Cockburn
/ St. Clair"s Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today"s
Stories
July
3 / 4, 2004
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam"s
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush"s Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain"t Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush"s Damaged Mind: the Madness
in His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush"s Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker"s Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America"s Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft"s
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang"s All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA"s New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn"t Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel"s Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin"s Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz"s Colleagues Refused
to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin"s Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets"
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan"s Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock"s Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global
Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
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Weekend
Edition
July 3/4, 2004
Michael
Moore's F9/11
The
Problem is Bigger than the Bushes
By
STEVEN ROSENTHAL
and JUNAID AHMAD
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11
opened this past weekend (June 25) to record crowds and box office
receipts across the United States. Moore is the author of the
bestselling book Stupid White Men and producer of the
award winning documentary Bowling for Columbine. The U.S.
opening of Fahrenheit 9/11 was preceded by considerable
excitement and political controversy. Released earlier in Europe
to enthusiastic audiences opposed to the U.S. invasion and occupation
of Iraq, it received the prestigious Palme D'Or (golden
palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival. The internet based Democratic
Party fundraising machine MoveOn.org, to celebrate the film opening,
organized over 3000 "house parties" on June 28 where
its supporters heard Michael Moore on closed circuit television
urge viewers to "take back the White House" this November.
After Disney refused to distribute
Fahrenheit 9/11 in the U.S., the Independent Film Channel
(IFC), which is owned by Cablevision and financed by JP Morgan
Chase and Citigroup, took over distribution and promotion of
the film. This struggle over the distribution of the film, along
with the film's obvious role in the 2004 election battle between
the Republican and Democratic Parties, reflects the deep division
Bush's debacle in Iraq has generated within the U.S. ruling class.
The large enthusiastic audiences
in theaters throughout the U.S. and at the MoveOn.org house parties
suggest that opposition to the Bush administration and to the
war in Iraq has been growing considerably during the past several
months. The absence of Iraqi WMDs and any connection between
Iraq and Al Qaeda, the massive Iraqi insurgency against the occupation,
the growing U.S. casualties, the ballooning costs of the war
and the shaky economy have evidently had a cumulative effect
in undermining mass support for the war.
Viewers who have suffered through
the nightmare four years of the Bush administration and marched
against the horrendous invasion and occupation of Iraq are understandably
hopeful that Fahrenheit 9/11 will help produce "regime
change" in the U.S. this fall. That may prove to be the
case, but will putting Democrat John Kerry in the White House
lead to withdrawal of U.S. troops, military bases, and profiteering
corporations from Iraq, repeal of the Patriot Act, or a reorientation
of U.S. foreign policy away from its drive for imperialist hegemony?
And, if replacing Bush with Kerry does not deliver any of these
results, does Fahrenheit 9/11 at least provide its viewers
with the information and analysis they will need to understand
why the leadership of the Democratic Party has betrayed their
hopes and needs? We will attempt to answer these questions after
first summarizing Michael Moore's indictment of George W. Bush.
***
Michael Moore begins the film
by defining George W. Bush as an illegitimate President who stole
the 2000 presidential election. He traces the family, business,
and political connections of the key players who made sure that
Bush won Florida's electoral votes. He shows us Al Gore, presiding
over the Senate in his last act as vice-president, using his
gavel to silence African American members of the House of Representatives,
whose protest against certifying the election results cannot
go forward because not one member of the all white U.S. Senate
will sign their appeal against the massive racist disenfranchisement
of black voters in Florida.
Moore depicts Bush as an incompetent
leader who spent 42% of the first eight months of his presidency
up to 9/11 on vacation. He cites findings of the 9/11 commission
confirming that the Bush administration virtually ignored the
threat of an Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. He then devotes a significant
part of the film to analyzing the intricate network of oil, banking,
and investment relationships between the Bush family and the
rulers of Saudi Arabia, including the Bin Laden family. He informs
us that George Bush senior is a major figure in the Carlyle Group,
which has major investments in several of the biggest corporate
military contractors. He describes how the Taliban rulers of
Afghanistan were invited to Texas in an effort to negotiate the
building of a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan from Turkmenistan
to the Indian Ocean.
Moore emphasizes how members
of the Bin Laden family and other influential Saudis were allowed
to fly out of the U.S. after 9/11 at a time when U.S. air space
was otherwise shut down. Although Moore never explicitly states
why he is telling this fairly detailed story, it seems pretty
clear that he is trying to demonstrate that family business interests
made Bush determined to invade first Afghanistan and then Iraq,
rather than go after the country from which most of the 9/11
hijackers came. In other words, Moore is suggesting that Bush
and his cronies put their personal interests above the national
security of the United States.
Moore then devotes most of
the rest of the film to the U.S. war on Iraq. He satirizes Bush's
"coalition of the willing" by listing some of the militarily
insignificant countries that did agree to join the coalition
of invaders of Iraq. He briefly reviews the now thoroughly exposed
lies Bush and his pals presented to gain support for invading
Iraq. He dramatizes the human consequences of the war for the
tortured and bombed Iraqis, for the American military soldiers
who are fighting and dying in this preemptive war, and for the
families, both Iraqi and American, who are devastated by the
war's deadly destruction. He provides footage of meetings where
corporate leaders eagerly discuss the profits they expect to
reap from the exploitation and reconstruction of Iraq.
Most poignant is the story
told by Lila Lipscomb, mother of Michael Pederson, killed in
Iraq after Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared victory
in Iraq. Lipscomb lives in Moore's hometown, Flint, Michigan.
Lipscomb describes herself as a "conservative Democrat,"
who used to despise anti-war demonstrators. A white woman married
to a black man, she has fought to survive amidst the economic
wreckage left behind in Flint by General Motors in its search
for cheaper labor and higher profits. She encouraged her daughter
and son to enlist in the army, and she reads from her son's final
letter home, in which he says of Bush, "He got us out here
for nothing." At the end of the film, she visits Washington,
gets as close to the White House as she can, and pours out her
anger at its occupant. Her obviously authentic testimony is perhaps
Moore's most potent ammunition in Fahrenheit 9/11.
In stark juxtaposition to Lila
Lipscomb are the Congresspersons who scurry away from Moore when
he tries to urge them to persuade their sons and daughters to
enlist in the armed forces, and the fat cats attending one of
Bush's fundraisers whom Bush calls his "base." By the
end of the film, we see the immense contrast between the Bush
crowd, who have launched a war to increase their wealth, and
the ordinary working class people, who, as Moore observes, always
make the biggest sacrifices in wars.
* *
*
In his speech to the more than
thirty thousand people attending MoveOn.org house parties last
night (June 28), Michael Moore stated his disappointment that
Kerry had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He suggested that
Kerry may lose the election unless he responds to growing
popular opposition to the war. He hopes Kerry, if elected, will
withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq during the first 100 days of his
administration. What leads Michael Moore to assert that a growing
anti-war movement, spurred on by Fahrenheit 9/11 and organizations
such as MoveOn.org, can make the Democratic Party do the right
thing? Let's examine Moore's analysis of the Bush Administration,
the war, and the Democratic Party.
The Theft
of 2000 Election.
Fahrenheit 9/11 begins with
an implicit indictment of both Republicans and Democrats
and ends with an implicit indictment of the system of inequality
in the U.S. But in between the film concentrates virtually all
of its fire on the Bush crowd and the Republican Party.
Republicans stole the 2000
election with the spineless complicity of the Democrats. Not
one Democratic Senator is willing to sign the appeal demanded
by African American members of the House of Representatives.
But why did the Democrats passively accept the massive disenfranchisement
of Black voters in Florida (and other states) in 2000? Moore
does not attempt to explain the Democrat's spinelessness. The
answer lies in the fact that the Democrats colluded extensively
in Black disenfranchisement. Democratic majorities in Congress
and the Democratic president Bill Clinton repeatedly proposed
and voted for legislation that resulted in the massive criminalization
of African Americans. Christian Parenti wrote in an article,
"The
'New' Criminal Justice System: State Repression from 1968 to
2001," Monthly Review, July 2001:
During his presidency, Clinton
signed the 1994 Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act,
which offered up a cop's cornucopia of $30.2 billion in federal
cash from which we got Clinton's one hundred thousand new police
officers, scores of new prisons, and SWAT teams in even small
New England towns(In 1996) Clinton gave us the Anti-Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act, which massively expanded the
use of the death penalty and eviscerated federal habeas corpus
The sad election year of 1996 also delivered the ideologically
named "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act," which eliminated the undocumented person's right to
due process and helped bring Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) funding up to four billion annually. These were the Clinton
administration's demolition devices, strategically placed to
take out what little remained for prisoners in the Bill of Rights.
These acts contributed to the
continuing rapid expansion of the prison system, to the disproportionate
incarceration of African Americans, and to their disenfranchisement
as convicted felons. Whites make up over three-fourths of the
violators of drug laws, but the criminal justice system has,
for the past three decades, under both Republican and Democratic
administrations, imprisoned millions of African Americans. Moreover,
those prisoners have increasingly been subjected to the same
kinds of torture that took place at Abu Ghraib, sometimes even
by the very same guards! Neither Al Gore nor the 100 white Senators-Republicans
as well as Democrats-who themselves supported this repressive
racist legislation, were going to put their signature on the
appeal of black Representatives. The Democrats were spineless
because they were as guilty as the Republicans.
The U.S./Saudi
Connection.
This cozy relationship is much
bigger than the family and business ties between the Bushes and
the Bin Ladens that Michael Moore describes. Before the end of
World War II, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and
the U.S. establishment as a whole decided that U.S. control of
Saudi oil and U.S. protection of the Saudi royal family would
be the essential linchpin of U.S. global hegemony in the post-war
world (Michael Klare, "The
Geopolitics of War," The Nation, 10/18/01 ).
This strategic alliance did not begin with Vice President Cheney's
secretive 2001 energy commission. It has been the unwavering
policy of every Democratic and Republican President for sixty
years. That helps to explain why the entire U.S. Government,
including both houses of Congress, both political parties, and
the corporate media signed on to Bush's plan for invading and
occupying Iraq. Now that the policy has become a disaster, politicians
and the media are quick to proclaim that they were misled by
Bush's lies, but they knew the truth from the beginning.
The Bush/Bin
Laden Terrorist Alliance.
Like the U.S./Saudi alliance,
the alliance between the U.S. and the international terrorist
brigades now dubbed Al Qaeda has also been more than the corrupt
money grab by Bush and his oil business cronies, as described
in Fahrenheit 9/11. It too has been a bi-partisan strategy
of the U.S. ruling class. It was begun by Democratic President
Jimmy Carter in 1979 as a way to draw the Soviet Union into a
quagmire in Afghanistan. The CIA and its Pakistani counterpart
trained tens of thousands of Islamic terrorists to invade and
overthrow the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan. Even before
that, the U.S., under both Republican and Democratic Administrations
during the 1970s, had undertaken the same strategy in Southern
Africa. The U.S., together with its ally the apartheid government
of South Africa, organized, trained, armed, and financed terrorist
groups in Angola (UNITA) and Mozambique (RENAMO) to attack civilian
populations and undermine unfriendly governments. And, during
the 1980s, the U.S. did the same thing in Central America with
the Nicaraguan Contras. In Central America and in Afghanistan,
the U.S. partly financed these terrorist operations with profits
from drug cartels run by the CIA's terrorist proxy forces. (Mahmood
Mamdani, "Good
Muslim, Bad Muslim: An African Perspective.") . Thus,
it was not only Bush and his cronies but the entire U.S. establishment
that created terrorist proxies as instruments of U.S. foreign
policy during the past three decades. John Kerry knows all this
quite well. He was on a Senate committee during the 1980s that
investigated it.
Between
the Bushes: CLinton's Iraq policies.
It is also a fact that Bill
Clinton's policies toward Iraq, which Fahrenheit 9/11
never discusses, were as murderous as those of George W. Bush.
The Clinton Administration enforced the UN sanctions for eight
years, which prevented Iraq from repairing its infrastructure
that was destroyed by the US during the first Iraq war (1990-1991).
Unable to repair its electrical power and water purification
system, unable to import medicines and hospital supplies, Iraq
became a death zone for its civilian population, especially its
children and the elderly. UN studies found that approximately
5000 children were dying every month throughout the 1990s as
a result of these sanctions. By the end of the decade, an estimated
1.2 million Iraqis died as a consequence of the U.S./British
enforced sanctions. When Clinton's secretary of state Madeline
Albright was asked on television whether this was too high a
price for Iraqi civilians to pay for the U.S. opposition to the
regime of Saddam Hussein, Albright replied that the price was
not too high. A Pentagon study early in the 1990s projected mass
civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of the sanctions, so these
genocidal results were foreseen and deliberate. Denying Iraqi
civilians access to clean water was a form of biological and
chemical warfare, a weapon of mass destruction unleashed against
the Iraqi population under the imprimatur of the United Nations
and enforced by regular bombing raids carried out by U.S. and
British forces. Why didn't Michael Moore mention any of this
in Fahrenheit 9/11? It certainly might help to explain
why Iraqis did not welcome the U.S. as liberators, no matter
how much they despised Saddam Hussein's regime. But it would
also lead the audience to recognize that both Republicans and
Democrats have pursued obscenely immoral policies toward Iraq.
An imperialist
war, not just Bush's war.
If Democrats signed on to the
war not because they were spineless or misinformed, and if the
war was fought in the collective interests of the entire U.S.
establishment, not just the private interests of the Bush family
and their friends, then what was really behind the U.S. invasion
and occupation of Iraq?
Addressing this question could
obviously require a very lengthy essay, but we will try to summarize
the central points. Numerous well informed critics of the war
have written many excellent articles and books on this subject
during the past year and one half. (We suggest Behind the
Invasion of Iraq, by the Research Unit on Political Economy,
from Mumbai, India, published by Monthly
Review Press, contents.html as one of the best analyses of
this subject.) Distilling what they have said, we come to the
following analysis.
First, we define imperialist
wars as wars undertaken as part of the profit driven struggle
by capitalist ruling classes for control of raw materials, cheap
labor, and markets. The U.S. seeks to consolidate its hold
on the Middle East because that region is strategically the most
important of all in U.S. efforts to maintain world domination
in a period of global economic crisis and capitalist rivalry.
The Middle East contains two-thirds of all known petroleum supplies.
Oil is the lifeblood of all capitalist economies and is crucial
for the exercise of military power. Not only is the U.S. importing
an increasing percentage of its oil (currently about 55%). More
importantly, the economies of the European Union and Asia are
increasingly dependent on oil imports from the Middle East. U.S.
control over Middle East oil provides crucial leverage and influence
over its capitalist competitors such as Germany, France, China,
and Japan, who have very limited domestic supplies of oil and
must import oil from the Middle East.
During the past three decades,
the U.S. has declined economically relative to its major capitalist
competitors. With the return of capitalism to Russia and China,
there are more competitors, and there is no communist enemy against
whom all major capitalist countries can unite. Thus, a declining
U.S. imperialism faces increasing competition from its imperialist
rivals. Most of the rest of the world more or less sees current
global conflicts in this way, and thus they view the U.S. attempt
to seize Iraq as an aggressive attempt by the U.S. to solve its
worsening economic problems through military aggression. The
U.S. attempt to prevent its competitors from gaining a foothold
in the Iraqi oil business was clearly not in the interests of
French, German, Russian, Chinese, or Japanese imperialists, which
explains why the U.S. could not get those governments to sign
on to the U.S. seizure of Iraq, no matter how much bribery and
intimidation the U.S. tried to apply.
Imperialist rivalry was at
the root of the two world wars of the 20th century, and it could
lead to a third world war, especially if the already shaky global
capitalist economy experiences a severe crisis like the Great
Depression of the 1930s. Thus, the U.S. invasion and occupation
of Iraq is an imperialist war. That is something much bigger
than the corrupt war profiteering of Halliburton or the sleazy
relationships between Saudi capitalists and the Bush family.
It is much bigger than the ideological fantasies of the clique
of neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration. Michael Moore
has revealed a limited aspect of a much larger problem. The Bush
clique exemplifies the true character of capitalist imperialism
in this period, but the problem is the system as a whole, not
just a few arrogant corrupt liars.
Israel:
Unmentioned in Fahrenheit 9/11.
Michael Moore has spoken out
against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and dedicated
his most recent book to Rachel Corrie, the young American woman
who was crushed to death last year by an Israeli (Caterpillar)
bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the destruction of Palestinian
homes and olive orchards. A film on U.S. policy in the Middle
East, the war on terror, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq
cannot give its audience an understanding of what is going on
in the world without discussing the U.S./Israeli alliance.
Since the 1960s Israel has
played a strategic role in helping the U.S. dominate the Middle
East and protect the undemocratic Arab regimes in Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries. The U.S. provides Israel
with billions of dollars of assistance annually and defends Israel
against all criticisms and threats. Israel has a massive arsenal
of weapons of mass destruction, including several hundred nuclear
weapons. Israel occupies the territory of neighboring countries
in defiance of numerous United Nations resolutions. Israel is
currently working extensively in Iraq with the Kurdish minority
in the northern part of the country. Much Arab anger at the U.S.
is a result of U.S. policy toward Israel. The U.S., in its brutal
occupation of Iraq, has in many ways emulated Israeli tactics
toward Palestinians. Israeli and U.S. terror against Palestinians
and Iraqis meets with resistance and terror from occupied Palestinians
and Iraqis.
Both Bush and Kerry and the
rest of the leadership of both parties support the cruelest Israeli
policies against the Palestinians, including Israel's current
efforts to build an apartheid style wall to imprison millions
of Palestinians within shrinking impoverished ghettos. Michael
Moore may have felt that the inclusion of any criticism of U.S.
policy toward Israel would have been a kiss of death for Fahrenheit
9/11 and his efforts to defeat George W. Bush. However, the
exclusion of this subject helps sustain the broader injustice
of U.S. policies throughout the Middle East and paves the way
for a Kerry Administration to continue the policies of all U.S.
Administrations toward Israel.
Now that we have laid out these
criticisms of Fahrenheit 9/11, the reader may object that
a two hour documentary could not possibly have educated its audience
on all of the issues we have raised in this review. That is a
fair comment. But Michael Moore could have made a much better
attempt to expose the role of both Republicans and Democrats
in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. It does a disservice
to the anti-war movement in the U.S. and around the world to
misdirect our anger away from the system as a whole onto a single
ruling class family or one political faction of the ruling class.
It particularly does a disservice to the tens of millions of
oppressed people around the world who will continue to be assaulted
by U.S. imperialism under a Democratic Kerry Administration.
It encourages us to devote too much energy to getting out the
vote on one day, instead of building a mass movement that fights
every day against the system of imperialism.
Finally, it could be objected
that, if Michael Moore had made the documentary film we wanted,
it would not be showing in movie houses all over the United States.
We readily agree. And that tells us a lot about the way the ruling
class limits the range of acceptable political criticism in the
U.S. and funnels protest into the capitalist controlled Republican
and Democratic Parties.
Steven Rosenthal is a professor of Sociology at Hampton
University and lives in Norfolk, VA. He can be reached at: steve-rosenthal@cox.net.
Junaid Ahmad is a member of the Progressive Muslims
Network and works with the Center for Progressive Islam. He can
be reached at: Junaid.ahmad@cox.net.
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