July 28, 2004
What's wrong with Fahrenheit 9/11?
Michael Moore claims that Bush is manipulating the American people. But who is manipulating whom?
by Joey Tartakovsky
Private Papers

In one of the best-known scenes from Fahrenheit 9/11, President George W. Bush is captured on film appearing more concerned about his skill at golf than his leadership in the war for civilization. Speaking to a throng of reporters, President Bush remarks, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now, watch this drive." These three phrases alone seem to many incontrovertible evidence that Bush, insincere about the threat of al Qaeda, merely mouths boilerplate that looks robust in the morning papers. It makes for great sneering. Now, as it turns out, President Bush was talking not about al Qaeda, but Hamas, which had suicide-bombed in Israel hours before. But don't expect the movie to mention such a detail, for here Bush looks silly, and this is the great purpose of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Instead of addressing Bush's policies in any honest or serious-minded way, the film's tactic is ridicule. In the golfing section, and in many others – the exit flight of the bin Ladens, Bush's "vacation' time, or Bush sitting in the Florida classroom on the morning of 9/11 – writer-director Michael Moore presents an apparent malfeasance to cause outrage. Most of the sniping is cheap and petty, inflating an unglamorous remark here or an ill-advised action there into a high crime. In every one of these cases, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. Should Bush have sat in the Florida classroom room for seven minutes, or two minutes, or should he have immediately leapt from the room to don his flight suit? Actually, Bush was contained in the classroom by the Secret Service as they scouted an alternative route to Air Force One and a secure location. Included by Moore as "vacation" days are weekends. Bush had nothing to do with the bin Laden family flights.

Michael Moore throws everything he can at Bush, who is portrayed at times as bumbling and artificial, at others conniving beyond our wildest imaginations. The Bush-hater need only take their pick: the disputed election, his ties to the House of Saud, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bush's plutocratic pedigree, his drawl, too much antiterrorism, too little antiterrorism, defense companies, the Saudis again, and then finally, at the end of the movie, the big one: war is what powerful elites do to keep the poor down and preserve their hierarchies of wealth and privilege. Actually piecing the movie together reveals a contradictory mosaic of unrelated topics, which, especially in the lurid conspiracy-weaving parts, flit across the silver screen in rapid-fire succession. It is "somewhat confusing, admittedly," says Joanne Doroshow, an associate producer of the movie. Nothing speaks more about Fahrenheit 9/11's incoherence than its consideration of the terrorism issue.

Fahrenheit 9/11 on Terrorism

Watching Michael Moore tackle the issue of the White House's response to terrorism, you can't help but feel an upwelling of déjà vu. Fahrenheit 9/11 explains that the Bush administration prior to 9/11 was unconcerned with the threat of terrorism, pointing to President Bush's lack of meetings with appropriate counter-terrorism officials, and memos about bin Laden being determined to strike in the U.S. Where have we heard this before? That's right, those were the controversies that arose – and were put to rest – by the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission informed us that before the attacks the Bush terrorism plan was the Clinton terrorism plan. Bush, for instance, retained Clinton's counter-terrorism coordinator, Richard A. Clarke, a featured personality in Fahrenheit 9/11. In his book, Against All Enemies, Clarke details his policy proposals to combat the threat of al Qaeda. Among them, more funding to the CIA for intelligence-gathering and covert ops, a freer hand for the FBI, better cooperation among intelligence agencies, and the bombing of al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

We must ask how Michael Moore might have reacted to these recommendations. What if Bush suddenly declared in the spring of 2001 that he was approving a substantial increase in funding to the FBI, which would simultaneously enjoy intrusive new latitude in matters of domestic surveillance? What if this were matched by equivalent increases to the CIA for dispatching spies abroad? What if a newly-elected President Bush had declared, out of the blue, that he believed there was lurking in the shadows of the Middle East a radical Islamic mass movement that considered it its divine duty to kill Americans. Not only that, he believed they were at that very moment planning an assault on the American homeland on a scale unprecedented in our history. And as a result, he was ordering a massive bombing campaign on their training camps in war-torn Afghanistan to pre-empt them?

Michael Moore would have howled in outrage. No matter, that era is over now. But suddenly, there comes a new broadside from Moore: through his preoccupation with terrorism, President Bush has foisted a culture of fear on the United States to consolidate his power and silence critics! The idea that an unhinged Bush has – with the aid of John Ashcroft – ushered in a new age of American repression has bobbed among the farther reaches of the left for some time. This movie cinematizes it with an entire section devoted to exposing the "war on terror" as a White House plot to manipulate the minds of millions of Americans. When Moore speaks of censorship stalking the land, he must be referring to the sort that prevents truth-telling movies like Fahrenheit 9/11 from making $103 million in four weeks. It's no secret that some people have it in for Bush to such a degree that they will stand on both sides of an issue – even one like terrorism – in order to stick it to him.

Who's Right About Terrorism?

"Countering terrorism has become, beyond any doubt, the top national security priority for the United States." Thus speaks the 9/11 Commission Report, released last week. "There is no terrorist threat in this country. This is a lie. This is the biggest lie we've been told." Thus speaks Michael Moore in an October 2002 speech. President Bush has a plan to stop terrorism. Michael Moore does not. Michael Moore doesn't see the need for a plan, because, well, there's no threat. And if you believed there's no threat, then these Patriot Acts and enhanced airport screenings probably would seem like a big scam to dupe our "nation of idiots," as Moore often refers to his fellow citizens. And a proposed Unocal pipeline through Afghanistan – even if the plan was ditched in 1998, even if the Clinton White House supported it, and even if then-Governor Bush had nothing to do with it – would seem a perfectly plausible explanation of our otherwise mysterious presence in Afghanistan. As a matter of fact, Moore locates the origins of terrorism elsewhere. This is the title of Chapter Five in his book, Dude, Where's My Country: "How to Stop Terrorism? Stop Being Terrorists!" Pause for a moment to consider if you agree with that statement: we are the terrorists.

President Bush, who had promised a more "humble" foreign policy, was changed by attacks of September 11th. He has made combating Islamic terrorism his presidential obsession, and as a result, al Qaeda is now crumbling under a withering assault that it will not survive. The prudent judgment is to declare our war against terrorism successful: two-thirds of al Qaeda's leadership is dead or in jail, their training camps are in ruins after the destruction of their Taliban patrons, dozens of terror cells in Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere have been unearthed, Osama bin Laden no longer lives in his mansions but in a lonely cave somewhere, and, lest we forget, there has not been an attack on America since the infamous day. These days, being an anti-American Islamic terrorist is just about the world's most dangerous profession.

Fahrenheit 9/11 and the War in Iraq

Fahrenheit 9/11 features what is surely one of the most disgraceful instances of cinematic propaganda in the annals of American film. In scenes of everyday Baghdadi life dated to March 2003, we watch carefree Iraqi children flying kites, a smiling young couple being wedded, and old men relaxing contentedly in coffeehouses, the cheerful citizens of a peaceful, oppressionless land. But Michael Moore must be aware that for the twenty-five years previous to March 2003, Iraqis lived under one of the cruelest regimes in human history. For a quarter-century, it tortured, mutilated and murdered tens of thousands. It violated every human rights law ever written. It possessed the distinction of being the only state to use chemical weapons against civilians since the Germans in the Second World War, and in doing so committed the supreme transgression of genocide. Barely one family in Iraq was spared the loss of a loved one. Fahrenheit 9/11's inverted depiction of Iraqi life under Saddam Hussein is a conscienceless insult to the memory of Saddam's victims.

Not everything in Fahrenheit 9/11 is unworthy. The sections bringing to light U.S. military casualties and Iraqi civilian carnage are emotionally gripping reminders of the Iraq war's unwanted costs. The choice of using violence to prevent even greater violence was a harsh moral dilemma that weighed upon advocates of war. But it worked both ways. For those that opposed the war, a similar moral dilemma existed: by opposing an invasion, they were opposing the only hope of twenty-four million Iraqis in escaping Saddam's totalitarian nightmare-on-earth, whose very existence would have guaranteed the deaths of thousands in its prisons and execution chambers. But Fahrenheit 9/11 will have none of this moral ambiguity. Iraq was just fine, thank you, until abruptly shattered by the warplanes of American imperialism. What's more, look at our so-called "coalition of the willing," as named by Moore: the Republic of Palau, Costa Rica, Iceland, Romania, Netherlands, and Afghanistan. It does seem less formidable when you leave out the United Kingdom, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Thailand, Norway, Australia, Poland, Japan, the Czech Republic, Hungary and South Korea.

President Bush may have been ineloquent in making the case for war, but the case – for those who cared to consider it – was there. Our administration, after carefully reviewing all available intelligence, concluded that the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein was an intolerable threat that could no longer be addressed by sanctions and no-fly-zones. It was a regime marked by serial aggression and violent miscalculation. It was the principal destabilizing force in the most destabilized region on earth. And it was a government that the intelligence agencies of the world's leading democracies agreed was questing for weapons of mass destruction. The case was presented to the American people, and by the time of the invasion in March 2003, it was considered compelling by a majority of them. It was also presented to Congress, which in an October 2002 vote gave President Bush the authorization go to war. The bipartisan vote included Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, the latter of whom was a cosponsor of the resolution.

What Fahrenheit 9/11 Has Wrought

Michael Moore is not a partisan in the cast of John Kerry or Howard Dean or even Al Gore. Moore is a dyed-in-the-wool radical, who advocates flamboyant and irresponsible policies that if followed would result in enormous damage. Senator Kerry has wisely avoided any association between his presidential bid and the film, even as Moore carries on like a surrogate Kerry campaigner at elegant French film festivals, glittering Oscar ceremonies, and other refuges of oppressed dissidents. Kerry no doubt fears the consequences an apparent endorsement would have on the sane Democratic majority. The "war on terror" may be a cunning Bush plot, but John Kerry also wants to fight the war on terror. In fact, Kerry promises to do so more "effectively."

Enthusiasts of the film have taken Moore's decision to hire a team of fact-checkers as confirmation of the film's truthfulness. The team certainly has its work cut out. But objections to various details should not cause us to miss the larger point: the real deceit lies not in his "facts," but in how he cobbles them together. There may be some evidence that four thousand Saudi princes manage U.S. foreign policy, a theory of Fahrenheit 9/11 advances, but there is substantially more evidence that they do not. Will the fact-checkers prove that the Saudis are, contrary to popular belief, thrilled with the war on terror? The bottom line is that there exists a boundless sea of "facts," and an ideologue willing to play fast and loose with them can easily manipulate them into extreme or unwarranted conclusions. You can "prove" just about anything and its opposite, and you can traduce any public figure, a President easiest of all.

No one has challenged Michael Moore's right to "reveal" the consequences of President Bush's decisions as brutally as he wants. But this is not what he does. He seeks to embarrass Bush by culling choice footage from hundreds of hours of recording, cutting-and-pasting them in unflattering ways, and then spicing it with wild innuendo and cinematic manipulation. If any one of us were on camera on a daily basis, speaking on record about a half-dozen issues, we'd have quite a blooper reel as well. Fahrenheit 9/11's unforgiving character assassination is corrosive to civil democratic culture. If everyone behaved this way towards their political opponents, and if every important issue were simplified to the point of absurdity, normal political processes would break down. Fahrenheit 9/11 thus resorts to the oldest, nastiest trick in the book: attack Bush's character, not his policies; impugn his motives, not his arguments. It's hard to ignore how relentlessly personal this movie is. All this, even as there remain few matters more in demand of partisan discretion and common decency than terrorism and war.

According to this movie, we live in a world of easy answers, where policy emerges not from the interplay of rival interests, but from elite cabals who will stop at nothing to rob poor countries of their natural resources. This makes the movie a delight for the types who will never give President Bush a fair hearing, the types who have convinced themselves that Bush acts out of a fundamental wickedness. The fact that fifty million people voted for Bush will not shake their conviction that Bush cares only about oil and the rich, and that it is to the benefit of these two intertwined evils that all his policies are directed. They refuse to grant that their political opponents can act out of genuine and well-intentioned motives as they believe they themselves do, because it's easier this way: if Bush stands for petroleum and imperialism, what need is there to bother with why Bush says he wants to go to Afghanistan? Meanwhile, the effective address of urgent issues like terrorism and Iraq requires deliberation and cooperation both. Many have chosen to enter the critical debate over these issues. This movie does not. This movie insists that there is no debate to begin.

Whatever your personal political stripe, there are many reasons to disapprove of this movie. You can dislike Fahrenheit 9/11 because you believe that friendship between Saudi and Texan oil dynasties does not explain the foreign policy of the world's most powerful republic. You can dislike this movie because you believe that while there were mistakes made with regard to the intelligence, planning and prosecution of the Iraq war, there was a case for action against Saddam over which people disagreed in good faith. You can dislike Fahrenheit 9/11 because you dislike any and all conspiracy theories. And you can dislike the movie because you believe that there is, somewhere out there, an extremist mass movement comprised of suicidal believers convinced God has called on them to destroy Americans, and who enjoy the acclaim of tens of millions in the Middle East and elsewhere, and who are organized into trained and well-funded networks spread across sixty nations, and who have already murdered innocents in over twenty of them. And you might just feel that they pose a real threat that will not soon go away.

As a polemic, Fahrenheit 9/11 is masterful; as a basis for informed decision-making, it is irresponsible. The thought that Fahrenheit 9/11's dishonorable message might actually become a basis for individuals to make decisions is the most disconcerting part of all. Make no mistake, Michael Moore released this movie with a conspicuous political objective: he explains that he hopes this movie will be the first to determine an election, just as his website urges fans to campaign in swing states. Soon, ten percent of this country will have seen this movie. There is the serious case against Bush's reelection, and there is the serious case for Bush's reelection. And then there is the case based on one meaningless comment on a Kennebunkport golf course. If the golf course case proves in any way effective in winning an election, you can be sure that Fahrenheit 9/11 will not be the last of its kind. Next political round, there will be more popcorn propaganda to hit theaters. Like Fahrenheit 9/11, it will be deceptive and incoherent, but sentimental and cleverly crafted, in order to transform the gravest matters into rollicking entertainment. And our civic culture will be degraded.

— Joey Tartakovsky was a columnist for the Daily Nexus and Gaucho Free-Press. He is a recent graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara. He can be reached at joey_tea@hotmail.com.