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Michael Moore skewers Bush in ’Farenheit 9/11’
by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith
Michael Moore’s "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the Cannes Film Festival Palme
d’Or
and has garnered a buzz usually bestowed on major Hollywood releases.
In its
first week, the film broke box office records for a documentary.
On the heels of the 9/11 Commission’s report and the scandal at Abu
Graib
prison, Moore’s scathing documentary film of the Bush administration’s
mishandling of the events leading up to and beyond 9/l 1, and the
subsequent
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a stunner. The film begins with clips
of
election day 2000; TV news anchors report that Gore won Florida and the
national election. Uh-oh, wait a minute….
Network talk-show hosts interviewing Moore have tried to skewer him on
nit-picky stuff, essentially missing the whole point of the film, which
is
to "ask the serious questions about the war," Moore told Philadelphia
Inquirer movie critic, Carrie Rickey. "From day one, I would not be
deterred
… the media were cheerleaders for the war … it was disgraceful."
Moore asks questions most reporters did not dare to—about Afghanistan,
Iraq,
the Patriot Act (which Moore gets Congress members to admit on camera
that
they never read), the Bush/Saudi ties, and Homeland Security (which
tries to
keep us in constant fear so that we will "get behind the Bush agenda"
for
his ongoing "war on terror").
He has included gruesome footage from Iraq; devastating portraits of
older
Iraqi citizens grieving over missing relatives, homes reduced to
rubble;
shots of confused U.S. soldiers voicing their despair at being betrayed
by
their government. "If it wasn’t for the oil," one says, "no one would
be
here."
The scene of Bush sitting stunned for seven minutes in front of a
classroom,
after an aide whispers in his ear about the second plane hitting the
World
Trade Center, is priceless.
Moore’s cameras follow Lila Lipscomb, a mother from Moore’s home town,
Flint, Mich. Lila was a super-patriot who flew an American flag in her
front
yard. Pictures of relatives in uniform adorn her front room. Then, her
oldest son’s helicopter was shot down in Iraq and he was killed.
Moore handled the impact of the tragedy on Lila and her family with
delicacy
and restraint—a testament to his maturity as a filmmaker. Lila’s grief
paralleled that of the bereft Arab mother filmed standing in front of
the
heap of stones and twisted wire that once was her home, wailing and
praying
to Allah to stop the U.S. bombing.
Moore interviews wounded soldiers in a veterans’ hospital: single and
multiple amputees, sitting in wheelchairs or lying abed. They talk
about
their experiences, about Bush and his war, a war that Rumsfeld, in the
film,
calls "humane." Narrating over footage of Bush rallying the troops on
some
Army base, Moore recounts the cuts Bush is making to veterans’ services
and
medical care.
Interspersed with the painful and poignant are hilarious scenes,
attesting
to Moore’s clever editing and camera work. His questioning of why the
bin
Laden family could fly out of the United States after 9/11 on specially
arranged flights with no FBI interrogation was enhanced with a clip
from the
old TV show "Dragnet," where Sgt. Friday (Jack Webb), snaps, "We just
want
the facts, Ma’am."
And, on the hunt for Osama, clips of Bush snarling, "We’ll smoke ‘em
out!"
is followed by quick cuts from cowboy movies with John Wayne and
others,
echoing, "We’ll smoke ‘em out!"
In an interview with members of a California local peace group,
retirees who
sit around eating cookies, they tell him they were infiltrated by a
police
agent. And an elderly man from Oakland states that he was visited by
the FBI
after voicing his opinions on the Iraq war during his workout in a
gymnasium.
In an attempt to provide some answers to "the serious questions about
the
war," (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not designed to fight
terrorism!) Moore reports the plans by giant U.S. corporations and
amenable
U.S. politicians to secure the oil of the region.
Moore nails companies who profited from 9/11 and now the Iraq war, such
as
the Carlyle Group (of which George Bush Sr. is a spokesperson) and
Halliburton (from which former CEO Dick Cheney derives income). He
films
CEOs at meetings, admitting on camera that war is always good for
companies
involved in war services and products.
He includes footage of a surly Taliban leader sitting in a parlor in
the
United States in March 2001, at a time when their egregious human
rights
issues and other atrocities were widely known. In a voice-over, Moore
explains that the Taliban visit concerned plans to build a pipeline
through
Afghanistan for the U.S. oil giant UNOCAL.
But his focus remains on George W. Bush, and the corporate ties of the
Bush
family. Unfortunately, in the absence of any stated alternative, most
viewers will see in the relentless anti-Bush message of the film an
implied
recommendation to vote for Kerry and the Democrats in the upcoming
election.
Moore has made his backing for the Democratic Party very clear in other
instances. He was outspoken in supporting Gen. Wesley Clark in the
primaries.
And on June 28, Moore spoke on closed-circuit TV to over 3000 house
parties
organized by MoveOn.org, in which he urged viewers to "take back the
White
House" in November.
In "Fahrenheit 9/11" Moore glosses over the fact that war, secrecy, and
injustices are hardly unique to the Bush White House. They have been
attributes of U.S. policy throughout the modern era in both Republican
and
Democratic administrations.
From 1992 until 2001, when Bush took over the presidency, Clinton not
only
ordered periodic bombing but also supported economic sanctions against
Iraq,
resulting in the deaths of over a million people.
Moore includes in "Fahrenheit 9/11" archival and recent film clips
showing
Daddy Bush and son chummy with the Saudi royal family, principally
Prince
Bandar. But the Saudi connections did not begin with the Bush family;
they
go way back to the early years of the last century, when the American
oil
companies acquired concessions in the region and needed a compliant
regime
to protect their interests.
These neocolonial ties were solidified during the Second World War
under
Roosevelt’s administration, and have been maintained by Republicans and
Democrats alike since then.
Nor were Bush and company unique in having relations with the Taliban.
It
was the Jimmie Carter administration, in its drive to counter the
Soviet
presence in Afghanistan, that first gave aid to Islamic fundamentalist
forces in Southern Asia—out of which the Taliban and al Qaeda later
emerged.
Let’s hope that in a future film, Moore will tackle the deeper issues
behind
U.S. strategic policy. We’re waiting.
This article first appeared in the July 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
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