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Fisk's war: Jorge Sotirios interviews Robert Fisk about Osama bin Laden's sense of history, reporting war and a public stoush with John Malkovich.

Article Excerpt
Robert Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for the Independent newspaper in the UK. Recipient of the Amnesty International Press Award, Fisk is a highly regarded journalist who has written incisively on war, giving voice to the victims and routinely skewering the grand narratives of power. He journeyed to Australia in March to promote The Great War for Civilisation, which has been likened to 'wandering through graveyards' in its description of the consequences of war. At the Australian National University the previous evening, he took aim at the proliferation of 'official' sources who, together with politicians, have never been to war. I met him in Canberra and conducted this interview on the pavement outside his hotel where we caught some sun, observed the bird-life and where 4WDs narrowly missed cutting us down. His face bears some scars from the beating given to him by Afghani refugees in Pakistan in 2001, but dressed in a blue shirt and light pants he could be mistaken for a dapper English gentleman.

Jorge Sotirios (JS): Why have you called your book The Great War for Civilisation?

Robert Fisk (RF): My father was a soldier in the First World War--he fought in 1918 in the third Battle of the Somme--and when he died he believed he [had been] fighting 'the war to end all wars'. He did believe it was a war against German barbarism, a war for civilisation. Indeed, when he died in 1992, aged 93, I inherited his campaign medals. The First World War medal had St George killing the dragon and the legend: 'The Great War for Civilisation'. Immediately I thought, 'That's going to be the title'. Ironic, of course, because in the seventeen months that followed we, the victors (Britain and France primarily), drew the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and the Middle East. I had spent my entire professional life in those borders--in Belfast, Beirut, Bosnia and Baghdad--watching the people burn within those borders. So Lieutenant Bill Fisk fought in a war that sent his son for an entire lifetime to cover them.

JS: Is your title something of a riposte to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations?

RF: No, I think Huntington is rubbish. I thought it was very boring. It was a very trashy, third-rate book. I wasn't impressed by it;...

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