List of Robert Fisk Quotes

At Baalbek Nuts I Bought Pistachios From The Lebanese Owners, Who Answered My Request For Their Thoughts On The War With The Typically Lebanese Response Of No Problem. It's A Lie, As We All Knew.

President Bush Will Come Here And There Will Be New "friends" Of America To Open A New Relationship With The World, New Economic Fortunes For Those Who "liberated" Them.

And History`s Fingers Never Relax Their Grip, Never Leave Us Unmolested, Can Touch Us Even When We Would Never Imagine Their Presence.

The Sheer Violence Of It, The Howl Of Air Raid Sirens And The Air-cutting Fall Of The Missiles Carried Its Own Political Message; Not Just To President Saddam But To The Rest Of The World. We Are The Superpower, Those Explosions Said Last Night. This Is How We Do Business.

I Don't Know What Happens If They Get Bin Laden. I'm Much More Interested In What Happens If They Don't Get Bin Laden.

It Is Always An Eerie Experience To Sit Among Bashar Al-assad's Soldiers.

I Wouldn't Say I Was Part Of An Anti-war Campaign.

Why Is It That We Go To Immense Lengths Getting The Serbs Who Were Responsible For The Massacre Of 7,000 At Srbrenica - That's Slightly More Than The Total Figure For New York - And We Take Them To A Tribunal In The Hague, And One After Another, We Arraign Them, Try Them, Convict Them, And Punish Them In Front Of The World, But No Plans Have Been Brought Forward To Get Bin Laden And His Friends And Put Them On Trial?

Why Is It That We Go To Immense Lengths Getting The Serbs Who Were Responsible For The Massacre Of 7,000 At Srbrenica-that's Slightly More Than The Total Figure For New York 9/11-and We Take Them To A Tribunal In The Hague, And One After Another, We Arraign Them, Try Them, Convict Them, And Punish Them In Front Of The World, But No Plans Have Been Brought Forward To Get Osama Bin Laden And His Friends And Put Them On Trial.

These Terrible Terrorism Acts Occur Because Of Political Situations And Injustice In Various Parts Of The World. The Middle East Is Heavy With Injustice. After September 11,george W.bush Announced That He Had Always Had A Vision Of A Palestinian State. Why Didn't He Tell Us That Before September 11, When It Would Have Been A Bit More Impressive?

We Love To Think This Fundamentalism And Terrorism Is All About Poverty, And, Of Course, It Has A Connection. You Can See That These People Not Only Are Poor But They Have No Outlets. These Governments Allow No Opposition. So What Do People Do? They Go To Islam. It's The Only Organizational Institution Where They Can Express Their Feelings. But It's Not About Poverty. I've Never Seen A Single Demonstration In Which The People Have Come Out With Signs Saying, "please Give Us Better Roads. Please Give Us New Prenatal Clinics. Please Give Us A New Sewage System."

Obama, Who Is Becoming More And More Preacher-like, Wants To Be The Punisher-in-chi Ef Of The Western World, The Avenger-in-chie F. There Is Something Oddly Roman About Him. ... The Lesser Races Must Be Civilized And They Must Be Punished... Everyone Outside The Roman Empire Was Called A Barbarian. Everyone Outside Obama’s Empire Is Called A Terrorist.

When I Saw The Pictures Of New York Without The World Trade Center, New York Looked Like A Shadow Of Itself.

Saudi Arabia Is The Most Fragile Of All Arab States, Though We're Not Saying So. And, Unfortunately, Bin Laden Puts His Finger On The Other Longstanding Injustices In The Arab World: The Continued Occupation Of Palestinian Land By The Israelis; The Enormous, Constant Arab Anger With The Tens Of Thousands Of Iraqi Children Who Are Dying Under Sanctions; The Feelings Of Humiliation Of Millions Of Arabs Living Under Petty Dictators, Almost All Of Whom Are Propped Up By The West.

Whether Osama Bin Laden Is Doing It Cynically And Has No Interest In These Matters, Or Whether He's Doing It Out Of Genuine Conviction, His Voice Has A Tremendous Resonance Throughout The Arab World. One Editorial In A Lebanese Paper Said It Is A Matter Of Great Humiliation For The Arabs That The Only Man Who Can Outline, Truthfully, What Our Humiliations Are Is An Arab Who Has To Say It From A Cave In A Foreign Country.

Clinton Impressed Assad: A Young Man Who Appeared To Want To Be Neutral In The Arab-israeli Dispute - An Illusion Of Course, But That's What Assad Thought.

The Dead Cannot Speak. But Hitherto Unknown Information Has Emerged From The Confidential Archives Of The Syrian Presidency And Foreign Ministry, Published In A New Book By Bouthaina Shaaban, Who Spent Ten Years As Hafez's Interpreter And Is Still An Adviser To His Son Bashar.

We Live In A Society In The West, Where, When Men Do Violent Things, They Do Them Under Orders. They Are Soldiers Carrying Out Orders Or Mafia Men Carrying Out Killings For Bosses. But The Way Things Happen In The Middle East Is Not The Same As In The West. Look, International Capital Has Been Globalized, So Osama Bin Laden Is Globalized. It's Not Surprising To Find Followers Of Bin Laden In All These Countries.

So Here's A Question From One Who Believed, Only A Week Ago, That Baghdad Might Just Collapse And That We Might Wake Up One Morning To Find The Baathist Militia And The Iraqi Army Gone And The Americans Walking Down Saadun Street With Their Rifles Over Their Shoulders. If The Iraqis Can Still Hold Out Against Such Overwhelming Force In Umm Qasr For Four Days, If They Can Keep Fighting In Basra And Nasiriyah – The Latter A City That Briefly Rose In Revolt Against Saddam's Regime In 1991 – Why Should Saddam's Forces Not Keep Fighting In Baghdad?

The [israelis] Believed - They Were Possessed Of An Absolute Certainty And Conviction - That 'terrorists' Were In Chatila. How Could I Explain To Them That The Terrorists Had Left, That The Terrorists Had Worn Israeli Uniforms, That The Terrorists Had Been Sent Into Chatila By Israeli Officers, That The Victims Of The Terrorists Were Not Israelis But Palestinians And Lebanese?

Colleagues Will Malign You If You're A Moderately Successful Journalist.

I Don't Like The Definition 'war Correspondent'. It Is History, Not Journalism, That Has Condemned The Middle East To War. I Think 'war Correspondent' Smells A Bit, Reeks Of False Romanticism: It Has Too Much Of The Whiff Of Victorian Reporters Who Would View Battles From Hilltops In The Company Of Ladies, Immune To Suffering, Only Occasionally Glancing Towards The Distant Pop-pop Of Cannon Fire.

In One Way, I Fear All Damascus Is A Dungeon. Or Do You Have To Live Here To Appreciate That?

I Do Not Make Stories Up, Full Stop.