The Age of the Warrior

For more than three decades, Robert Fisk has traveled throughout the Middle East as a correspondent, covering 11 major wars in the region, and winning the British International Journalist of the Year award an impressive seven times. As a long-time resident of Beirut, Fisk is fluent in Arabic and has most recently covered the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Israel's conflicts with Lebanon and the Palestinians. He is also the author of the new book, The Age of the Warrior.

Robert Fisk has said that the primary role of journalists is to challenge authority � especially those who would take us to war. This address, recorded in Berkeley, California in November 2008, certainly raises a challenge to that authority, as Fisk explains how the West's attitudes toward the Arab world have culminated in the current foreign policy fiascoes we face in the region.


The Age of the Warrior | Link TV

A review below:

This book is a selection from Robert Fisk's Saturday columns in the Independent from 1998 to 2007. These writings cover films and novels, the World Wars, the first British war of occupation of Iraq, the wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, the Turkish genocide of Armenians, and many other themes.

He sums up this period as the age of the warrior, describing how Bush changed the US Army's official `Soldier's Creed' to "I am a warrior" whose sole mission is `to destroy the enemies of the United States of America'. An American veteran wrote that the new creed "allows no end to any conflict except total destruction of the `enemy'. It ... does not allow one ever to stop fighting (lending itself to the idea of `the long war'). It says nothing about following orders, it says nothing about obeying laws or showing restraint. It says nothing about dishonourable actions ..."

The American veteran wrote that this new creed encouraged the committing of atrocities. For example, the CIA had videos of prisoners being waterboarded, recently admitting that it had destroyed them. Americans in authority believe, wrongly, that `Torture works', as one Special Forces major put it.

Fisk notes how politicians impose policies against our national interest and against all morality, and how they use power to terrorise us. But our consent is not unthinking or automatic; the thought is that `authority is trustworthy', despite the evidence. He noted that some of his fellow journalists refuse to see cruelty and use the notion of `balance' to avoid the truth. He also notes the growing efforts to censor criticism, whether of Israel or of Islam.

Bush tells us that `we' are fighting `evil', so his wars are nothing to do with the occupation of Palestinian land, Afghanistan and Iraq. He tells us that `we' must blame `them' for the violence that threatens us all.

But if we keep the same Middle East policies, there will be more bombings, followed by harsher laws. As Fisk wrote of the Middle East, "the Americans must leave if peace was to be restored and the sooner they left the better."