Post by unknownSo was i . you cant read links i see. Does your mommy still wipe your
ass
Post by unknowntoo?
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/
Awww, how cute, you pulled out another insult because you can't think
for yourself or back up your crap with any facts.
There is no F9/11 section yet. The stuff up is about Bowling for
Columbine. What's this then, at the top of the page?
==================
Lair. Do you really like making such an ass of yourself??
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/
Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT
One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American
left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn,
mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many
times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and
semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be
our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the
comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the
second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that
I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.
Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally
beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America
network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There,
one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over
wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media
presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a
possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic
standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni
Riefenstahl.
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote
those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece
of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise
above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile
crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise
in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is
also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a
demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society,
I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival.
In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden
should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the
American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at
least to that extent unjustified. Something-I cannot guess what, since we
knew as much then as we do now-has since apparently persuaded Moore that
Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty
and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a
dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I
understand the convenience of this late conversion.
Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about
Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:
1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if
convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle
Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in
the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline
across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and
thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely
risible in that its non-army was purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine
from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to
all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's
direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these
discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run
U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they
do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed
Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right:
They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the
time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to
send any at all-the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002-or we sent too
few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or
escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore
is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in"
the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we
discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a
joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest
military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is
preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least
a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't
think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do
with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar-an insurance against
warlordism and a condition of nation-building-is nearing completion with
infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan
secular left-like the parties of the Iraqi secular left-are strongly in
favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore
chooses to deal.
He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the
distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of
the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of
the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about
this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the
groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which
Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike.
In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the
film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain
of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's
former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he
alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This
might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that-as you
might expect-Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical
hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that,
in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is
taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So,
that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all
mythologies."
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only
sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by
wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is
accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way?
Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?)
But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with
Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so
briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A
meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this
prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf
course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then
asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you
catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he
often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton
had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More
interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the
infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole
minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say
that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance,
and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such
thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a
month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a
man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be
saying what they already say-that he knew the attack was coming, was using
it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup.
This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that
also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least
Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in
their paranoid box.
But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many
other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact,
Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions,
however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N.
resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting
choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling
in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then-wham!
From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching
the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various
Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But
these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera
would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic.
You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not
even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore
at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight
answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent"
side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year
record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned
once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only,
and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to
the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)
That this-his pro-American moment-was the worst Moore could possibly say of
Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications.
Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even
threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as
ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was
for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the
most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by
the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe
house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam
boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel.
(Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.)
In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After
that same invasion was repelled-Saddam having killed quite a few Americans
and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to
kill many more-the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former
President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should
take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not
resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired
chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered
the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.)
Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled
the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of
the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the
bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a
guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime
was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New
York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger
revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic
incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one
was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was
after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved
from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal
design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times
reported-and the David Kay report had established-that Saddam had been
secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of
secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North
Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf.
(This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the
coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)
Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you
can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so
many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly
believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look
again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to
happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others
would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having
ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."
The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of
another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From
being accused of overlooking too many warnings-not exactly an original
point-the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many.
(Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken
seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd
encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who
can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police
departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any
stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we
know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations.
Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation
at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not
forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister
influence of Big Tobacco.) So-he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport
officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is
having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again-simply not
serious.
Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the
Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to
switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and
the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of
vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then
how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to
stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in
Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's
recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the
liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary
points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory."
Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle
East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare
not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be
a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not
take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience
member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial
isolationist.
I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush
for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From
Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures,
such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of
Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the
presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to
point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army,
and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in
Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this
time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and
march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for
almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S.
Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army
that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the
film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to
garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those
who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well,
where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from?
Does he favor a draft-the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he
think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he
think-as he seems to suggest-that parents can "send" their children, as he
stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned
Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in
their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack)
riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a
waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like
taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or
flies or gets a cheer.
Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one
of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview,
he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would
have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and
women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on
those planes-we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that
Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed
the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring
down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward
either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real,
impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than
actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident
fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being
brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not
recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon
it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is
everything.
Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might
face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that
he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking
staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue,
Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I
gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop
the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one
form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this
terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience
strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the
conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that
"fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers-get a
life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid
response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show.
Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.
Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a
movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's
kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah,
well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget
made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill
Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more
polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know,
thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of
view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out
absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw
in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one
bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance
to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter
and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them
and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote
somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (.), I swear on
my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full,
would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this
pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael
Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up
the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for
minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved
mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who
thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for
Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore
concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The
words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a
hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The
clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that
there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and
the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore
had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying,
and in his own voice, the following:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are
simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow
their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual
pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of
western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda
usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if
one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one
finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are
directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States .
And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word
of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already
way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also
incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric
celluloid rewriting of recent history.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big
man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been
cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan
would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of
Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic
crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for
WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce
a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of
the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock
the vote, indeed.
Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist
attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985
attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood,
Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in
paperback.
Photograph of Michael Moore by Pascal Guyot/Agence France-Presse. Stills
from Fahrenheit 9/11 © 2004 Lions Gate Films. All Rights Reserved.Photograph
of Michael Moore on the Slate home page by Eric Gaillard/Reuters.