Fisk weighs in

Robert Fisk has surfaced just in time to render judgment on the election in Iraq: “What a bloody charade.” The column reads like an over the top parody of the British journo who gave his name to the phenomenon of “fisking.”
Fisk sees the Iraq election as a “fantasy” (why?), notes that the terrorists have not been defeated yet (though Fisk’s reference to the “occupiers” suggests he supports them), and bizarrely summons the ghost of Vietnam:

The reality is that much of Iraq has become a free-fire zone (for reference, see under “Vietnam”) and the Americans are conducting this secret war as efficiently and as ruthlessly as they conducted their earlier bombing campaign against Iraq between 1991 and 2003, an air raid a day, or two raids, or three. Then they were attacking Hussein’s “military targets” in Iraq.

Fisk appears to have recovered fully from the famous beating he took in 2001. His column memorializing that event is “My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war.” That “filthy war” was of course the war that liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. Fisk wrote regarding his beating:

I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

Is it wrong to wonder if Fisk might enjoy another such opportunity to express solidarity with his victimizers before he leaves Baghdad?

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