Distressing: leftists will justify the half-truths in Fahrenheit 9/11 because it's fighting propaganda with propaganda. More distressing: the full-truths that will be lost in the barrage of accusations: the lone Oregonian defending over a hundred miles of Pacific coast, thanks to budget cuts; the craven senators who refused to sign an objection to the Florida election debacle; the idiots who call the FBI when someone questions Bush's policies while working out at a gym; the TSA regulations that let you carry four books of matches (but not five!) and two lighters on a plane, Mr. Shoe Bomber notwithstanding.
You've probably read Christopher Hitchens's review by now; he's right, somewhat. The film is scurrilous agitprop, chock-full of innuendo and insinuation, devoid of substantive argument. It's easily dismissed as propaganda, and lazy propaganda at that--its target is so big, so plodding, so take-downable. But the film works when it lets normal people speak--when Jarheads talk about which songs pump them up for war, when parents talk about their children lost in combat, when recruiters note that Shaggy is a "former Marine" (a phrase no real Marine would say, as my retired Marine boss once informed me, in no uncertain terms. Semper Fi!).
And then there's that one damning scene.
...the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup..
If Moore were a truly risk-taking director, he would have run the tape in real time, letting the viewer truly understand the length of it, the discomfort. Seven minutes is a long time.
"Stunned and useless for seven whole minutes." This, the man who carries the nuclear football, who is told "America is under attack." Seven precious minutes. Moore uses it as an excuse to peer into his mind--is he thinking about his Saudi friends? that he's been royally screwed?--but the obvious point is not made. Forget conspiracies, forget hotheadedness; it's much simpler. George W. Bush is incompetent, unfit to govern in a moment of crisis. And his staff knows this. You get the sense from the scene that the situation is being handled, but elsewhere, and by those really in charge. No, Bush should not have rattled off "Bring it on," or leapt into a tank, but for God's sake, he should have done something, anything, not just sit there with the camera rolling, fiddling with a children's book, staring dumbly into space.
4 comments:
Well put.
I, unlike the rest of my family and friends, didn't like the film. Unfortunately, I thought it was OK--at best, but I viewed it as a short-circuited compilation of many of the arguments made against the Bush administration.
Your way is much better and I'm going to steal it.
Good day.
George W. Bush is incompetent, unfit to govern in a moment of crisis. And his staff knows this. You get the sense from the scene that the situation is being handled, but elsewhere, and by those really in charge. No, Bush should not have rattled off "Bring it on," or leapt into a tank, but for God's sake, he should have done something, anything, not just sit there with the camera rolling, fiddling with a children's book, staring dumbly into space.
What? What, pray tell, should he have done? I stopped where I was for seven minutes when I heard what happened. Why? Because I was incredulous. That in itself does not make me incompetent. In a situation like that, either the established security system is going to work or it isn't. It obviously didn't. How does that make him unfit to govern?
What would you say about a general who was told, "We are under attack!", but merely sat there for seven minutes, saying and doing nothing? Not even a question of "where?" or "by whom?" or "what are we doing in response?"
Sit out seven uncomfortable minutes in total silence to get the full effect.
I remember the moment I first saw the planes hit. I was stunned; we were all stunned. Our incredulous inaction only showed the same thing--we, too, were unfit to be in that position. Which is fine. We weren't.
We were incredulous because we had no special training or advance warning to deal with such a situation, or even the slightest clue that an attack of that nature could happen. George W. Bush did, as Richard Clarke clearly showed (and even Condoleezza Rice had to admit). We were also inactive because there was nothing we could do about it, really. The Commander-in-Chief, the one (as I pointed out) who alone can authorize nuclear retaliation, and hundreds of other emergency reactive measures, sat there, and not just sat there, but sat there looking confused, stupefied, lost, out-of-it. And his aides let him continue to sit there--without such blank looks of chagrin, I might add--for seven whole minutes because to them, he really didn't matter. And this is why I call him unfit to govern: he is, to the machinery of his administration, irrelevant.
I am merely skeptical of the argument that George Bush is unfit to govern because he sat for seven minutes. What was he thinking? Neither you nor anyone else has any clue (it's the problem of other minds, you know). Frankly, I WOULDN'T claim that a general who sat for seven minutes is unfit to lead. Why? Because "fitness" (an incredibly vague concept) doesn't seem to be merely determined by the quickness of response, but the quality of the response. I am currently starting a small business and quickly (hah!) learning that the fastest decisions aren't necessarily the best or wisest. I relish every seven minutes (and yes, I do know how long that is) that I have to make crucial decisions because I know my success depends upon what I choose. Why can't the same sort of healthy caution be allowed to a President? If he had exercised nuclear retaliation he surely would have been charged with being a hasty and impulsive decision maker. It seems he's in a lose-lose.
As for the "memo," it didn't mention Al Quaeda using planes as bombs. Hijackings are nothing new--using planes as weapons is. The 9/11 report charges the government with a lack of imagination--clearly that's correct. However, I doubt that George Bush (or anyone else in the government) was any less stunned on 9/11.
Also (as an alternative interpretation of his silence--another argument from silence!) it might be the case that he understands that when events like that happen, either the infrastructure responds or it doesn't. It didn't--you've suggested nuclear retaliation, but that decision CAN'T be made in that 7 minutes (or even that day, presumably, because we didn't know for sure yet WHAT had happened). So the question I asked of you still seems to apply: what SHOULD he have done?
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