George & Me

Michael Moore is many things. He is outspoken, unafraid of taking on the powers that be, and willing to do anything to get his point across. Roger & Me documented the economic collapse of his hometown of Flint, Michigan, after General Motors closed all its assembly plants there. Bowling for Columbine examined America’s culture of weaponry against the backdrop of continual gun violence. And now, Fahrenheit 9/11 is nothing less than an indictment of the White House of George W. Bush.

The film has triggered reactions all the way from “Michael Moore is a genius and he hit the nail right on the head” to “Michael Moore is a traitor who hates America and who is only helping our enemies.” As is usually the case, the truth lies somewhere in between. (Personally, I believe that Moore loves America but hates what the Bush Administration is doing in America’s name.)

In a little over two hours of film time, Moore makes too many accusations against Bush and the War on Terror to cover individually, but they basically boil down to these:

1. The Republicans stole the 2000 election with the help of Bush's brother (the Governor of Florida) and Bush's cousin (the head of Fox News' election desk).
2. The Bush family’s commitment to putting America first is doubtful because they are in business cahoots with the bin Laden family.
3. The Bush family’s commitment to putting America first is doubtful because they are in business cahoots with the Saudi royal family.
4. Bush ignored pre-9/11 warnings because he was lazy and never thought al Qaeda would attack the United States (see point 2 above).
5. Bush whitewashed possible Saudi involvement in 9/11 to protect his friends in the royal family (see point 3 above).
6. Bush ordered a purely-for-show war against al Qaeda and the Taliban to secure space in Afghanistan for a natural-gas pipeline.
7. The Bush Administration uses vague and hazy warnings of possible terrorist attacks to keep the American people in a permanent state of fear and thus politically acquiescent.
8. The Bush Administration exploited Americans’ post-9/11 fears to (literally) scare up public support for the invasion of Iraq.
9. The war in Iraq is a bloody quagmire and its sole accomplishment is making the rest of the world hate us.

Some of Moore’s points, particularly those about the Bush family’s business connections and hence their loyalties, are a stretch at best, and bring to mind the endless accusations against Bill Clinton back in the 1990s. You know, the ones that said because Clinton knew someone who knew someone else who knew someone else who was once busted for something shady, he was a murdering, dope-smoking, Chinese-loving sleazeball. And Moore doesn’t help his case by making the Afghan gas-pipeline claim; that threatens to make him look like some conspiracy-theory wacko.

But most of Moore’s other points are dead-on. Bush did sit quietly in a Florida classroom and do absolutely nothing for seven agonizing minutes after he was told of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. (A pro-Bush friend of mine once asked what I would do in such a situation. I replied that as President, it was Bush's duty to respond to the crisis immediately rather than continue with a feel-good photo op.) He did fight the congressional and independent 9/11 investigations tooth and nail until he was publicly shamed into allowing them. He did order 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 report, reportedly examining official Saudi connections with al Qaeda, blacked out. He did allow the Saudi government to fly dozens of Saudi nationals, including many of Osama bin Laden’s relatives, out of the country with only perfunctory examination while the rest of America was grounded. And he most definitely did play to our fears of another 9/11-type attack to manipulate public opinion into supporting the invasion of Iraq.

And speaking of playing to our fears, am I the only one who finds it just a tad suspicious that scary terrorist warnings tend to be announced whenever the White House gets into trouble over a particularly odious revelation or threatens to get upstaged? Has anyone else noticed that these “warnings” are almost always so ridiculously vague as to be useless? Personally, I think most of it is that they’re going overboard trying to keep their butts covered and not look as inattentive as they did before 9/11. But from Moore’s standpoint, however, the warnings are anything but useless if their real purpose is to keep the public in a constant state of fear and thus more likely to go along with whatever the Administration says.

The film is not, however, perfect. Disturbingly, there is no mention at all of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial cruelties, Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the 1980s, or the struggle over United Nations weapons inspections – all of which are essential to understanding the present conflict and putting it in context. The only footage of pre-war Iraq shows smiling families flying kites and enjoying themselves, giving the impression that Iraq was a happy paradise before we got involved. But this was hardly the case, and while Moore has never claimed the film to be a "fair and balanced" examination of the war, these troubling omissions only undermine the film and give ammunition to his critics.

Most of the aid-and-comfort criticisms of Moore derive from his use of unflinchingly graphic footage of the war and his showing soldiers asking why they are fighting in Iraq. Here is war in all its gory glory, with amputated limbs, children screaming in pain, bloated corpses, and everything else we never see on the network news. Anyone who has ever been in combat will testify that war, in the words of William T. Sherman, is hell. The closest the rest of us will ever come to the horror of war is probably the D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan. But does that mean that the home front should be protected with sanitized coverage?

Will bringing the realities of war into America’s living rooms result in an evaporation of public support for the war? Will showing American soldiers as people who can question their leaders instead of just supporting the war blindly and without a second thought really embolden America’s enemies? Moore leaves us to ponder these questions for ourselves.

Fahrenheit 9/11 has generated a lot of heat from all points of the political spectrum, from Michael Moore’s most devoted fans to his most ferocious detractors. But whatever your opinion of the war, of Bush, and of Moore himself, one undeniable fact about the film is that he makes us think for ourselves about what America is doing and forces us to consider the possibility that our leaders might not always do what’s right. And whether you agree with him or not, thinking for ourselves is always a good thing.