 Zarqawi tape authentic, says Fisk
| We bloody well knew that. |
TONY JONES, LATELINE PRESENTER: Well, Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for 'The Independent' newspaper and more than 30 years of reporting from the region makes him one of the most acute observers of the Arab world. To discuss the implications of the al-Zarqawi video, he joins us now from Beirut. Thanks for being there, Robert Fisk. Do you have any doubt at all that these really are images of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
ROBERT FISK, MOONBAT, AUTHOR AND IDJIT JOURNALIST: They do look like Zarqawi. I think it's pretty clear that he is alive, which I doubted for some time and that he, indeed, made this videotape. It clearly is a blow to the United States in the sense that they have several times claimed that they've killed him, which they obviously haven't done, and the tape is obviously new. But I think it 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.
| Sure they do. History is driven by individuals: sometimes individuals of outstanding character (George Washington, Madame Curie, Winston Churchill), and sometimes by madmen (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Napoleon). History is capricious, twists and turns, and bagging an individual like Zarqawi or bin Laden matters a great deal. |
It's a bit like, you know, after you make a nuclear bomb, you go around arresting all the nuclear scientists and putting them in prison. It doesn't do any good.
| I dunno, can we try it in Pak-land and see? |
The nuclear bomb exists. Al-Qaeda exists. The organisation which bin Laden has created exists. So, the individuals per se don't actually matter anymore, but that's something which I think the Americans don't yet grasp.
| See above: bagging bin Laden or Zarqawi wouldn't kill off al-Qaeda, but it would demoralize them, hurt them, and make a few of their spawn think seriously about careers as auto mechanics. That would be good. |
TONY JONES: The last time we spoke, you did indeed think it very possible that he'd actually been killed and no-one knew where he was. So that's not so surprising.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah.
TONY JONES: You also thought he was a creature invented to fill the narrative gaps. In other words, a creature created, in a sense, by American propaganda. He's much more than that; isn't that evident from this video?
ROBERT FISK: Yeah. It is pretty clear. He does exist.
| See, Fiskie is indeed capable of receiving cognitive stimuli! |
He is still alive and that was him on the video. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I watched it several times over and am clearly of the mind that this is the man. What we do need to know, of course, is whether he has actually any real status over and above being a name al-Zarqawi. 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.
| Is he really the man who beheads innocents? Is he really the man who squashes baby ducks? |
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?
| Robert thinks there's a difference between an enemy of the West and the latest mad terrorist. I don't see it, but I'm not as refined as him. |
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.
| We never loathed Nasser, we just figured he was another chuckleheaded thug who made his bed with the Sovs. It's not like he did a lot in the end. Gaddafi is a legend in his own mind, it says so in his little Green Book. You could look it up. The problem with Fiskie is that he doesn't understand that people pop up. It's like in a new football league: the first quarterback to throw three touchdown passes in a game will become a star, even if we never heard of him before. Create any system and someone rises up in it. History, again, is individual, and the individuals who rise up matter, whether they're evil like Khomeini or an overgrown class clown like Qaddafi. |
People who, at the end of the day, are not per se people who we need to worry about, people who, indeed --
TONY JONES: Robert Fisk, can I interrupt you there?
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, yeah.
TONY JONES: I'm surprised to hear you say some of these things because isn't it he himself who put these images on the Internet, including make a beast of himself by earlier putting on the Internet images of him with a mask on beheading Nicholas Berg, for example?
ROBERT FISK: Well, no. I mean, we don't know that that was Zarqawi. If indeed it was, then he is obviously the monstrous figure we make him out to be.
| There's an admission for Fiskie, that someone other than an American President could be a 'monstrous figure'. Thanks for noting the possibility. |
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?
| Fiskie is making this a tad more complicated than it needs to be. The Middle East is a world in which murderous thugs can rise to positions of power. In fact it's hard to be in power there if you aren't a murderous thug. We didn't 'create' Zarqawi, he grew up in a culture where he could grab the brass ring of death, violence and mayhem and become famous doing so. |
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?
| Again, this isn't hard: the personas of good and evil, as exemplified respectively by Dubya and Zaraqawi, aren't caricatures. One of these men is good (however flawed you wish to think of him) and one is demonstrably evil. One doesn't necessarily have to hate a caricature of evil, though the progressive left seems to find this easy to do these days (go type 'Cheney' over at Daily Kos for a slobbering demonstration). One can and should hate evil itself and the people who demonstrate themselves to be evil. In fact, that's one of the requirements of being good, as I was taught long ago in Sunday school. |
TONY JONES: But I mean -
ROBERT FISK: The real problem you know is - well, hold on a second, hold on a second, hold on a second. The issue is whether we accept the issue of them and us - hatred and good, good and evil. Is this actually what the world is about or is it about something different? Is it about injustice and justice and cruelty and goodness in the Middle East, for example?
| This is actually what the world is about, and the Middle East is just one place where you can find it laid out for you in starkly clear terms. |
TONY JONES: Well, here's the problem. I mean, Osama bin Laden is clearly a man who -
ROBERT FISK: Yes, it is a problem for you, isn't it?
TONY JONES: It certainly is a problem for me. Osama bin Laden is a problem for me and, I imagine, the rest of the world.
ROBERT FISK: And for me, too, by the way. Yes, he's a problem for all of us.
| Reeeeeaally? For you too Bob? That's mighty white of you to admit it. |
TONY JONES: Musab al-Zarqawi seems to be in the same category. In fact, he's been adopted by Osama bin Laden in a famous communiqué he released on Al-Jazeera at the end of 2004. So they are at least connecting up with each other. They see in themselves kindred spirits, you know, one terrorist to another. I mean, shouldn't we be concerned about the fact that this man may well have blown up the UN building in 2003 and sent a truckload of bombs into a mosque in Baghdad? These figures are creating themselves. We're not creating them.
| One gets the sense that perhaps Tony Jones has a clue; whether he did before 9/11 I don't know, but there are plenty who didn't then and do today. Welcome aboard. |
ROBERT FISK: 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".
| We didn't create Zarqawi as a creature of evil. He went and did evil things, like beheading innocent hostages and bombing innocent civilians. We didn't help him create an image of himself as the evil baddest boy of the region, he did that all on his own. |
TONY JONES: Robert Fisk, you wouldn't like us to ignore them, would you? We're journalists, we have to acknowledge their existence and dreadful things they have done. We can't just ignore the fact that they exist?
ROBERT FISK: No. Absolutely not. You're right.
| So then, what's your point? |
TONY JONES: So, what do you conclude from that and in fact what do you conclude from whether this man has any influence within the insurgency?
ROBERT FISK: Look, look, look, look. 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.
| And now that Robert Fisk says so, we can book it. |
But I also think that they register in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, they register a line that says, in effect, there is injustice in the Muslim world and I am speaking about that injustice and as long as we, the West, go along with that injustice, so these people will have a claim on the ideas and the minds of the people who listen to them.
| Then again, it may be that in their minds, it isn't about injustice as we in the West define it, as in a lack of freedom or material goods. In their minds, injustice may be defined in terms of their religion: it's that old Dar-al-Harb problem, where the 'injustice' is that infidels consume oxygen, and indeed, manage to be successful in life. |
In other words, we, as Westerners, give them some credibility by not being fair in the Middle East and that is the problem.
| In other words, it doesn't matter what we do in the Middle East, we'll be 'unfair' by refusing to submit to Allan. |
We're not fair, we are not just in the Middle East and as long as we're not going to be just, as long as we're not going to be fair, so unfortunately will these people have a say and a mind in the Middle Eastern people.
| These people will have a say and a mind in the Middle East, and the rest of the Islamic world, until Islam redefines itself away from demanding mastery of the world and all the people therein. There's another solution but it's far more bloody-minded. |
TONY JONES: OK, Robert Fisk. We thank you very much for taking the time to come in and talk to us again tonight. |