So Fisk Supported the War? Er, Nevermind...

Instapundit has directed our attention to an amazing piece of dissembling from that most amazing of dissemblers, Robert Fisk. To read the first three-fourths of this column, you would think that Robert Fisk had been an enthusiastic member of the "Coalition of the Willing" when in fact he took every opportunity to undermine support for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Here, Fisk writes about what he and other journalists "knew" about Saddam even when Saddam was a friend of America:

In those days, we called him an autocrat -- The Associated Press used to call him "the Iraqi strongman" -- because he was a friend of America. But we knew all about him, the raping rooms, the tooth extractors, the knives and the concrete hanging chambers with their clanging doors, and the execution pits....

In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq this year, we journalists -- and all praise to Paul Wood of the BBC for his part in this -- got our hands on videos of some of the most pornographic violence any of us would be able to stomach. For 45 minutes, Saddam's security police whipped and beat half-naked Shiite prisoners in the courtyard of their "Mukhabarat" headquarters.

They are covered in blood, screaming and whimpering. They are kicked and their testicles crushed and pieces of wood forced between their teeth as they are pushed into sewers and clubbed on the face.

One could forgive me for thinking that maybe old Fiskie was suddenly coming around, especially when he takes credit for being part of the "we" who got rid of the maniac (I mean Saddam, not Fisk):

It's easy, looking at these images of Saddam's sadism, to have expected Iraqis to be grateful to us this week. We have captured Saddam. We have destroyed the beast. The nightmare years are over.

But here's the catch: Because we waited too long to get rid of Saddam, we can never make it right, and therefore (I guess -- Fisk isn't real clear about this) the war can never be justified:

If only we could have got rid of this man 15 years ago -- 20 years ago -- how warm would be our welcome in Iraq today. But we didn't. And that is why his capture will not save U.S. soldiers. He lives on. Just as Hitler lives on today in the memories and fears of millions. It is in the nature of such terrible regimes to replicate themselves in the mind....

Dictators remain in the mind, to poison again, to torture once more. Saddam has gone. Saddam lives. And we think the war is over.

Such spellbinding logic from one of the high priests of the Looney Left can only leave you shaking your head in amazement.

First, Bobbie, nobody said that "the war is over." Quite the opposite. You may not have heard the press conference with President Bush, but he himself said that he expects violence to continue, and that Americans and their coalition partners should be prepared for more sacrifice.

Fisk is right about one thing, though. The people of Iraq will be like a collective mental patient for some time to come, and we will need to show a great deal of forebearance in helping them climb out of this collective nightmare that they have been living.

Where I clearly disagree with Fisk is that he seems to think that hope is already lost. I, and the President and many Iraqis, believe that hope is just beginning.

Perhaps Fisk's problem is that he is a man without courage. Only a coward could relate all of the horrors that he obviously "knew" about when he was glad-handing with Saddam, yet at the same time so shamelessly shirk his responsibilities as a member of Western liberal (in the more traditional sense of the word) civilization.

Robert Fisk belonged in that hole with Saddam.