The Great War For Civilisation - Robert Fisk

It’s far too long; the tone often has an annoying self-righteousness; and the violence sometimes borders on the gratuitous: but every page is fascinating. What makes the book so absorbing is the overwhelming sense that Fisk has completely mastered his subject: the wars of the Middle East. From the opening chapter which begins with the tale of his interview with Bin Laden, to the last in post 2003 Iraq, you feel there is not much more to know, or at least, for the time being, not much more you can take in. The chapters on Iran are exceptional. One major reason why Fisk is good is he was there when it mattered. There when the revolution got underway; there at the front-line during the war; there after the Vincennes shot down the Iran Airbus in July 1988. So he brings the history alive. The reality of revolution is a sick scene of a trial in Qom, where the mullah judge allows a crowd of 600 to taunt a royalist policeman and the prosecutor to howl liar in his face before the inevitable execution; the boy soldiers in the war, so shocking to the West, telling him about the glory of martyrdom; and rather than just having the statistics of the air crash, Fisk takes us to the morgue, and to meet the pilot’s brother, where we feel the pain and anger, the author so often displays, at the American insult that somehow this was a terrorist attack. The pilot was from a thoroughly normal middle class family. His chapter on the Armenian massacres is also excellent. It starts with Fisk and a colleague finding the skeletons of the victims in the Syrian desert, continues with a detailed and depressing account of what happened, illustrated by eye witness reports, and ends with a justified indictment on the governments that will not use the ‘g’ word out of fear of upsetting Turkey. These chapters stand out for me because of my personal interest in Iran and Armenia, but the others were equally absorbing, as the mix of history and his eye witness accounts keeps you turning the pages…over a thousand of them.