Fahrenheit 9/11: the verdict

Last night, I saw Michael Moore's polemic Fahrenheit 9/11 with a friend of the family's. My soccer kids (or their parents most surely) gave me a gift certificate to the local dinner and a movie place. It's the only place around here you can see F9/11, as the mall cineplex avoided it like a hot potato.

I'm not a fan of Michael Moore's style. I've never seen any of his movies or read any of his books. That said, F9/11 was definitely worth seeing.

About 1/3 of the screed is exactly what I expected. Lots of Bush-bashing, some of it unfair, much of it irrelevant. Video and music judiciously edited to present the president in the most pathetic possible light. Not that this was hard. Moore is, in many ways, the left's equivalent of Rush Limbaugh, except worse-dressed and not a druggie. I'm not a big fan of his so it didn't surprise me there were a lot of cheap shots. I think this distracted from the more legitimate points he raises elsewhere.

About 1/3 it addressed psychological aspects of terror/fear, terrorism, war, patriotism/nationalism/xenophobia and the hell of the combat zone. Not much that I hadn't read or thought of before.

But the other 1/3 was worth the $5 charge for the film. He mentioned some things I'd heard before and some I hadn't, but tied them together in a way that was fascinating. He stated that the Saudis, for example, own about 7% of the American economy (investments, etc).

This explains why, despite the fact that both bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, the administration decided to invade a country like Iraq that had nothing to with 9/11 and posed no threat to the United States. This non sequitir ranked as one of the great ruses in American history, along with the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" and the bombing of the USS Maine. Not coincidentally, they were the pretexts for the two previous greatest American imperial excursions.

I like the fact that Moore showed footage of Iraqi civilians and how they reacted to the invasion. Though there may have been some, many Iraqis did not welcome us as liberators, like the recklessly naive (or willfully deceptive) planners of the war contended beforehand. The whole idea that Iraqi national pride would be blown away by "shock and awe" was in defiance of common sense; if some other country invaded America to effectuate "regime change," even the most hard-core anti-Bush people would rally to the nation's defense or, in a worst case scenario, resist the occupiers.

Moore showed footage of the "collateral damage." Body parts strewn all over the place, etc. Sure, it was sensationalist, but sometimes that sort of thing needs to be shown. Seeing it moves it away from the realm of the theoretical into the concrete. It wasn't collateral damage, it was innocent civilians killed. Yes, that will happen in any war. But seeing it reminds us that war shouldn't be entered into casually and on a dubious premise. The images were certainly a counterbalance to the hagiography offered by the corporate media and its "embedded" transcribers, performing a service frequently misidentified as journalism.

Seeing it reminds us that, contrary to political correctness and popular belief, Americans are NOT the primary victims of the violence in Iraq. As tragic as the death of any American soldier is, he's there in some part because of a voluntary choice somewhere along the line (to join the military). He's armed, accompanied by comrades and generally well-protected compared to everyone else in the war zone. Most civilians died not as the result of any voluntary choice they made. They were probably not armed (and if so, certainly not as well-armed as the American soldiers) and far more vulnerable. They certainly didn't ask to be "liberated" by an imperial power.

It's easy to forget them because they're the Eh-rabbs! It's easy to assume that they're all terrorists, like the 3 year old girl (or rather her scattered body parts) shown in the film. It's easy to rationalize that "they" will ultimately be better off us having "liberated" them (whenever that liberation finally occurs). It's easy to forget that war, conquest and occupation are not events, but processes.

One thing I noticed was how young most of the American combat soldiers were. Almost all of them looked under 25. Some of them looked like they could've been on my high school's varsity soccer team. Some of them looked like they didn't even shave yet. They went in gung ho with great enthusiasm to fight the "evil doers." Having believed the administration's b.s., many of the soldiers didn't understand why the Iraqis didn't welcome us with open arms. Except the us wasn't me and you, it was them.

But Moore did one interview with an older soldier, maybe in his early 30s, who'd been in other combat situations. The soldier said something like, "You can't kill someone without losing a part of your soul." The internal conflict he was feeling was clear on his face.

This showed that for all the gung ho and bravo and huah, soldiers are still human beings, with consciences. They live daily with decisions they are forced to make in the heat of the moment. They may have a job to do, but it doesn't immunize them from feeling guilt. That was, perhaps, the most refreshing thing to see. It's easy for a dichotomy to form according to which: "Soldiers are all pure as white snow saints who liberate the miserable" or "Soldiers are all soulless murderers." Even if everything the guy did was reasonable, I'm glad it pains him, I'm glad he thinks about it. It means he's a human being.

I just wish he, my best friends from high school and college, and others like them weren't thrust so regularly into these situations for no good reason.

Ultimately, F-9/11 contains a lot of juvenile taunts. But if you're mentally strong enough to fight through the cheap shots, Moore raises a lot of questions that the American people deserve an answer to.