Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT
Moore: Trying to have it three ways
One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and
self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and
boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious
ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to
hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the
second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of
success on either front was infinitely slight.
Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al
Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early
days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be
reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a
possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic
skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of
respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would
never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too
obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in
seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of
"dissenting" bravery.
In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with
Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama
Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The
intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot
guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama
Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other
discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I
understand the convenience of this late conversion.
Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this
order:
1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with
the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the
Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many
Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was
purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this
supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience
hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the
Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies
and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed
the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the
operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view
as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived
or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending.
And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left
out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility
and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is
preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former
refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't
do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a
condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the
parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the
regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.
He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid
(and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took
members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time
and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable
Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In
the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11
commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard
Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the
responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of
Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed
ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission
about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush
administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying
succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims.
President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he
supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp
David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so
briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister
of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response
to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you
catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been
presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.
More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida,
looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are
those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work.
I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and
"dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man
who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he
knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his
coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of
FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last
theory back in their paranoid box.
But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to
Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions,
however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this
peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites,
shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the
night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling
them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment.
But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have
transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian
casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at
Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now,
either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the
30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's
not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington
preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)
That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is
further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never
attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as
ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official,
undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been
sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe
house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial
sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of
Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam
having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having
threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush
during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he
not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief
executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of
the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled
the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr.
Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he
remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in
the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the
beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I
think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism
only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved
from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic
civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that
Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in
Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system,
right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence
having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)
Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it
that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can
possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I
have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be
sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored,
some fairly unmistakable "warnings."
The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely
domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an
original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been
"fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who
have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a
story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the
manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know
by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't
enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not
forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.)
So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage,
who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not
serious.
Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why
instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush
family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian
scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region
has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The
Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their
near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary
points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi
Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where
one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a
purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to
any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.
I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's
much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden
disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's
"military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time
someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and
some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe
ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and
rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a
half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a
desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says
loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a
favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where
does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most
statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines?
Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected
members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to
pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against
Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It
would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a
cheer.
Trying to talk congressmen into sending their sons to war
Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients
of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black,
they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and
children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what
Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll,"
rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines
plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words
for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The
Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or
in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize
courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in
front of credulous audiences, is everything.
Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I
notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a
fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if
anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their
local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form
of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends,
and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the
conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And
as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid
response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's
see what you're made of.
Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse
than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote."
Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on
subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a
slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before
you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative
line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any
old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the
next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter
and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the
same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…),
I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original
meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no
point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the
chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it
off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who
thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his
senile dementia.) Such courage.
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous
reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person
analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as
clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States,
the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit
more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to
taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual
pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and
admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as
the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do
not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the
United States …
And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's
highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral
equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid
rewriting of recent history.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and
tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been
listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq.
And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with
the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would
induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of
our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the
Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the
corrected sentence.)
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The
Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.
Photograph of Michael Moore by Pascal Guyot/Agence France-Presse. Stills from Fahrenheit 9/11 © 2004
Lions Gate Films. All Rights Reserved.Photograph of Michael Moore on the Slate home page by Eric
Gaillard/Reuters.
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