take away from [the terrorists] the ability to use injustice for their own aims <193> because unless we do that <197> and I mean you and me together <197> we are not safe.@<|> From Green Left Weekly, October 12, 2005.
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