“It's not factual” and other political games: Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

 

By Phoebe C. Godfrey

 

 

Charlestown, W. VA., July 4 - President Bush said at a boisterous Fourth of July celebration on the steps of the West Virginia Capitol . . . that “the founders would be proud of America today,” and that American military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has made terrorists “desperate” and “furious.”

The crowd waved American flags and yelled, “Four more years.”

 

Yesterday was July 4th, and what better time to sit around and discuss the state of the nation by asking those in my company if they had seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Heads nodded and compliments were uttered; one dissenting voice belonging to the only person present who had not actually seen the film chipped in saying, “It is not factual.” Flinching but not wishing to bring ill humor to the revolutionary homage, I let it pass, making a mental note to follow up on what is of course the key issue of the film, much like Christianity rests completely on the bodily resurrection of Jesus. It is either true or not and if it is not true then all that follows essentially has no merit. So in assessing Moore 's film we must override all that is moving, amusing, patriotic, critical, problematic, even brilliant, and deal directly with the most pressing question at hand -- is it factual? And once we answer that question then we must address the other most important aspect of the film: If it is true then why is that we the people, who so often like to proclaim our national superiority because seemingly we alone have “freedom of speech,” are totally ignorant as to what our elected (in most cases) officials have been doing in our name, with our money and even with “our” sons and daughters?

In order to proceed it is important to point out that much of the footage used in the film was not filmed by Moore but rather collected from film archives and outtakes acquired from television camera people and other sources. Images of Bush boastfully playing golf, or reading My Pet Goat while the Twin Towers collapsed, or talking to an elite group he calls “his base” are all factual. Likewise the interviews with soldiers serving in Iraq are factual, as are images of Iraqis being bombed and terrorized. Furthermore, according to Philip Shenon writing in the New York Times (June 18, 2004), “it seems safe to say that central assertions of fact in Fahrenheit 9/11 are supported by the public record.” And what are these central assertions? Well, for one, it should be obvious to all, even without seeing the film, that the “rich birds flock together,” as in the Bush family and prominent Saudis, including members of the royal family, not to mention the incredible wealthy Bin Laden family. Links between James Bath, a financial advisor for the Bin Laden clan, and George W., including the exchange of large sums of money, have also been well documented. Now one may argue that the Bush family may do business with whomever they choose, and yet we are told that one of the reasons for going to war with Iraq was because of “human rights” violations by Saddam, whereas the Saudis are acceptable to us because they are a nation of “liberties,” complete with a liberal number of punishments like “flogging, amputation, and execution by beheading, stoning, or firing squad” (US State Department).

Other issues that Moore presents, which should be obvious to all, are the economic interests of the Bush clan and friends in relation to the war in Iraq . The idea of using a war to make money might appear shocking or immoral, but let us not forget that the basic premise of our economic system is profit. War is good for business and Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman are taking in billions while 853-plus American families have lost their sons and daughters and 5,134-plus service people have been wounded. Moore shows us the plight of one such mother, a plight that has been intentionally kept off screen. As Barbara Bush, our president's own mother, said last year, “But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what for you suppose? Or I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” And why indeed, as long as it's not her son nor the son of anyone she knows, nor of any Congressional member but one, as Moore tellingly points out. Furthermore, the $126.1 billion that has been spent on the war so far has not deprived her “beautiful mind” of any physical comforts. In fact no doubt the Bushes, like the Cheneys, have benefited greatly from spending “our” money to buy weapons from their associates and friends at Halliburton and co. So that is another issue Moore covers accurately. More to the point, he takes the trouble to show not only the victims of those ill-begotten weapons in Iraq, but also here at home.

Now who could those domestic victims be? Well, if we accept, as we must, that the $125.1 billion came from our tax base, then we must also accept that had it not been spent on the war, it could have been spent on us, on health care and housing and schools and Headstart programs and. . . . You name it, someone in our own country needs it, and the ones who need it most are the same ones most likely to end up in one of those irrelevant, unseen, and unnamed body bags. And who but Michael Moore is telling these stories? Stories that at times don't even need Moore to point out their despicable hypocrisy, as Bush often does that quite well on his own. For example, last January Bush said, “I want to make sure our soldiers have the best possible pay,” only to announce a few months later that the White House would roll back “imminent danger” pay from $225 to $150. And that, too, is factual.

So where are the “not factual” parts of this film? For surely we need to find them since it would be so much easier, so much more affirming to accuse Moore of lying than to have to face the possibility that our own supposedly democratic government is potentially as corrupt and as deceitful and as immoral as those we condemn. And if this really is a democracy, as we like to claim, then we the people are also responsible for this government. I must admit as I was watching the film that my only comfort was that as one of those who had always been against the war, that although it is being carried out with my money, it is not being done in my name.

The one point of contention in the film that I have come across is the claim made by Moore that in the days after 9/11 when all air traffic was grounded, the Bush administration assisted in the departure of members of the Bin Laden family from the US. According to the New York Times report on the Sept. 11 commission there was “no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States.” However, according to the St. Petersburg Times, June 9, 2004, on Sept. 13 “ a small jet landed in Tampa International Airport, picked up three Saudi men . . . one of them thought to a be member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent.” The flight took them to Lexington, Kentucky, where they took another flight out of the country, unaccompanied. Now who's lying? The New York Times? The Sept. 11 commission? The St. Petersburg Times? Michael Moore? I think the answer is obvious but the implications are not, since they are the very same ones that make us question as a result of our total ignorance all that by Moore shows us in the first place.

What we are shown night after night on our commercial television stations is not fact-hunting objective journalism nor is it, as conservatives like to claim, liberal journalism. In fact, it is not even worthy of the name journalism but rather that ugly, so “un-American” word which is only ever used about other countries' media, those that don't have our famed freedom of speech. But it is sadly the only word appropriate to describe our commercial media -- instruments of propaganda. Not convinced? Just remember the firestorm of controversy that resulted when Ted Koppel of ABC decided to read the names of dead American soldiers on Nightline. Tremendous pressure was put on him not to do so, and thus we must ask, why not? Are our dead GIs really as irrelevant as Mrs. Bush claimed, or are they on the contrary so dangerously relevant that we must be prevented from hearing each and every one of their names lest in mid-recital we suddenly realize that we are at war, and worse still, that we willingly attacked and invaded a sovereign country that had posed no immediate danger to us, and that had made no aggressive moves towards us? Lest we realize that we may be the terrorists and that the war on “evil” is one that we have not even begun to win, because it is one we must “fight” by exercising our rights as citizens, be it our right to vote or if necessary our right to protest.

Whatever else one may validly say about Moore's movie, please accept that “it's not factual” is not one of them. And as a result, it is time to ask if Bush is right when he stated on this July the 4th that the “the founders would be proud of America today.” Perhaps Bush needs to read a bit further in our history, fourscore and sixty years on, to 1864 when Abraham Lincoln said something that is even more relevant today:

“As a result of the war corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

And the crowd waved American flags and yelled, “Four more years.”

 

(Phoebe C. Godfrey is an assistant professor of Psychology, Sociology, & Social Work at Texas A&M International University.)