« Clearing Up Some Misconceptions - Part I | Main | United 93 »

April 27, 2006

I Would Comment if I Could Figure Out What he Meant

Robert Fisk — a man so vile and depraved and shameless that his name has become a pejorative verb meaning "to ridicule a person's statement or article point by point" — has given an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I would love to take it apart, but I can't figure out where to start. For example, did the US create Abu Musab al Zarqawi as a mythical demon to justify our actions in the war, or not. Every single statement that follows is from this one short interview, and every single one is Fisk in his own words (with occasional context added in [brackets]):

"But I think [Zarqawi's recent tape] is part of the bestialisation, if you like, of those people we want to hate, in the sense that I think individuals like Zarqawi or bin Laden don't actually matter."

"In other words, does he actually have any real status as a militant, as a resistant, as a rebel, whatever you like to use the word, terrorist, other than just being a person who is to be hated and to be bestialised in front of the television screens. The issue really is, I think, is this a person who is seriously an enemy of the "West" or is this just another person who is popping up on our screens to say this is the latest mad lunatic, the latest fanatic, the latest terrorist whom we have to be concerned about? That is the real issue, you see. Over and over again we've had this system where whereby we've had Ayatollah Khomeini and Gaddafi in Libya. We've had these extraordinary figures in the Middle East, like Nasser, for example, in Egypt in 1956 and people whom we are encouraged to loathe, encouraged to hate and who, ultimately, are just figureheads, who in the end are people who we just are encouraged to loathe, encouraged to hate. People who, at the end of the day, are not per se people who we need to worry about, people who, indeed -- "

"I mean, we don't know that that was Zarqawi [beheading Nick Berg]. If indeed it was, then he is obviously the monstrous figure we make him out to be. At that time you'll remember the Americans said they believed the voice was that of Zarqawi, but we didn't have any evidence of the voice on the tape. You know, the issue is, are we in fact creating these creatures for ourselves to hate or are they creating themselves? In other words, are we being promoted by these people? Are these people being put before us as caricatures, if you like, to hate or are they people who are there to be hated by us in order to make the, you know, them and us, evil/good caricatures, which George W. Bush has laid out before us?"

[Answering a question from Tony Jones as to whether, in fact, Zarqawi and bin Laden and such "creating themselves" as beasts.] "No, that's absolutely correct and they want to create themselves and we help them create themselves. We help them do that. We help them do that. Every time we hold a press conference of the occupation powers, for example, in Iraq and say, "Mr Al-Zarqawi is to blame" , we help to do this. This is what we are doing and this is a big problem because we are helping to create the creatures of "evil". "

"Here 's what I conclude. I think these people are bad guys. OK, they are. There's no doubt about it. They are bad guys."

So, did we create Zarqawi as an evil bogeyman, or is he an evil bogeyman showing his true colors? Listing to Robert Fisk, you'd have to conclude the answer is "yes". Fisk's only consistent (not coherent) position is that America is evil, and Bush is particularly evil, and that anything in the world that opposes America, and especially Bush, must therefore not be, in the end, evil. Even people who slaughter children by the hundred, are not evil in Fisk's world, if only they also burn an American flag. Or would, if it came up.

hat tip: InstaPundit

Posted by jeff at April 27, 2006 7:33 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.caerdroia.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/956

Comments

Posted by: Sgt. Gehlen at April 28, 2006 7:49 AM