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Today's
Stories
July
17, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...
July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire
July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
July 17 / 18, 2004
Three
Reviews of Moore's F9/11
The
Schlemiel as Muckraker
By
SAUL LANDAU and FARRAH HASSEN
A muckraking shlemiel provides a cinematic
case for US regime change. But "Fahrenheit 9/11" goes
beyond the predictable anti-Bush screed; it delves into the nature
of empire. Like Michael Moore's earlier documentaries, "Roger
and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," the new film
treats contemporary class conflict at home and abroad. Its heroes,
confused working class Americans, try to behave morally in the
face of imperial evil.
Moore's empathetic "documentary"
characters evolve as the result of a traumatic social act: in
"Roger," General Motors closes eleven auto plants in
Flint, Michigan, which brings consciousness or depression to
those who lose jobs, stability, marriages; the high school shootings
in Littleton, Colorado inspire two of permanently disabled Columbine
students to confront the hidden hand behind gun violence; in
"Fahrenheit," Moore introduces Lila Lipscomb, a flag
waving, conservative Democrat whose life personifies the bumper
sticker line, "Bush Lied, My Son Died."
Dead and wounded soldiers,
victims of the Bushies' lies in Iraq, emerge as foreign policy
equivalents of the victims of General Motors' irresponsibility
in Michigan. Roger, the first name of GM CEO Roger Smith, offers
empty euphemisms and platitudes to justify his profit seeking.
Using the pretext of reaching
Roger, so the CEO can witness the results of his decision on
the community, Moore returns to his hometown, Flint, to explore
the lives of the newly unemployed coping with job loss and escalating
crime--provoked by the obliteration of the city's infrastructure.
A GM lobbyist matter-of-factly explains that Smith had to move
the plants to Mexico  because it was "cost
effective" -- low wages and unenforceable labor and environmental
standards. Hey, corporations can't afford sentimentality. Remember,
GM's obligation to stockholders outstrips any duties the corporation
might have toward large communities! And Roger got a multi million
dollar raise for making the move!
"Bowling" targets
another major corporation, Lockheed Martin, the world's largest
weapons manufacturer located, ironically, near Columbine High.
Lockheed provided the Pentagon with lethal weapons while serving
as Littleton's biggest employer. Homicidal violence in American
life, the film suggests, parallels US actions abroad. Guns, Moore
shows, are equally accessible in peaceful Canada, which does
not share either the imperial institutions or the cruel racial
past maintained by violence.
In "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
Moore communicates a sense of urgency as he punctures the aura
of "smoke 'em out" George as well as the carefully
crafted "protect America" patina that the military
has elaborated as it institutionalized and inflated itself in
the post World War II decades. His footage on Iraq recalls what
the networks aired during the Vietnam War and now seem frightened
to exhibit: a US killing machine and lots of gruesome shots of
dead and wounded GIs. "Fahrenheit" shows troops in
Iraq preparing to "kill the enemy" by listening to
lyrics screaming, "Burn, motherfucker."
And it shows the faces of the
young victims, dead and wounded who enlisted, the poor and minority
men and women who comprise the lower ranks of the armed forces.
The "support our troops" slogan rings hollow when they
return home without assistance for their needs in education,
health care or employment. The film exposes Bush's priorities:
young people join the army because it's the only way to pay for
college--like Lila Lipscomb's son.
In Iraq, the young soldiers,
presumably like Lila's son, a good natured and moral person,
act like brutes and occupiers--in the name of doing their duty,
following orders, liberating Iraq.
These young people don't necessarily
seek the military; the military looks for them. Moore follows
two recruiters cynically pitching in "poor shopping areas,"
with a ubiquitous Wal-Mart, trying to enlist poor black youths
for lethal combat much as they do in high schools. These well-groomed,
uniformed hucksters sell professional killing as "career
opportunities." What really happens to those who fight becomes
clear when the camera enters a ward in the Walter Reed Army Hospital.
The wounded don't make the
evening news, but they stoically try to manage without arms,
legs or eyes. In Iraq, images flash of innocent dead and wounded
civilians-- equally absent from TV news.
"Fahrenheit" demands
that people understand the behavior of Bush as President and
his criminally fraudulent case for the Iraqi invasion in order
to throw him out of office in November. Moore implies a sinister
connection between the Bush and Saudi royal families to an extent
that actually colored the Administration's response to 9/11.
The media reported, without
concluding, the mysterious exodus of Saudis, including members
of the bin Laden family, immediately following the dastardly
September deeds. Moore gets a former FBI agent to describe such
behavior as downright irresponsible. The FBI knew that 15 of
the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and that bin Laden was
the key suspect. Obviously, members of his family, however innocent,
would surely have known something that could have helped find
the chief conspirator.
Using juxtaposition of images
with mood inducing music to mold emotions, Moore maintains the
audience. All films employ emotional manipulation, not book logic,
to make their point. Imagine Moore trying to talk about the significance
of the neo-con Project for a New American Century that prioritized
Iraqi regime change. Yawn!
"Fahrenheit" begins
by presenting the President as a privileged jerk who set a record
for vacation taking, a man both absent-minded and downright absent.
"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop
these terrorist killers. Thank you." Then, Bush turns and
strokes a golf ball: "Now watch this drive."
The persona that White House
spinners fed the media after 9/11 was of Bush as the fearless
commander. In contrast, Moore shows Bush after receiving news
of the 9/11 attacks as dazed and confused. The President looks
lost while trying to follow the story line of "My Pet Goat,"
which he was reading to second grade Florida students. Seven
minutes tick by as the Chief executive holds the oversized picture
book. Chaos, death and destruction envelope lower Manhattan while
a hijacking pilot of the third plane aims for the Pentagon.
Moore's quiet but tendentious
narration leads the public to conclusions. He clearly does not
rely on the audience's own intelligence. Like Hollywood producers,
Moore seems to assume that mainstream America, battered by mass
media's shotgun pellets of trivia, has become befuddled.
In the film, Moore skewers
the media for their absence and their toadying. Some networks
that dropped their investigative ball after 9/11 now question
facts and motives behind "Fahrenheit." On CBS' "The
Early Show" (June 25, 2004), Hannah Storm piously intoned:
"the one thing that journalists try to do is to present
both sides of the story, and it could be argued that you did
not do that in this movie."
"My side," Moore
responded, "the side of millions of Americans, rarely gets
told. Why don't you ask them [the Administration] the hard questions?"
Storm had no answer.
"Fahrenheit's" message
and its surrounding publicity, has begun to resonate. At a Covina,
California local hair salon, where chatting usually involves
the latest diet trends, love lives of celebrities, or the unfulfilling
sex lives of hair stylists and clients alike, the talk has turned
to Bush and his failings.
At the AMC theater in Covina
and the Edwards in West Covina, a mix of Latinos, Arabs, Chinese
and Caucasians applauded at the end. In one Oakland, California
theater, the owner announced he would not enforce the R rating.
Teenagers flocked to see the film.
Did Moore convince them that
the Bush family colluded with the corrupt Saudi monarchy and
the bin Laden family? Did the shots of Bushies shaking hands
with Crown Prince Abdullah establish guilt by association? The
close ups of dark-skinned Saudi princes juxtaposed with a public
beheading in Saudi Arabia certainly reinforce the Hollywood black
hat image. The Saudi focus also lets Moore off the hook on the
more politically cantankerous subject of Israel, a missing ingredient
in the "Fahrenheit" script.
But he does not compromise
on the issue of class. Indeed, he screams about the failure of
Bush's "compassionate conservatism" to reach the pockets
of the jobless and uninsured poor. The real Bush, with his characteristic
shit-eating grin, extols the white tie set at a fundraising dinner.
"Here we have the haves and the have-mores," he quips.
"Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."
Yes, Bush is the progeny of this parasitic class and from them
he derives his destructive "vision" of power.
Moore appears in his documentaries
as the polar opposite of Bush, obese and unshaven--or is that
a beard? This non-celebrity needs a tailor. Feigning innocence
and sometimes righteousness, this self-proclaimed member of the
oppressed class has made Time magazine's cover. This shameless
self-promoter--is there any other way to generate publicity?--has
also made mass box office hits on the core issues of capitalism:
class war, racism, violence--the ingredients of empire.
At a time when poor and minorities
have no clear political representation, Michael Moore emerges--in
all his imperfections--to articulate their grievances and steer
them toward meaningful politics.
Farrah Hassen graduated from Cal Poly Pomona University.
Saul Landau is the Director of Digital Media and
International Outreach Programs for the College of Letters, Arts
and Social Sciences. His new book is The
Business of America.
An Informal Rejoinder to Jensen on F9/11
Moore Has Done Us a Service;
More Must be Done
By VIJAY PRASHAD
Robert Jensen's review
of F9/11 irritated me. It seems to have missed the wood from
the trees. There is the phenomenon of F9/11 which deserves comment
-- those who see the movie are not only seeing what Moore has
edited for us, but many have been going for an experience, as
an act of rebellion against the warfare culture, as a way to
have conversations with relatives and friends whom one might
take along, etc. (this, as far as press reports are concerned,
and many are on michael moore's own website). The movie enables
and provokes a wider set of discussions and debates. What is
in the movie, then, should not be judged only for what it is,
but for what it enables. Jensen does not get this.
Jensen makes much of the racism
in the movie: that South Asians and Arabs are not part of the
frame when Moore discusses the Patriot Act. This is so. But the
lack of discussion on South Asians and Arabs by Moore should
not take away from the fact that the heart of the movie is in
three places, all of them with much to say about race and racism:
(1) The opening, when the Black
Congressional Caucus and one Asian representative rebuke the
all-white Senate for failing to challenge the SC's delivery of
the presidency to GWB. This is a powerful scene, and it will
make everyone recognize the strength of the Black-Asian voice
in the House, and the racist cowardice of the Senate (which is
basically an old-boys club). If Barack Obama wins, I wonder if
he will be able to do anything there.
(2) The strong presence of
Iraqis in the movie, notably the grandmother who grieves powerfully
for the loss of a part of her family. She is the one who cries
out for revenge as the last act of those who have been rendered
helpless in the face of such state terror. This woman is the
Iraqi version of Lila Lipscomb, of whom more below.
(3) Lila Lipscomb anchors this
movie. She is a polycultural woman, of the working-class, with
all the powerful contradictions of life in that sphere of America.
Her honesty and forthrightness not only silence Moore (a fact
that has been much related in the media coverage), but it also
shows us the complexities of belief among people whose name the
left often speaks.
Rather than take out Moore's
movie, it might be more useful to add to his framework. Here
are two supplements to the opening section that might have enriched
the film, and that do extend Moore's rather limited analysis
of capitalism:
(1) The political economy of
the Ibn Saud-Multinational Oil Firm-Pentagon-Wall Street relationship.
Moore relies upon the familial relationship between the Bushes
and the Al-Saud clan to personalize or to dramatize the nexus
between the monarchs of the peninsula, the multinational oil
firms (mainly of US origin), the US military (and its contractors,
such as United Defense -- the Carlyle Group), and Wall Street
(or global finance). For a documentary, the personal story makes
certain abstract connections very compelling -- it brings the
abstractions to life with a concrete, made for television example.
The documentaries from Media Education Foundation on sexism and
on media criticism are able to be very didactic and successful
-- but they were geared to the classroom and not a mass audience.
Documentaries that tend to go for a mass audience use the personal
story to illustrate or illuminate the broader connections. One
way to have intimated the broader contradictions would have been
to have mentioned the report that Saddam Hussein had been trying
to get his OPEC partners to shift their oil profits from Dollars
to Euros. Such a move would have threatened the financial stability
of the Dollar, hence the Dollar-Wall Street Complex (so well
analyzed by Peter Gowan in Global Gamble). Moore could have even
talked to a mainstream analyst at the Cambridge Energy Associates
who, if they hewed close to the facts, would have told him that
yes, there has been informal discussion in OPEC to consider such
a move; and he could have spoken to a mainstream currency broker
who would have said that such a move would have had grave effects
for the US economy. That might have shown how integral the Saudi
holdings of T-Bills is to the "stability" of the financial
architecture.
(2) The destruction of the
Saudi Left. Since Moore continued to talk of the Al-Saud clan
as the "Saudis" he gave the very mistaken impression
that all Saudis benefit from the actions of this undemocratic
regime. He could have had a very short quote from someone like
Fred Halliday, or any number of Saudi intellectuals who would
have told him that the oil lands were once home to a vibrant
left, that state repression by the monarchy destroyed enlightened
groups such as the Arabian Peninsula People's Union and Voice
of the Vanguard, and that one of the instruments for the counter-revolution
via a very intolerant brand of "Islam" was the creation,
with CIA support, of the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami, the World
Muslim Congress. He treated "Saudis" as a monolith,
had one too many images of the grotesque Al-Saud family fawning
on Bush Senior, and an image of men at prayer -- all without
any other Saudi voice, so as to show that it is a society in
ferment, with disagreement, and that state repression by the
US (and ARAMCO, the oil monopoly) contributed to the barrenness
of the left in the region. The details for this will be in my
next book, The Rise and Fall of the Third World (New Press, forthcoming
in the Spring of 2005).
I enjoyed Fahrenheit 9/11,
and found it to be a very valuable op-ed in these times of corporate
media strangulation of many of the basic 'facts' of our contemporary
history. Moore has done us a good service. There is much more
to do be done. So let's do it.
Vijay Prashad teaches at Trinity College, Hartford,
CT. His latest book is Keeping
Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare (Boston:
South End Press). He also contributes a chilling essay on prisons
and poverty in CounterPunch's forthcoming book, A
Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils.
A Screening in a Working
Class Town
A
Contrarian Review of F9/11
By DAVE LINDORFF
As someone who has frequently been a
harsh critic of Michael Moore, I have to say I tip my hat to
him for his film "Fahrenheit 9-11."
Leftists who saw the film at
early showings in New York City, or in some suburban mall or
college town, where most of the audiences tent do be composed
of middle class liberals, might be tempted to dismiss the film's
appeal as being a sop to liberal sensitivities.
I, however, was sitting in
an urban theater in working-class Ambler, PA. In the theater
with me were a mix of some middle-class liberals, teenage kids
and working people of all races.
The response to the documentary
in that theater was simply staggering. People-ordinary people
who work for hourly wages, punch time cards and who may even
have voted for Bush in 2000--were laughing uproariously at the
images of Bush staring dumbly into space after being informed
of the attacks on the Trade Center towers, groaning and laughing
as Bush told a group of assembled business leaders that they
were his "base," and applauding wildly during the film's
credits.
But what really gripped the
Ambler theatergoers was the part of Moore's film where he interviewed
troops in Iraq-both those that showed young men dehumanized to
the point that they were killing to taped rock music, and those
that showed troubled soldiers distraught that they were killing
innocents and fighting and risking their lives for no discernable
purpose. They were also gripped, as was I, by the images of a
distraught Iraqi grandmother cursing America and bewailing the
loss of a household of her relatives to an American bomb, and
of a Flint mother who had lost her soldier son.
Equally powerful, and clearly
troubling to those in the Ambler Theater around me, who expressed
their disgust and dismay loudly, and almost involuntarily, were
the scenes of bloody carnage, especially the shattered Iraqi
children.
Whatever complaints one might
have about things that Moore did or didn't do in this film-he
didn't delve deeply enough into Bush's AWOL record in the National
Guard, he didn't touch on Israel's role in promoting the Iraq
war or in helping train U.S. forces during the occupation, and
he didn't say much of anything about the Democrats' complicity
in the invasion and in the so-called "War on Terror"
and the Patriot Act assault on the Bill of Rights-this is a powerful
film.
It's a powerful film for what
it does do, and that is to show mainstream America for
the first time the real horrors of this war. It shows clearly
how it is the children of the working class who are being asked
to fight this war on behalf of a corporate elite that President
Bush declared to be "my base." It shows, graphically,
the corporate feeding frenzy to make money out of Iraq's misery.
And it shows how the poor in America, in run-down cities like
Moore's native Flint, Michigan, are being left to rot while Washington
spends hundreds of billions fighting for corporate interests
in the Middle East.
If a picture is worth a thousand
words, this film has to be worth 1000 words per frame-certainly
1000 words in any mainstream corporate newspaper or read from
the teleprompter of any corporate TV "news" anchor--
and Moore is to be commended for producing it, even if it does
make him filthy rich.
We don't live in a perfect
world, and given the extent to which our mass media have become
little more than state organs for the purveyance of official
government propaganda, this documentary, which is reportedly
reaching deep into the heartland of America and garnering tremendous
support, is about as good as it's going to get. To criticize
this film because it doesn't go beyond an exposé of the
Bush administration to deconstruct the evils of the U.S capitalist
system is what Lenin might have called infantile leftism.
There are films like that being
made, but they don't run in the local Cineplex, which is the
point. Besides, I suspect that most of the ordinary working-class
people watching this film have anough common sense to realize
that it's not just Republicans who are calling American corporate
leaders their "base" in private.
While it's fair and appropriate
to critique Moore and his film, and to call attention to its
mistakes and omissions, I think we on the left should at the
same time acknowledge the importance of such a powerful anti-war,
anti-corporate message--one which is reaching more ordinary Americans
than any other I can think of.
For my part, I'm recommending
it warts and all--to everyone I meet.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new
book of CounterPunch columns titled "This
Can't be Happening!" to be published this fall by Common
Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by
Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for July 10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
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