View From the Middle East

As recounted in his recent book, "The Great War for Civilisation," highly acclaimed British journalist Robert Fisk, who has interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times, wrote the following immediately after the September 11 attacks: "But this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and U.S. helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia --paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally-- hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."(p. 835) "America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so."(p. 836) One reason America thought this would be cost-free is that our media doesn't report on the atrocities we subsidize. An eye-witness living and reporting in the Middle East for 30 years, Robert Fisk has documented that which Americans are not supposed to know. He has also illuminated the techniques by which our government and our media prevent us from seeing our country the way the rest of the world does.