During his speech, Fisk stressed that “September 11 came from the Middle East, from a land that has been besieged and mistrusted” for years.
Fisk told the audience about a time when he was nearly beaten to death by locals when his car broke down in rural Afghanistan.
Explaining the motivations of the civilians, Fisk said that if he had been an Afghani, he also would have wanted to assault a European. Animosity arises from a history of self-interested Western intervention in Arab nations, Fiske said.
When asked by the audience about the United States’ reasons for attacking Iraq, Fisk said, “I think we want to invade Iraq because we want oil fields.”
He said that he does not believe that Iraq has nuclear weapons, mentioning that he thinks the United States avoids war with countries that have already acquired weapons of mass destruction, pointing to the situation in North Korea as an example.