Fahrenheit 9/11

[Rusty914]

I will see it, it's supposed to be an eye opener.....

 

[Pure]

Critique of the Essential Hitchens

Googling for writings about Hitchens yielded few critiques, and we have to thank Sher for the good one, by Parry, of Hitchens on F 9-11.

I did find this rather nice analysis of Hitchens book of writings in the months before 9-11. The first half is a bit dry.

John -- Finkelstein on Hitchens -- 09.11.03
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000466.php

Hitchens' points, for all the brilliance of invective, are not easy to make out; nor do the points of Moore's he enumerates go much to the big issues. Moore is morally contemptible, sleazy and cowardly, would be a one sentence summary.

Since Hitchens goes to the large picture, the man, and what he stands for, let's look at Hitchens, a lefty, who, after 9-11, fell in with Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.

Hitchens, as a old Trotskyite brought the following memories to the table. Why had 'left' intellectuals supported Stalin? Hitchen's conclusion was that they had a double standard or were hypocritical.

Why were there some pacifists in the second world war? They were blind to evil, and morally corrupt and secretly hating the US and Britain: unwilling to 'take down' a dictator who was a menace. Orwell, in his time, saw both of these points.

Hitchens' analyis of Saddam is in similar terms. He's a evil to be removed. Some of the left treat him like Stalin. Others, 'pacifists' (a term applied to Moore-- which may seem odd, outside this analysis) treat him as old pacifists treated Hitler.

In contrast to the degenerates, Hitchens has two principles:

There are right things that have to be done.

There are people who deserve the blessings of prosperity, democracy and freedom.

Ergo: the job of the US, overseas is to materialize these principles through all necessary force.
----

Unfortunately, applying this moral approach to foreigh policy and military actions abroad, is rather tricky. Wilson tried it, and Kennedy/Johnson to some extent. The Bushes try it.

The problem is where to apply it. It's a bit like taking for a personal principle "Help everyone who's needy."

You also have to have lots of faith. For IF the US is an honest policman, then the list of interventions should look like a list of places that *really needed help. Where the most profound evil occurred. But Grenada?

I'll look at only a couple passages of Hitchens, to make the points.
As he himself says--while claiming there are small falsehoods-- pointing out errors is beside the point.

Hitchens

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.

IOW, the mistake of Moore is to only look at current casualties, and not the horrors before. This is a prime argument of Bush: that there were mass graves.... and torture rooms.

You can see that the premise is that somehow the US should fix it, and anything else is moral cowardice. There is also an assumption that the attempt to fix will work, and that the situation not be made worse by US efforts.

You can see the accusation of moral weakness or hypocrisy.

----
{Hitchens quoting Orwell}
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 …

This of course is Hitchens' main stick, as regards a certain segment of 'pacifists': They are degerates who secretly hate the US. How do we know? Since their statements are not coherent: The oppose only *US* war efforts.

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. [...] It's ... 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.

This is the very core of the argument. There is a false dichotomy: either go with Wolfie, or sit on your hands while evil strikes at home and abroad.

In one sense Hitchens is correct: Liberals have a hard time deciding on intervention, and don't seem to have consistent principles and practices: Why attack Vietnam, and yet give up on Cuba? (one half hearted attempt, only).

Classic conservatives have a simple rule. Intervene if US interests are substantially involved, and you can advance them by the action. Fuck the morals. Shut up about torture.

But how does Hitchens get HIS laundry list: Serbia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq. Are these the places where the most evil was happening? Why do three of them seem to involve OIL?

In fact Hitchens just tries to slip us the Neo Con laundry list ["To Do," 21st Century], the Wolfie/Rummy/Cheney list. And the genesis of it is not to do with evils so much as 1) business interests, and 2) power politics [change the middle east; shake up Syria and the Saudis, protect and strength Israel's position} through setting up a US friendly democracy in Iraq]

Parry did a good job sorting through the 'contradictions' alleged of Moore, but these are mostly just verbal dazzling and obfuscation. I believe the above points, or something close to them, are key.

Some of the above ideas are inspired or supported by Finklestein's nice analysis of Hitchens' new politics at

http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000466.php

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Oh, and I coundn't guess your name. (I suck at that stuff)

It's an old Rolling Stones song called "Sympathy for the Devil".

Don't worry so much about strong views or wishy-washy views. None of us are really as polar on every issue as we'd like (with a few exceptions). Enjoy the forum and remember when traversing the minefield of political debate, follow logic and reason and you'll come out fine no matter which view you hold and don't ever be afraid to leave a thread if it's too much and you're getting too heated up. We've all done it and it helps to take a break.

P.S. I know it's just personal opinion, but I've always felt that Coulter is far better than Rush. Rush tends to just rant on a topic with little backup and little style, whereas Coulter brings out the charts, graphs, and old quotes to roast someone. She reminds me a lot of Ted Rall on the other side of the spectrum. Anyway, that's just me.

Have fun and don't forget to stop and fuck next to the flowers.

 

[Guest]

It's an old Rolling Stones song called "Sympathy for the Devil".

And an excellent song, at that.

Have fun and don't forget to stop and fuck next to the flowers.

Awww, you're such a romantic!

 

[Somme]

...and will we be seeing Mr Rumsfelds' Altamont?

 

[shereads]

www.fahrenheit911.com

If there was nothing else in this film besides this scene, it would still be a worthwhile piece of investigative journalism: Moore or someone has snuck a hand-held camera into an auditorium where a businessman is being applauded for his presentation about the profit potential of the upcoming Iraq war: "Once this war is underway, there will be a lot of money to be made," says the man at the podium. "Whatever it takes, the government will pay it."

I read Denby's review, and I was struck by his assertion that the scene of a flattened home and grieving Iraqi family are not an appropriate way to refute Rumsfeld's assertion that our bombings are minimizing civilian deaths. I think he misses Moore's point: it doesn't matter how many die, if the deaths are not justified.

 

[shereads]

----

{quoting Hichens}
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.

It's worth pointing out that Donald Rumsfeld said in a Newsweek interview back then, that the Clinton administration should have negotiated a diplomatic solution with Milosovich; one of GWB's most consistent campaign themes in 2000 was his assertion that Clinton had misused America's military for "nation-building."

Al Franken, in "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," documents a significant number of public statements against Clinton's leadership, his "moral right" to lead the military into war, and the inappropriateness of U.S. involvement in Bosnia, by many of the same people in Congress and the media who said last year that protesting the Iraq war was unpatriotic because it would harm the morale of our troops and encourage our enemies.

The double standard that Republicans have applied to these two war efforts is impossible to justify.

 

[Clare Quilty]

...and will we be seeing Mr Rumsfelds' Altamont?

Hopefully the Hell's Angels will kill him.

 

[shereads]

Hopefully the Hell's Angels will kill him.

I don't hate even Rumsfeld enough to wish him dead. On some level, he must have believed he was doing something important. Lying, yes, but for a reason he was able to justify for himself. Maybe he and Cheney and Wolfowitz really do believe that what's good for Halliburton and Bechtel is good for America and the world. I despise them for lying to us, but I'd much rather see them live with what they've done. Unfortunately, they'll be rich as Croesus and they won't have to live in Baghdad.

 

[Clare Quilty]

I don't hate even Rumsfeld enough to wish him dead. On some level, he must have believed he was doing something important. Lying, yes, but for a reason he was able to justify for himself. Maybe he and Cheney and Wolfowitz really do believe that what's good for Halliburton and Bechtel is good for America and the world. I despise them for lying to us, but I'd much rather see them live with what they've done. Unfortunately, they'll be rich as Croesus and they won't have to live in Baghdad.

What would make you think he believed anything other than he was doing what was in the best interests of his associates and his socio-economic class?

I have yet to see anything from the administration that indicates anything but contempt for the average American, and a desire to destroy the freedoms we enjoy. They shamelessly manipulated the fear and grief over 9/11 into carte blanche to trample the constitution and embroil us in a war that targeted Bush family enemies and padded the already fat pockets of every oil and military industry golf buddy of Bush/Cheney. Simultaneously, in what could be described as a full court press, the administration encourages corporations to send jobs abroad (which lowers labor costs for Bush cronies), floats a tax cut that amounts to a pittance for all but the very rich, then engages in massive spending which raises interest rates--again benefiting the super rich who own the banks.


That is enough for me to want Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney tarred and feathered. What makes me want to see their heads on pikes is the craven ignominy of how the patriotism of those kids in the Armed forces is being used against them in order to further the financial and political interests of a small group of insane fundamentalist christian fascist oligarchs—and not the interests of the United States.

The dishonoring of our soldiers conscripted in a poverty draft, while not one member of the administration or either legislative house has a child in Iraq is more than enough to make me hope the entire administration suffers a fate befitting the traitors they are.

the war is fought by an impoverished class created by the ruthlessness of capitalism—men and women who, faced with dim economic chances, have no choice but to “volunteer” for the armed services.

 

[Pure]

Hitchens unhitched by a conservative

Raimondo is a prominent (NOT-neo) conservative and libertarian who has opposed the war in Iraq.

http://www.anti-war.com/justin/?articleid=2824

Christopher Hitchens:
Liar, hypocrite, coward, drunk – have I left anything out?

by Justin Raimondo

It's pathetic, really, to have to hear our war birds squawk and complain about the consequences of the policy they wanted so passionately, the glorious crusade they argued for with such overriding certainty and sense of mission. Here's Andrew Sullivan on the Abu Ghraib horror show:

"We have to know who really sanctioned this. And we have to stop it. Just because some anti-war opportunists are getting on this bandwagon does not absolve pro-war advocates from holding this administration responsible."

This from someone who advocated launching a nuclear strike on Iraq when he (and nobody else but Laurie Mylroie) was sure Saddam was behind the anthrax attacks:

"At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter.

"Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn't dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat."

But if, according to Sullivan, it would have been okay to nuke hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis because, after all, it was "likely" that Saddam was responsible for the anthrax, then why isn't it okay to torture far fewer of these same Iraqis?

"We have to know who really sanctioned this."

Earth to Sullivan: You did.

In the run-up to war, Iraq was caricatured by the War Party as the fount of evil, the source not only of the deadly anthrax but also of a veritable arsenal of WMD, which were ready and waiting to be launched at the U.S. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the Abu Ghraib torturers believed they were exacting revenge for 9/11: to this day, a good many people still believe the myth of Iraqi responsibility, including the Vice President of the United States, without a shred of evidence to back it up. The point is that Sullivan has hyped this lie consistently and energetically – and now backs away from his own handiwork.

Doesn't anybody take responsibility for anything anymore?

An even more brazen case of hypocritical cant is exemplified by Christopher Hitchens' recent column in Slate, wherein he confides that the horrors of Abu Ghraib have only just begun to be revealed, and, after mustering a fairly good rendition of moral indignation, announces:

"Almost the whole of public opinion is complicit in this, as is shown by the fury over the administration's failure to pre-empt the Sept. 11 assault: a pre-emption that would almost certainly have involved some corner-cutting in the interrogation room."

This is an outrageous proposition on so many levels that the mind reels. To begin with, the inmates at Abu Ghraib – 70 to 90 percent of whom were arrested by mistake – are hardly the equivalent of the 9/11 hijackers. But such fine distinctions as guilt and innocence are not discernible through the thick moral fog that clouds the author's mind.

Hitchens pined for this war the way Echo pined for Narcissus, and, when it finally arrived, declared "I couldn't be more ready to spend the rest of my life fighting it." Now that his love has soured, we are told it's everybody's fault. Or, at least, "almost" everybody. I suppose Hitchens really could mean to exclude himself – that is, if he managed to consume enough alcohol.

Good grief, but our warmongers are such effete cowards! These fabled chickenhawks, who would never let themselves get anywhere near a battlefield, are, virtually all of them, self-proclaimed military experts. Sullivan, for example, has been demanding that we "Take Fallujah!," and level Najaf, as if he were directing the war from the comfort of his P-town digs. And they are never wrong – even as their vaunted predictions of a "cakewalk," of Iraqis dancing in the streets and hailing us as "liberators," now seem to mock the dead.

Cowards, and liars, too. In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Hitchens reviews a reissue of Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, which, we are told, is "sonorous and majestic," but no less so than its subject. Trotsky is glamorized by Hitchens as a literary icon and inspiration to such giants as Mary McCarthy, Norman Mailer, and the art critic Clement Greenberg: The founder of the Red Army, we are told, is the very embodiment of "defiance and dissent."

I'll bet that isn't what they thought at Kronstadt, where dissent was felled by Trotsky's sword. Wasn't it Trotsky's Red Army that ruthlessly stamped out the very possibility of defiance in Soviet Russia? You have to be as dumb as a stump to believe that the much-feared prophet of "military communism" was anything other than a totalitarian, a Leninist, and a murderer.

Hitchens cuts a pathetic figure these days, dazzling the ditto-heads with showy displays of half-assed erudition. I especially like this sentence from his recent Slate column:

"If any young scholar were now possessed of equivalent daring, a biography of the protean, scintillating revolutionary and Cold War sage Max Schachtman [sic] could be an intellectual Rosetta stone for the story of mental and moral combat in the modern American mind."

If such a scholar were to depend on Hitchens, he would have to learn, first of all, how to spell Max Shachtman's name correctly. Otherwise, I agree that Shachtmanism is the "bridge" between the "Old Man" and his present-day epigones. So how, as Hitchens avers, is this "kinship" between Trotskyism and what is known as neoconservatism "merely an anecdotal or autobiographical one"?

Ah, but, never mind all that. The whole point of Hitchens' paean to Trotskyism, aside from justifying his unrepentant faith in the benignity of the "Old Man," is to lash out at those of us who find the neocons' Trotsky cultism more than a bit dubious:

"Even today a faint, saintly penumbra still emanates from the Old Man. Where once the Stalinist press and propaganda machine employed the curse of Trotskyism to criminalize and defame the 'rotten elements' and 'rootless cosmopolitans,' now the tribunes of the isolationist right level the same charge at neoconservatives and the supporters of regime change. In Patrick Buchanan's vituperations, and in a plethora of related attacks on a hidden American 'cabal,' it is openly said that the cunning members of a certain ethnic minority are up to their old tricks of 'permanent revolution,' and even that the arcane figure of Leo Strauss is the partial reincarnation of Trotsky. Intended as a mortal insult, and wildly, not to say laughably, mistaken in point of any theoretical resemblance, this charge might yet have a faint tincture of interest to it."

The essential dishonesty of Christopher Hitchens, as I have noted before, is underscored in his online pieces by the complete lack of links (except, on occasion, to his own pieces, and other articles in Slate). And even in the dead-tree edition of The Atlantic, an author raising the sort of charges Hitchens makes owes it to his readers to identify the source, and put quote marks around what the accused actually said or wrote. Oh, but he doesn't have to tell us just where and how Buchanan identified "a certain ethnic minority" as the "cabal" behind the "permanent revolution" currently convulsing the Middle East. We're all supposed to indulge "Hitch," and acknowledge, if only implicitly, that the rules applicable to ordinary writers certainly don't apply to him.

Baloney. He's a liar, and a fraud, and it's about time someone called him on it.

If we "isolationists" are to be characterized as "Stalinists" because we oppose the revolutionary program of imposing global "democracy" at gunpoint, then so be it: I'll take Americanism in one country over American imperialism on a global scale any day.

But if anyone is here mimicking the methods of classical Stalinism, it is the shameless liar Hitchens. Buchanan never identified anyone as a "rootless cosmopolitan," nor did he target "a certain ethnic minority" in any way, shape, or form. Pat singled out supporters of the hardcore Israeli nationalist Likud party in the U.S. as the vanguard of the War Party on the basis of their foreign policy stance, not their religion. And he is hardly alone in his analysis, which, in any case, is being confirmed on practically a daily basis. A review in Time magazine of James Bamford's just-released book, A Pretext for War, has this to say:

"The Bush hard-liners had long believed that stability could come to the Middle East and Israel – only if Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq converted into a stable democracy. Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, they were installed at various national-security choke points in the government, and nothing moved without their O.K. Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel's hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors.

"Such a world view, Bamford argues, was simply repotted by the hard-liners into U.S. foreign policy in the early Bush years, with the war in Iraq as its ultimate goal. Bamford asserts that the backgrounds, political philosophies and experiences of many of the hard-liners helped to hardwire the pro-Israel mind-set in the Bush inner circle and suggests that Washington mistook Israel's interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year. The result was a war built on sand."

And we are sinking in it, thanks to the Likudniks embedded in this administration. But what's really coming out is the key role played by the neocons, acting as the agents of a foreign power. Former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski and writer Robert Dreyfuss have both touched on the subject of Israel's involvement in pushing the lies that led to war, and Bamford, a longtime chronicler of the world of intelligence, elaborates and confirms it:

 

[shereads]

Suspiciously fair and impartial

Believe it or not, this is from Fox News online. My guess is that Fox is part of a conspiracy to get as many of us into the theaters as possible so we can be held there until after November.



Tuesday, June 15, 2004
By Roger Friedman

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Gets Standing Ovation

The crowd that gave Michael Moore's controversial "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary a standing ovation last night at the Ziegfeld Theater premiere certainly didn't have to be encouraged to show their appreciation. From liberal radio host/writer Al Franken to actor/director Tim Robbins, Moore was in his element.

But once "F9/11" gets to audiences beyond screenings, it won't be dependent on celebrities for approbation. It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.

As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, "F9/11" — as we saw last night — is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty_ —_ and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.

Readers of this column may recall that I had a lot of problems with Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," particularly where I thought he took gratuitous shots at helpless targets such as Charlton Heston. "Columbine" too easily succeeded by shooting fish in a barrel, as they used to say.

Not so with "F9/11," which instead relies on lots of film footage and actual interviews to make its case against the war in Iraq and tell the story of the intertwining histories of the Bush and bin Laden families.

First, I know you want to know who came to the Ziegfeld, so here is a partial list:

Besides Franken and Robbins, Al Sharpton, Mike Myers, Tony Bennett, Glenn Close, Gretchen Mol (newly married over the weekend to director Todd Williams), Lori Singer, Tony Kushner, "Angela's Ashes" author Frank McCourt, Jill Krementz and Kurt Vonnegut, Lauren Bacall (chatting up a fully refurbished Lauren Hutton), Richard Gere, John McEnroe and Patti Smythe, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Carson Daly, NBC's Jeff Zucker, a very pregnant Rory Kennedy, playwright Israel Horovitz, Macaulay Culkin, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kyra Sedgwick, Linda Evangelista, Ed Bradley, Tom and Meredith Brokaw, director Barry Levinson, NBC anchor Brian Williams, Vernon Jordan, Eva Mendes, Sandra Bernhard and the always humorous Joy Behar.

If that's not enough, how about Yoko Ono, accompanied by her son, Sean, who's let his hair grow out and is now sporting a bushy beard that makes him look like his late, beloved father John Lennon?

And then, just to show you how much people wanted to see this film, there was Martha Stewart, looking terrific. I mean, talk about an eclectic group!

Now, unless you've been living under a rock, you know that this movie has been the cause of a lot of trouble. Miramax and Disney have gone to war over it, and "The Passion of the Christ" seems like "Mary Poppins" in retrospect. Before anyone's even seen it, there have been partisan debates over which way Moore may have spun this or that to get a desired effect.

But, really, in the end, not seeing "F9/11" would be like allowing your First Amendment rights to be abrogated, no matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat.

The film does Bush no favors, that's for sure, but it also finds an unexpectedly poignant and universal groove in the story of Lila Lipscombe, a Flint, Mich., mother who sends her kids into the Army for the opportunities it can provide_— just like the commercials say — and lives to regret it.

Lipscombe's story is so powerful, and so completely middle-American, that I think it will take Moore's critics by surprise. She will certainly move to tears everyone who encounters her.

"F9/11" isn't perfect, and of course, there are leaps of logic sometimes. One set piece is about African-American congressmen and women presenting petitions on the Florida recount, and wondering why there are no senators to support them.

Indeed, those absent senators include John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, among others, which Moore does not elaborate upon. At no point are liberals or Democrats taken to task for not supporting these elected officials, and I would have liked to have seen that.

On the other hand, there are more than enough moments that seemed to resonate with the huge Ziegfeld audience.

The most indelible is Bush's reaction to hearing on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, that the first plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Bush was reading to a grade-school class in Florida at that moment. Instead of jumping up and leaving, he instead sat in front of the class, with an unfortunate look of confusion, for nearly 11 minutes.

Moore obtained the footage from a teacher at the school who videotaped the morning program. There Bush sits, with no access to his advisers, while New York is being viciously attacked. I guarantee you that no one who sees this film forgets this episode.

More than even "The Passion of the Christ," "F9/11" is going to be a "see it for yourself" movie when it hits theaters on June 25. It simply cannot be missed, and I predict it will be a huge moneymaker.

And that's where Disney's Michael Eisner comes in. Not releasing this film will turn out to be the curse of his career.

When Eisner came into Disney years ago, the studio was at a low point. He turned it around with a revived animation department and comedy hits such as "Pretty Woman" and "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."

But Eisner's short-sightedness on many recent matters has been his undoing. And this last misadventure is one that will follow him right out the doors of the Magic Kingdom.

 

[Guest]

lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. . .

Atlantic Unbound | June 23, 2004 - Politics & Prose | by Jack Beatty

Bush's Monica Moment - Clinton's affair with Monica called his character into question; Bush's true colors emerged on 9/11

This weekend Bill Clinton gave the world a look into his character. In his autobiography, My Life, previewed on 60 Minutes, Clinton calls his affair with Monica Lewinsky a "terrible moral error" that sprang from the "darkest part" of his "inner life." Lying about it under oath got him impeached by a Republican House led by Newt Gingrich, who was having an affair with a younger aide at the time, just as the voluble Clinton scourge, William Bennett, rested from his indignations with the Las Vegas chapter of the Moral Majority. The reckless impeachment peterrated by these pecksniffs crippled the Clinton presidency at a fateful time—when Osama Bin Laden was about to target the "homeland." Historians will doubtless explore the question of how far Bill Clinton's "moral error" and the Republican near-putsch contributed to September 11.

Next weekend, when Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 opens, we will see George W. Bush's Monica Lewinsky moment. Philip Shenon, who covered the hearings of the 9/11 commission, described that scene in an article on the film in Sunday's Times.

For the White House, the most devastating segment of Farenheit 9/11 may be the video of a befuddled-looking President Bush staying put for nearly seven minutes at a Florida elementary school on the morning of September 11, continuing to read a copy of My Pet Goat to schoolchildren even after an aide has told him that a second plane has struck the twin towers.

Moore stipples his film with damning (and in some cases doubtful) statistics—for example, that Mr. Bush spent 42 percent of the first eight months of his presidency on vacation—and vituperation. But, Shenon concludes, while "Mr. Bush's slow, hesitant reaction to the disastrous news has never been a secret,…seeing the actual footage, with the minutes ticking by, may prove more damaging to the White House than all the statistics in the world."

That moment exposes Bush's character. It reveals what his press conferences proclaim: his incapacity. If he were George W. Smith, what job would he be qualified for? Bush's presidency can be seen as one long cover-up of the most obvious thing about him. A life of upward failure, of being his father's son, left him without "sand," my nineteenth century-born father's word for the residue of strength acquired by "standing on your own two feet" and "taking your medicine." Bush never stood on his own feet, never took his medicine—and he has never been his own man. He's the only president to be related to the Queen of England, and his biography is that of a "royal." Prince Charles would make a sorry prime minister. Like Bush, though, he'd give good strut.

Leaders show what they are made of in a crisis. Bush hid in plain sight with those kids. Later, hiding twice over, he used them as an excuse, saying he did not want to frighten them by ending the reading before finishing the book. Later still, and repeatedly, he said he saw the first plane strike the tower that morning (in fact, no one saw that live; the film was not available until the evening) and that he remarked, "That's some bad pilot"—pure strut. As the Wall Street Journal reported, he also magnified his role in managing the crisis, claiming he gave orders others gave. Conflicting accounts of Bush's communications documented by the 9/11 Commission now raise doubts whether, as he and Cheney told the commissioners, he ordered Cheney to shoot down any hijacked planes still in the air, or whether Cheney, in the White House bunker, acted on his own. Maybe Cheney persuaded Bush to stay away from Washington that day less for Bush's safety than for the country's.

Bill Clinton betrayed our expectations of how a president should act, then lied to cover up. His critics claim Monica was no discrete "moral error" but part of a pattern of character that showed his unfitness for the presidency. Yet, whatever his personal weaknesses, Clinton performed competently, even prudently. His controversial decisions—raising taxes to balance the budget, NAFTA, the China trade deal, less so welfare reform—were largely policy-driven, outraging various elements of the democratic base. Competence, prudence, policy over politics: these are not the words to describe George W. Bush's conduct of government. If we doubted Clinton's character, we were reassured by his intelligence and command of the scene. Bush lacks these compensations. His vaunted "moral clarity" is as much strut as conviction. He achieves certainty by arresting thought. The "befuddled-looking president" caught in that video is an emblem of his presidency. url

 

[shereads]

Does "moral clarity" mean you can see through Dubya's head?

 

[Clare Quilty]

His vaunted "moral clarity" is as much strut as conviction.

Moral clarity? Is that a joke. This is an administration that has lied at every opportunity. Bush's lies haven't been about anything as insignificant as a blowjob. He lied about being fiscally responsible--He is in fact the typical deficit spending republican. He lied about Iraq buying weapons grade uranium--"the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." He lied about Iraqi WMDs--851 working class American kids are in their graves as a result. He's lying about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam--well that's not a lie anymore. Bush has forged and unprecedented alliance between bathists and Saudi wahabists who formerly hated each other.

This administration was committed to invading Iraq from day one. 9/11 simply provided them with the means to drag a sheep-like America along with them. And Bush callously politicized that tragedy in order to cram his fascist agenda down our throats.

it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country---Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia & founder of The Gestapo

By the way, does anyone remember when a contestant in a MoveOn.org contest compared Bush to Hitler? The repulicans feigned outrage and spun the story as if that was the clip that won the contest. It wasn't, but the administration was able to keep the eventual winner off television largely due to the controversy surrounding the Hitler comparison.

Well now in typical dishonest republican fashion, there is an Video ad on Bush/Cheney's official reelection site that compares prominent Democrats to none other than Adolf Hitler. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Bush/Cheney Hitler ad

Bush/Cheney Reelection site

 

[Guest]

This is not a time for pessimism and rage. . . Wow. Thanks, Q.

Perdita

 

[shereads]

Bush has forged and unprecedented alliance between bathists and Saudi wahabists who formerly hated each other.

"I'm a uniter, not a divider."

~ GWB

 

[shereads]

Speaking of moral clarity, what the hell possessed John McCain to cash his in? They HUGGED on stage at some event last week, after McCain gave Dubya a glowing introduction that included phrases like "moral courage." This, after the bastard's campaign managers trashed McCain like old garbage during the primaries. Granted, McCain has said repeatedly in response to the two-party ticket rumor, that he would remain loyal to the Republican party. But please - moral courage? He could have remained loyal and kept his credibility intact by just keeping quiet.

In the aftermath of the Abu Ghairib mess, when Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain was gunning for bear. Five years as a POW, complete with broken bones, left him with more respect for the Geneva Conventions than the Bush/Cheney crowd, and I'm astonished that his anger didn't extend up the ladder past Rumsfeld. Or maybe Rumsfeld IS up the ladder from Dubya. Who knows.

Maybe they threatened to shoot McCain's dog or deport his children. Or maybe whatever is wrong with Colin Powell is contagious. Or maybe they're the Stepford Politicians.

 

[Clare Quilty]

Are you familiar with the phrase "someone's got the pictures?"

How a man like McCain can stand to be to even be in the presence of that draft-dodging coward is beyond me. One would think that aircraft carrier photo-op would've sickened a man who actually flew 23 bombing missions over Vietnam.

 

[Pure]

I think McCain was promised Sec'y of State or something.

Finally, the first shoe drops, in the vaunted land of the free:

http://www.thehill.com/news/062404/moore.aspx

‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ ban?
Ads for Moore’s movie could be stopped on July 30

By Alexander Bolton



Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel.

{This is the opening of an article.}

Is everyone aware of www.antiwar.com ? It's got lotsa good stuff from left AND right.

 

[Pure]

[B] Film to be suppressed [/B]

Hey guys,

Isn't anyone worried?

Seems Fahrenheit 9-11 is to be -- for now-- contained. Federal Elections commission may restrict it, since it's intended to... get this.. influence an election.!!!

Is suppression next!!!

Why has the story not hit the Times yet?

 

[shereads]

Re: [B] Film to be suppressed [/B]

Hey guys,

Isn't anyone worried?

Seems Fahrenheit 9-11 is to be -- for now-- contained. Federal Elections commission may restrict it, since it's intended to... get this.. influence an election.!!!

Is suppression next!!!

Why has the story not hit the Times yet?

It's hit the Washington Post. I think we talked about it in this thread...Or did I dream that?

Something about it violating the McCain-Feingold Act, the campaign funding regulation that Bush's people fought so hard. A commercial that mentions a candidate can't run after June 30 without violating the "soft money" clause, whose intent was to stop campaigns from benefiting from donations that took the form of third-party commercial endorsements rather than cash.

 

[Guest]

A bit of an aside - "man/woman on the streets" of SF Bay Area

I think I'll join up. Even though this is in the newspaper I deleted the names. - Perdita

TWO CENTS - On Politics: Has a film ever influenced the way you voted? Has a film ever influenced the way you voted? (June 25, 2004 )

Oakland
In 1980, I saw "The Final Countdown," in which a nuclear aircraft carrier goes back in time to pre-empt Pearl Harbor. It was preposterous, Ameri-centric and so disgustingly glorified the military that it inspired me to vote for the relatively pacifistic Jimmy Carter. Reagan was elected, and he wound up starring in the sequel for the next eight years.

Oakland
"Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" simply solidified what I suspected. Over 20 FBI, CIA agents and "weapons inspectors" are interviewed, spliced in between videos of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft and the rest of the Bush administration, caught in lie after lie. It's chilling.

San Francisco
"Wag the Dog" will influence my vote in November. I keep wondering, with all the attention going on with Iraq, are we missing the bigger story of the erosion of our privacy rights? Not to mention the recent rulings that affect our ability to hold HMOs accountable in court. Our attention is being diverted from larger issues that affect our day-to-day living.

Alameda
"Koyaanisqatsi" galvanized my feelings about environmental abuse and made me less cavalier about my vote. We have a beautiful planet, and there's still time to stop messing it up.

Oakland
The documentary "People and the Land" influenced the way I will vote in the upcoming election. I learned of the tremendous aid the U.S. gives to Israel, which continues its oppression. Kerry's stance is perhaps even worse than Bush's. I've gone from "anyone but Bush" to alienated voter. And I know I'm not alone.

San Francisco
"Wag the Dog" didn't influence my vote as much as it made me reconsider all sound bites we hear. After that film I tried to seek out alternative sources for news and became a much bigger skeptic than I already am.

Oakland
I saw 10 minutes of "The Terminator" on TV once and did not vote for Arnold in the recall. How could anyone after seeing that?

Oakland
I saw a documentary called "Reasonable Doubts: The Truth About 9/11" that focused on an ex-FBI investigator who was fired after discovering the government was bringing in drugs to the U.S. He talked about how Bush already knew about 9/11 and let it happen to excuse the war he wanted to start for oil. He didn't get my vote last election, and he hasn't won me over for this one.

Oakland
I saw a TV newsreel that showed a Viet Cong prisoner thrown out of a helicopter to his death. I have been anti-war and anti-torture ever since. I am a World War II veteran.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two Cents is a pool of Bay Area residents we tap for comments and anecdotes. Columns are a representative sampling of responses to questions we pose via e-mail. To join the pool, e-mail us at twocents@sfchronicle.

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: [B] Film to be suppressed [/B]

It's hit the Washington Post. I think we talked about it in this thread...Or did I dream that?

Something about it violating the McCain-Feingold Act, the campaign funding regulation that Bush's people fought so hard. A commercial that mentions a candidate can't run after June 30 without violating the "soft money" clause, whose intent was to stop campaigns from benefiting from donations that took the form of third-party commercial endorsements rather than cash.

Michael Moore was on Jon Stewart last night. He received a standing ovation as he walked on stage.

(I was most amazed; Stewart rarely invites a guest with such polarity. He's on the Comedy Channel, for Christ's sake! I truly enjoy his disrespectful and smart-ass comments, however.)

Anyway, Moore addressed this issue. He said it was incredible; every time someone attempted to repress his film he wound up earning more positive publicity. He welcomed those who were fighting him and in fact asked them to please continue because it only helped matters.

I find it absolutely amazing that now they are attempting this kind of attack. What has happened to our country?

(rhetorical question, that - I know good and damn well what has happened - )

 

[shereads]

What's amazing is that it requires a movie to get people to notice what's been revealing itself in bits and pieces, all along.

Even more amazing is the positive review from Fox's website. "A triumph of patriotism."

Wow.

Wierd.

And it wasn't even sarcastic.