The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk

Decorated British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk has been based in the Middle East for the last twenty-five years, reporting from the world's worst trouble-spots. This is his first-person account of fifty years of bloodshed and tragedy in the area, from the Palestinian-Israeli bloodbath to the shock and awe of the current war against Iraq.

The Great War for Civilisation is written with passion and anger, a reporter's eyewitness account of the Middle East's history. All the most dangerous men of the past quarter century in the region - from Osama bin Laden to Ayatollah Khomeini, from Saddam to Ariel Sharon - come alive in these pages. Fisk has met most of them, and even spent the night out at a guerrilla camp with bin Laden himself.

In a narrative of blood and mass killing, Fisk tells the story of the growing hatred of the West by millions of Muslims, the West's cynical support for the Middle East's most ruthless dictators and America's ever more powerful military presence in the world's most dangerous lands as well as its uncritical, unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. It is also a story of journalists at war, of the rage, humour and frustration of the correspondents who spend their lives reporting the first draft of history, their weaknesses and cowardice, their courage and truth-telling. After reading The Great War for Civilisation the reader grasps just why those 19 suicide pilots changed the world on September 11th.

Brought right up to the current day and reporting from the heart of a bombed-out Bagdad, Fisk examines the factors leading up to the coalition forces entering Iraq, and discusses possible outcomes of long-term involvement there.

Read an interview with Robert Fisk at http://www.progressive.org/0901/intv1201.html

See Robert Fisk's daily comment from the Middle East at www.independent.co.uk