Latest Robert Fisk Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• How could believers, people who regard themselves as true Muslims, get on those planes, quoting the words of God delivered through the Prophet to themselves, knowing they were going to kill innocent people? They saw the other passengers on the plane. They could see the woman with her little daughter. They saw people making phone calls to their wives or their husbands. They knew who they were killing.

  Robert Fisk

  Daughter, Husband, Wife

  Source: progressive.org

• The violence stems from injustice, because people feel they have been treated unfairly in the Middle East, whether that means military occupation, starvation under U.N. sanctions, whether it means that they have a dictatorship imposed on them, propped up by the West. This is why people turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.

  Robert Fisk

  Military, Mean, People

  Source: progressive.org

• 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."

  Robert Fisk

  Thinking, People, Giving

  Source: progressive.org

• 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?

  Robert Fisk

  Political, September 11, Vision

  Source: progressive.org

• I still wonder if the United States realizes how much planning went into this. When we talk about "mindless terrorists," we are lying to ourselves.

  Robert Fisk

  Lying, Planning, Wonder

  Source: progressive.org

• I've lived in the Middle East for twenty-five years. I know exactly how these issues come up. Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, "But bin Laden says what we think." These people believe that Osama bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington; they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth.

  Robert Fisk

  Believe, Thinking, People

  Source: progressive.org

• 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.

  Robert Fisk

  Country, Men, Boss

  Source: progressive.org

• 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.

  Robert Fisk

  Country, Men, World

  Source: progressive.org

• Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden puts his finger on the other longstanding injustices in the Arab world: the conying so. And, tinued 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.

  Robert Fisk

  Children, Feelings, Dying

  Source: progressive.org

• Osama bin Laden is very shrewd. But he struck me, even in 1997, as being remarkably out of touch. I remember thinking this does not look like the type of guy who walks to the top of a mountain with a mobile phone and says, "Operation B, attack."Now he is America's number one enemy. He's always wanted to be that.

  Robert Fisk

  Thinking, Guy, Enemy

  Source: progressive.org

• At the end of the day, Osama bin Laden's interest is not Washington and New York, it's the Middle East. He wants Saudi Arabia. He wants to get rid of the House of Saud. There's a great deal of resentment, even inside the royal family, at the continued military presence of the United States there.

  Robert Fisk

  Military, House, Resentment

  Source: progressive.org

• Osama Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do in response to this attack 9/11. I'm sure he wanted America to attack Afghanistan. Once you do what your enemy wants, you are walking into a trap, whether you think it's the right thing to do or not.

  Robert Fisk

  Thinking, Enemy, Osama Bin Laden

  Source: progressive.org

• I was very struck by the fact that Colin Powell said he would produce evidence of Osama bin Laden fault and then never produced it. Then Tony Blair produced a document of seventy paragraphs, but only the last nine referred to the World Trade Center, and they were not convincing. So we have a little problem here: If they're guilty, where is the evidence? And if we can't hear the evidence, why are we going to war?

  Robert Fisk

  War, World, Problem

  Source: progressive.org

• If it is bin Laden, he's a very intelligent guy. He's been planning his war for a long time. I remember the last time I met him in 1997 in Afghanistan. And bin Laden said to me "From this mountain, Mr. Robert, upon which you are sitting, we beat the Russian army and helped break the Soviet Union. And I pray to God that he allows us to turn America into a shadow of itself." When I saw the pictures of New York without the World Trade Center, New York looked like a shadow of itself.

  Robert Fisk

  War, Army, Intelligent

  Source: progressive.org

• 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.

  Robert Fisk

  Trying, World, Osama Bin Laden

  Source: progressive.org

• It's very easy to start a war but the muftah, as the Arabs say, the key to switch off a war, is very difficult to find.

  Robert Fisk

  War, Keys, Easy

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.

• Whatever the political injustices are that created an environment that brought this about, it was not Americans who flew those planes into those buildings. And we should remember that. The crimes against humanity were perpetrated by people who were Arab Muslims.

  Robert Fisk

  People, Political, Humanity

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.

• Fundamentalism is not bred in poverty. There are plenty of poor countries in the world that don't have violence because amid the poverty there is a kind of justice and in some countries a democracy.

  Robert Fisk

  Country, Justice, Democracy

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.

• People turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.

  Robert Fisk

  People, Violence, Turns

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.

• I've never seen a single demonstration in Pakistan, in the streets of Gaza, in the West Bank, 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." I'm sure they'd like those things, but it's not what they demand in the demonstrations. In the demonstrations, they talk about justice, they talk about an end to Israeli occupation.

  Robert Fisk

  Justice, People, Giving

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.

• Individuals in various countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia listen to the tapes of bin Laden. They gather in groups of four or five. They feel they want to do something to express their support for what they've heard. The idea that they were taking orders is a particularly Western idea.

  Robert Fisk

  Country, Egypt, Order

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.

• 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.

  Robert Fisk

  Men, Order, Boss

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.

• Some of the guys in the Northern Alliance are war criminals. One of the Northern Alliance commanders ran a slave girl network in Kabul in 1994. Remember that there was a period when every woman on the streets was at risk of being raped. This was the Northern Alliance period of glory.

  Robert Fisk

  Girl, War, Guy

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.

• 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.

  Robert Fisk

  Children, Land, Feelings

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.

• Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, "But bin Laden says what we think." These people believe that bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington; they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth.

  Robert Fisk

  Believe, Thinking, People

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.