aka
Making Hitch My BitchA dissection of the "arguments" presented here:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/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.Sure they do. The point is that our media has fallen down on its job and there's a huge number of very important questions to be answered that have never even been addressed.
Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not.False dichotomy. They have a hand in US policy. They are given special treatment. But they don't run the nation.
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.)False dichotomy. The House of Saud is an enemy of radical Islamic fundamentalists, but many of the people in Saudi Arabia -- including some very powerful Saudis -- are these radicals' biggest friends and benefactors.
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.False dichotomy. I don't think the war in Afghanistan was justified by the actions of a few criminals, but I understand why we went in there and I didn't protest the decision. Furthermore, as long as we went in there, we should have committed the troops and resources to do the job right.
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.As long as we went in there, we should have committed the troops and resources to do the job right.
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.Yes, the situation is Afghanistan is marginally better than it was under the Taliban. But did we really commit the resources and troops necessary to do the job right, Chrissy? I mean, warlords control the majority of the country. Heroin production is at an all-time high. More American troops die with each passing week, Bin Laden is still on the loose and the Taliban is back.
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.It didn't have to be so risky. And if we committed more money and troops, it wouldn't be.
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.Yes, we are marginally better than both Saddam and the Taliban. But isn't the real irony here that you and your new brethren on the right feel compelled to crow about these less than flattering comparisons?
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.Sure it does. The "operative" phrase is "limited hangout," Chrissy. I assume you've heard of it.
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.What big lie? What big misrepresentation? Where does the buck stop, Chrissy?
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.But Bush DOES take too many lazy vacations. Does the Camp Davis footage with Blair somehow negate the fact that Bush has taken more vacation days than any other President in history? If so, why?
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.And? The image is presented for what it's worth. Without the surrounding context, even Moore would agree that's not a lot.
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.Wow, Chrissy! So this footage made such an impression that you had to set up TWO hypothetical strawmen to shoot down! Way to show you know all the tricks when it comes to arguing the inarguable!
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. Why? Suppose that Bush just sat there like an idiot because -- with the "missions" of Flight 77 and Flight 93 delayed -- it was too early to "spring into action" without making the complete lack of US air defense that morning his own responsibility?
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.So which Americans did Hussein attack or kill again, Chrissy? Saddam was a threat to US security because Abu Nidal murdered Leon Klinghoffer? If you are picking nits, you lose with this one, Chrissy, since Nidal isn't Hussein. If you are looking at the bigger picture, you also lose since Nidal's presence in Iraq didn't make Iraq a threat to the United States.
Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.)And this made Hussein a threat to Israel's security, not ours. Right, Chrissy?
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.)Whoa, Chrissy. I guess your idiotic support of Bush's Iraqi misadventure is really making you dig deep for some reason -- any reason -- left to justify it.
Let's see:
1) Hussein didn't kill the hostages he took in the Gulf War.
2) Hussein fought back in the Gulf War.
3) Hussein's "agents" supposedly tried to off Poppy.
4) Hussein's forces fired at the US & British planes that patrolled an internationally unsanctioned "No Fly Zone" that never bothered with UN approval.
5) Hussein took public pleasure in actions that hurt the country that led the invasion that soundly defeated him during the Gulf War.
6) Hussein was trying to buy missiles from North Korea until our invasion of Iraq miraculously stopped his nefarious plans? OK, Chrissy, whatever you say. But even if he got them -- which he didn't -- even the best NK missiles couldn't reach the United States from Iraq, now could they?
7) Zarqawi "moved" to Baghdad before our invasion? Well, that's news to all of us, Chrissy! Who is your source on this doozy, NewsMax?
Even if we grant you every one of these claims, how do any of them make Hussein's weak and decrepit regime a threat to the United States -- which was the entire context of Moore's claim?
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.What do these two things have to with one another, Chrissy? Heeding warnings = protecting us = good. Issuing warnings = scaring us = bad.
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.Moore is arguing to direct our anti-terrorism resources better. Where is the contradiction?
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?Once again, he's pointing out that the criteria used for increasing our security and safety are skewed. It's more for show than for effectiveness. Where is the contradiction?
Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"?Let's see. Because it would @#%$ off too many fundamentalist Saudis? How many false dichotomies do you plan on rehashing, Chrissy?
The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly.Oil is running out. Oil prices are rising. Iraqi oil isn't going to make Saudi oil any less valuable. Plus, the Saudis will be primary investors in whatever oil companies reap Iraqi profits.
They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise.Well, luckily they have a US puppet regime to take care of that for them, now isn't it?
To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory."My God, Chrissy. Not another strawman. It's
your dichotomous "theory," not Moore's. And your "points" are meaningful only in terms of the false dichotomies the YOU yourself have posited.
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.And your audience is what, Chrissy? Neo-liberal war mongering imperialists?
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.And which of these observations are lies? And which are not increasingly relevant to today's America?
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.And you'll try any false dichotomy twice in the same article if you get a really good drunk going.
Still looking for all those lies you promised us, Chrissy ...
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