Okay, a few quick thoughts about ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ before I do my next post.
I guess the first thing to say is that it has always been evident to me that, if film were newsprint, this movie would belong on the Op-ed page of the newspaper, not the news pages. And that’s just fine. Of course movies can be–are!–part of the broader public discourse… But people who have been criticizing Michael Moore for “not showing both sides of the story”, etc etc, have really been missing the point.
Lighten up, guys. It’s opinion. Get used to it.
What’s more, unlike much so-called ‘opinion’ from the rightist side of the aisle, this movie is based on (one reading of) some very solid facts. I don’t think anyone has raised any credible criticisms of the facts MM presented in the movie.
Interpretations, though–well, that’s another matter.
June 30, Bob Dreyfuss of TomPaine.com ran a strongly worded criticism of the the movie. In it, he asks:
- am I the only one to notice that in one critically important way, it entirely misses the boat and gets nearly everything wrong? Maybe this has been said before? I’ve hardly read all of the criticism of Moore–but if so, I haven’t seen it. Moore totally avoids the question of Israel.
That’s a good point– though perhaps a little overstated. I don’t think MM got “everything” wrong. But yes, I did notice that after elaborately laying out all the plentiful information about the Bush family’s strong ties to the Saudi princes and the Bin Laden family, MM (1) notably did not say anything about the very close links between the Prez and the Likud (and their supporters), and (2) did not to my satisfaction explain –though this was certainly implied–how the Prez’s relationship with the Saudis helped propel him into launching a war against Iraq…
The implication there, at one point in the movie, was that after the Bushies “successfully” finished invading Afghanisatn, they looked around to see, “Well, who’s next?” And maybe Saudi Arabia would have been one plausible candidate–was this the point at which MM helpfully flashed up the photos of the 15 9/11 hijackers who were Saudi citizens? “But no,” the movie’s voice seemed to be saying, “Saudi Arabia was not where they went next–it was Iraq!”
Well, it’s not quite a solid argument; and it doesn’t really ‘explain’ the choice of Iraq as the next target, at all. I am convinced that the Saudi royals, for their part, were sincere in their desire that the US not invade Iraq. But there certainly was one Middle Eastern power urging and urging the Prez to invade Iraq. Yes, it was you-know-who, our old friend Ariel Sharon. And his many Christian-Zionist and Jewish-Likud-Zionist allies within the Bush administration and our country at large certainly magnified that campaign hugely.
So inasmuch as the movie is “about” the appalling and (in my view) downright criminal decision to launch the quite optional war against Saddam, then the whole emphasis on the Bush-Saudi relationship is a bit of an irrelevant tangent. Some mention–or even better, a solid examination–of the Bush-Sharon relationship would have been far more appsite and informative in that regard.
Note that I am not joining Dreyfuss in saying, essentially, that the Bush-Saudi relationship was not worth worrying much about. I think many of the issues MM raises–about the Bin Laden family members being allowed to leave the country immediately after 9/11; about the yes, enormous dimensions of the financial relationship between the Saudi royals and the Bushes, and the Saudi royals and US big business in general–are significant and worth exploring more. And yes, those relationships were relevant to the immediate reactions the Bushies made after 9/11.
But I don’t see them as particularly relevant to the decision to invade Iraq.
So Dreyfuss is right when he asks, in an attempt to refute the arguments made in F-9/11: “Why did [Bush] launch his Iraqi adventure over Saudi objections, with many of his advisers chortling that Saudi Arabia would be ‘next’? ”
But I think he is wrong when, also attempting a refutation, he asks: “If Bush is so ‘in the pocket’ of Saudi Arabia, why is he Ariel Sharon’s strongest backer?”
I think the truth of the matter is that there are some respects in which one could describe Bush as ‘in the pocket’ of Saudi Arabia–but many, many more respects in which one has to see the Saudis as being pathetically dependent on the goodwill of (and therefore, ‘in the pocket of’) the US government.
Partly, this is because of the longstanding “defense relationship” between the two governments–a relationship in which, until April 2003, the Saudis contracted out the basic defense of their Kingdom to the US military. Partly, it’s precisely because of all those Saudi investments inside the US, whose sheer size and strategic importance to the Saudis themselves make them definitely a two-edged tool for potential political blackmail. (Look at what the US did to Iran’s investments in the US after the 1979 revolution there!) But in good part, at a more general level, it’s also because of the flimsiness and flakiness of Saudi society, and the fact that the Saudis don’t really do much to produce all their incredible wealth except collect “rent” from their oil revenues.
So the fact is, when Bush invades Iraq, or cosies up to Sharon, or totally ignores Crown Prince Abdallah’s urgings on the peace process– the Saudi royals feel there is absolutely no retaliatory action they can take. They just have to suck up all those humiliations, and deal with them.
So yes, evidently the Prez and his advisors have many close links with Israel’s warrior-king, Sharon. But that fact doesn’t refute the fact that there is also a strong relationship between the Prez and the Saudis. It just underscores the fact that the dynamics within the Bush-Saudi relationship, and probably in the US-Saudi relationship, more generally– are weighted far more in the Americans’ favor than in the Saudis’…
I must say, too, that though I was genuinely shocked when I learned about how the Bin Laden family people had all been allowed to hurry out of the country after 9-11–and that at a time when tens of thousands of other, less well-connected people of Middle Eastern heritage were suffering extreme jeopardy throughout the US–I thought MM went overboard with the general Saudi-bashing.
Regular readers of JWN may know I am no big fan of the Saudi royals… (Check past posts here.) But I do think it’s ways easy to move from “vigorous criticism” of the Saudi royals to Saudi-bashing in general and thus to feed into a more general–and worryingly present–Arabophobia and Islamophobia. If we’re into mocking Arab-American “fat cats” for seeking very tastelessly to cash in on the invasion of Iraq, maybe it would be good also to see a few of the Jewish-American ‘fat cats’ and even just generic non-Semitic ‘fat cats’ who were also seeking to do exactly the same thing?
..But those caveats aside, I still think F-9/11 was a great, nay an inspired, piece of movie-making. At the end of the day, Lila Lipscombe’s story was just beautifully and very movingly told. The newsclips of the US soldiers in Iraq–with their progression from gung-ho, to confused, to alienated–was very valuable. Reminding us of the great stand taken in December 2000 by the stalwart African-American members of the House of Representatives–and their betrayal by the entire Democratic Party leadership in the Senate–was salutary.
Yeah, the movie is “about” a lot more than just the Saudi connection. Thank goodness. Anyway else who’s seen it, tell me what you think.
I too was moved by the scenes in F9/11 showing Lila Lipscomb’s transition from supporting the war to condemning war after her son died there. I understood the pain she felt in losing her son because I tried to imagine how devastating it would be to me had my 26-year-old son died there.
But there was another scene which was very symbolic of the severe damage this war has caused to the Iraqi people and to the American image in the Middle East. It was of the Iraqi woman calling down the wrath of Allah on the Americans who brought death and destruction to her country. That summed up for me the utter futility of the war and the incredible harm it has caused to so many people. I wondered why we do not see images like this on our evening news.
Moore is a populist. The Saudi section doesn’t achieve any connection between Bush, the Saudis and the war. What it does is cleave Bush away from the conservative regular folks and black people who fight the wars, and connects him with the rich people who can benefit from wars.
Obviously Michael Moore is not a policy wonk. I think Paul Krugman’s piece in the Times got it right. He comes from the working class and he can speak to the working class. For intellectuals the first part of the movie is at times frustrating, since we’d like to see nuance and of course accuracy. However, I’d like to see the movie again, striving for a view of how the poor, the rural people, the evangelicals?, the working people might see what Moore is doing. He’s trying to convert, I think. And emotion is very effective for conversion. Once someone is converted, then maybe they turn to the “scriptures” and try to figure out the truth. But to get people to think differently, maybe playing on emotion is the best bet. And tying bush to the Saudis and the corporations may be a way of distancing him from the common folk, to whom Moore is really speaking.
That’s my theory here. It works for young people too, I think. And that is another audience that goes to a lot of movies.
It’s a sad thing that we’ve come to a position where we need propaganda – to counter propaganda. But hopefully the next step, after someone becomes doubtful about their former thinking (in line with the bush folk), is that people will see things differently, very differently!
“W” is a “were” president, I do believe!
I don’t know that seems kind of elitist. I’m not sure now that Moore is really talking about the war and why it happened — the geopolitics of it. If you want that you really have to go to the conservative antiwar people.
In any case the war side managed to put together an alliance of people who wanted to invade Iraq to save the Arab Middle East (Tom Friedman) and people who wanted to invade Iraq to kill Muslims and intimidate the Arab Middle East (Dick Cheney). I’ll side with Michael Moore any day and he did America a great service.
I’m with you “wellbasically.” Given the choice I’d rather be on the same side as Michael Moore and opposed to the bush/cheney (etc.) side.
Sorry if I sounded elitist. Guilty as charged!
I think that Michael Moore works the Saudi angle instead of the Israeli angle because 15 (is that right?) of the 911 hijackers were Saudi.
Perhaps if 15 of the hijackers were from Israel he would have shown Bush/Likud connections.
Perhaps Mary Ann’s argument did sound elitist but I believe there is some validity to it. Many of the Bush supporters were moved in his direction by emotion rather than by intellectual arguments. I think one reason that we liberals have been steamrollered in the past 12 years is because the conservatives have been so adept at framing the issues so their views have emotional appeal.
In his approach to the movie, Moore has now changed the rules we’ve been playing by for the past two decades. Although he has the facts (mostly) on his side, he has not made them the central focus of F9/11. Rather the movie appeals to our emotions, reframing the issues of 9/11 and Iraq in a way that neutralizes arguments made by conservatives.
As evidence, I offer the shrill invective being hurled Moore’s way by conservatives, who know instinctively he has landed on them a serious body blow. As further corroborating evidence, I point to the derision directed by liberals towards the movie because they are offended by Moore’s appeal to emotions rather than to the intellect. Liberals are as unwilling to employ the same tools conservatives have successfully used on liberals as are the conservatives to have liberals use them against the conservatives.
Moe writes, “I think that Michael Moore works the Saudi angle instead of the Israeli angle because 15 (is that right?) of the 911 hijackers were Saudi.”
If there’s any proof that Saudis were involved in 9/11, I’d like to know what it is.
Moore does hit some intellectual points solid. But his Saudi connection was long, complicated and the punch didn’t really land.
Just my speculation but I don’t think Moore really understands how the Saudis and other super-rich work. Like anybody who grows up working class, he thinks the goal of the rich is to get more income. So Dick Cheney has the war for Halliburton, which makes Dick Cheney’s stock more valuable. Bush is nice to the Saudis because they gave him money. No, this is not the way it works.
One thing I do admire about the movie is the way it wrested Sept 11 away from the war people. To Moore, the working people who died on Sept 11 haven’t received a proper accounting from Bush.
I also admired that Moore didn’t go after people for driving SUVs.
I saw the film yesterday. It was fantastic. I agree with Dreyfuss that the neocon angle was ignored. I’m sure that was intentional. If Moore made the connections to Feith/Perle, Wolfy etc, the film would either have been left undistributed or dismissed as anti-semitic. And it’s not like the Saudis aren’t villains. They are. They just don’t hold down the key positions at Defense! Moore can go after the neocons after Kerry-Edwards wins. Hey, I hope there are treason trials featuring Feith and Perle in ’05. But the purpose of this film is to help destroy Bush. For once, a lefty is thinking strategically. Bravo!
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