Burnt Orange Report

Why I Hated Farenheit 9/11

By Andrew Dobbs

So yeah, I really disliked Michael Moore's new movie Farenheit 9/11. I know that in the world of liberal blogging that is akin to saying that you have sex with animals or burn down synagogues or something but its the truth- I think that it was contradictory, demagogic, disrespectful to American soldiers, slanderous and annoying.

To begin, let me note that I am most likely the most conservative author on this blog. That is not to say I'm a conservative- I like to joke that I'm a liberal trapped in a conservative's body. I have a conservative temperament and outlook but I come to liberal conclusions. Perhaps it is just a case of proving FDR's adage that a liberal is nothing more than a far-sighted conservative, but I know that the far left really pisses me off and Michael Moore is among my top sources of annoyance.

The movie is really quite disingenuous to begin with. When it gets to talking about the War in Iraq it begins with scenes of idyllic, happy, peaceful Iraq. It shows children playing and laughing, old women shopping and smiling, a restaurant full of cheery people, families all peaceful and wonderful. It then cuts to the bombing, suggesting that it was the US that ruined their lives. This is dishonest to the point of apologetics for Saddam's regime. While its true that children may have been running around happily, what about the thousands that starved while Saddam stole aid money to build palaces? While it might be accurate that old women shopped peacefully, where is the condemnation of the man who stole their sons and daughters in the middle of the night to torture and kill them? While people might have had the opportunity to sit down for a meal at a restaurant, where are the images of Kurds, Shi'ites and others who were brutally gassed by the monster who ruled their country? To suggest that Iraq was a nice place to live before we came there and we ruined it is bullshit and is disgusting.

Furthermore, after the bombings begin he shows families whose homes were destroyed- including one woman who wishes for terrorism to occur against the US. He shows her in a sympathetic light, never contradicting or addressing this. He cuts it into a scene where she is made to look like someone the audience is supposed to sympathize for and then she spews forth anti-American garbage. He also shows soldiers arresting a young man as his family cries for him and makes the soldiers look like bad guys while the young man is portrayed as "just a college student." For all we know this guy could be a terrorist but Moore never makes it clear, suggesting that our soldiers are to be blamed for doing their jobs.

He also, in his unique way, makes soldiers look like heartless fools. He shows the bodies of dead Iraqis and then shows grinning soldiers. He shows devastation and then shows soldiers who listen to heavy metal and portrays them as hicks and murderers. He never explicitly says anything about them but his editing and visual montage suggests that they are bad for being over there. He then shows Marine recruiters in a negative light, implicitly criticizing them for looking for recruits in the poorer parts of town. He makes them look like fools who are taking advantage of young people. Moore's disdain for servicemen and women is shocking.

And then he does a complete 180. After an hour of showing Iraqis as innocent victims (and many are) and soldiers as uncultured killers he talks about how sad it is that they have to be over there and shows injured soldiers and most dramatically the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. The contradiction is glaring to anyone who sees the movie with anything other than frothing-at-the-mouth partisanship. To cut a whole half hour of the movie making soldiers looking like dolts and then turn around and cast them as heroes is sloppy filmmaking and the fact that this won the Palme d'Or really just proves that the French are more interested in hating Americans than they are in promoting anything useful.

The other part of the movie deals with Bush's ties to the Saudis, the bin Ladens, the Taliban and others. The implicit (and often explicit) suggestion is that Bush was glad that 9/11 happened, that he consciously let it happen and perhaps even had some inkling of when it was coming. It shows the 7 minutes between when Bush was told of the attacks and when he left the classroom he was in- something Moore suggests was sinister in nature- and he says "I wonder what he was thinking? Maybe- I've been hanging with the wrong crowd." Essentially, he says that Bush was affiliated with the conspirators of 9/11. This is slander at its worst. I hate George Bush, but I do not believe that he wanted 9/11 to happen, that he knew it would happen the way that it did or that he was glad that it happened. This is worse than when GOPers suggested that Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster. Where is the left's outrage at Moore's viciousness? Yes, Bush had some pretty vague ties to bin Laden's dad in the 1970s- Salem bin Laden had James R. Bath invest his money in Texas, Bath- being in the oil business like Bush- came to know Bush and put some money into Bush's doomed oil exploration business. To try and draw a line- either explicitly or implicitly- from this to 9/11 is idiotic and despicable.

Finally, he also is terribly inaccurate. When he is decrying the USA PATRIOT Act- something that is probably justified, though it is not nearly as bad as most of the left says it is- he cites two cases of post-Patriot Act overstepping by the authorities. The first is the case of an undercover Fresno (CA) police officer infiltrating a local peace group and the second is the case of a man whose friends called the FBI after he suggested that Bush was as bad as bin Laden (a disgusting bit of slander that Moore lets go unchallenged). The problem with this is that neither of these two cases have anything to do with the Patriot Act. Long before the Act police officers could infiltrate whatever groups they wanted to, provided they didn't violate anyone's constitutional rights, and long before that people could rat their friends out the the FBI and the FBI could question those friends. He suggests that these are the result of the Patriot Act, but in fact they have absolutely nothing to do with the law, a case of either willful dishonesty or of lazy filmmaking on Moore's part.

This all adds up to one thing- demagoguery. Moore is no better, and in fact may be worse, than Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage or Sean Hannity. He makes very tenuous connections, outrageous statements and unbridled ideology to slander his political opponents and to appeal to the worst instincts in his base of support. He may be worse because he essentially indicts Bush in the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. I hated this movie and I promise to never pay to see another Michael Moore movie ever again.

I'm surprised the Republians haven't raised a much bigger stink about this. All they'd have to do is talk about how he portrays Baathist Iraq as a happy place and then suggests that we are worse than Saddam, or the portrayal of our soldiers, or the implication that Bush let 9/11 happen, or the fact that towards the end of the movie he lets a woman calls Bush "the real terrorist" and suggests that he is worse than bin Laden and the claim goes unchallenged, or the factual inaccuracies. Any one of these would make Moore and all of his left-wing standard-bearers look ridiculous, which frankly they already do.

This movie angered me and the response to it is even more enervating and I think that it is important that my opinion be put on the record as well. So here it is- right in the middle of liberal land. I hate Farenheit 9/11 and I think that it is shameful that we would embrace such a piece of despicable garbage.