levertovfan | (no subject)

I just got back from seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. Here’s my take on it. If you haven’t seen the movie and intend to, I’d suggest you ignore this and see it for yourself.

As someone who agrees with all of the points it has to make, I have to say that I really disliked it. It’s got a light touch. It’s got humor and poignant moments and some footage that the American public should see. But it’s also very superficial. It slurs its points together. It chooses anecdotes over the solid evidence that is there in scads. It doesn’t inquire into deeper root causes. If I were a Republican who saw it, even the sort of person who dislikes seeing our politicians disrespected, I would have doubted the legitimacy of the information in the film, and it probably would have made me dislike liberals (rather than, say, respect them for their idealism, but agree to disagree).

The effective points it has to make are
1) The Bush family and friends has connections with the Bin Lauden family and more generally with the Saudi Regime. Both the Saudis and the Bushs have a lot invested in the military-industrial complex and stand to profit from war.
2) W. is not so bright.
3) Rumsfeld and Chaney and the entire Bush administration are using the terror threat to scare the American public into giving up their civil liberties.
4) The military draws soldiers from the poor and lower classes. When politicians send the military into Iraq and Afganistan, they aren’t sending their children or putting their interests on the line.
5) The Bush Administration protects the interests of the rich while trampling on the needs of the American people, in particular the poor.

Now all of these points are fine and good, but they desperately need wider substantive content and context and more factual support. The film does not delve into the way the party system works in America, the history of US involvement in the middle east, the structure of Saudi society, etc, except by implication. It needs to connect more of the dots—a lot of those dots are connected by things that happened in the 1970s and 80s.

Although the film mostly supports and approves of the troops, at one point it interviews troops who listened to a heavy metal song with the words “Burn, motherfucker, burn” as they opened fire on Iraqi civilians, and goes on to a montage of the damage American troops did. If it had provided some sort of commentary about what paltry training new recruits receive, or more of an idea of how America gets its intelligence on what Iraqis to target, or information about the lack of translators, at least it would have been internally consistent. Instead, that segment just stands alone and makes the film look like it doesn’t support the troops.

Like “Bowling for Columbine”, it’s uneven. The film overplays up some of its weaker narrative points and downplays some of its better points: the dignified-looking officer who says that he doesn’t want to go back to Iraq and be a poor person killing other poor people is downplayed; a story about a woman who an airline safety officer made drink her own breast milk is overplayed. It presents some silly stories about how local police forces have misused the patriot act when there are a lot of better stories about the real abuses it has created.

In general, I’d say “Fahrenheit 9/11” misses a lot of excellent targets. The “War on Terror” is supposed to make the world safe for democracy and freedom. Instead it’s making the world more dangerous for Americans and for the world. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” presupposes America is the right country to instill democracy in Iraq, but America’s track record on instilling democracy ain’t great. The Bush administration has carried out many more betrayals of veterans than the ones Moore briefly lists. etc.