Detail
- Artist: Francois Smit (after Grant Wood's "American Gothic)
- Published in: The Sunday Independent
- Author of article: Robert Fisk
- Date: 31/03/2007
- Paper: 280gsm 100% cotton acid free paper
- Ink: Epson ultrachrome archival pigment ink
- Image Size: 594mm x 420mm
- Frame: Optional
- Edition: Limited edition of 12
A short extract from the article
Iraq casts a long shadow over the US
Bush's campaign of fear has worked. Ordinary Americans, untouched by a distant war, are nonetheless afraid, writes Robert Fisk
There's a helluva difference between Cairo University and the campus of Valdosta in the Deep South of the United States. I visited both recently and I feel like I've been travelling on a gloomy spaceship - or maybe a time machine - with just two distant constellations to guide my journey. One is clearly named Iraq; the other is Fear. They have a lot in common.
The politics department at Cairo's vast campus is run by Dr Mona El-Baradei - yes, she is the sister of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - and her students, most of them young women,
almost all scarved, duly wrote out their questions at the end of the turgid Fisk lecture on the failings of journalism in the Middle East.
"Why did you invade Iraq?" was one. I didn't like the "you" bit, but the answer was "oil". "What do you think of the Egyptian government?" At this, I looked at my watch. I reckon, I told the students, that I just had time to reach Cairo airport for my flight before Hosni Mubarak's intelligence lads heard of my reply.
Much nervous laughter.
Well, I said, new constitutional amendments to enshrine emergency legislation into common law and the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood supporters was not a path to democracy. And I ran through the United States state department's list of Egyptian arbitrary detentions, routine torture and unfair trials. I didn't see how the local constabulary could do much about condemnation from
Mubarak's American friends. But it was purely a symbolic moment. These cheerful, intelligent students wanted to see if they would hear the truth or get palmed off with another bromide about Egypt's steady march to democracy, its stability - versus the disaster of Iraq - and its supposedly roaring
success.
Bush's campaign of fear
