Christopher Hitchens apparently ran out of booze and got mad, launching a vicious 4298 word attack on Michael Moore, and his new flick Fahrenheit 9/11 – and a defence of the Iraq war. Hitchens believes that, if not for the good ol’ USA, Hussein would have systematically massacred every Iraqi, even to the last child. Hitchens’s world – and the neocons’ – is one where the entire non-democratic world is populated by hideous, unstoppable totalitarians, endlessly evil, endlessly resourceful. The powerless masses of these nations being unable to stop them, only Uncle Sam can. The world is more complex in the average comic book. Stare very closely into Hitchens’s eyes and you’ll see a tiny American flag blowing in the vapors of his mind – perhaps that’s also what he sees.
Hitchens accuses Moore of making an anti-war propaganda flick, not an “even-handed” one. What a shock! That was Moore’s purpose from the start, and it’s a valid one. As Roger Ebert pointed out recently:
“Most documentaries, especially the best ones, have an opinion and argue for it. Even those that pretend to be objective reflect the filmmaker’s point of view. Moviegoers should observe the bias, take it into account and decide if the film supports it or not.”
With that in mind, here’s Hitchens:
“At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective.”
Translation: At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to agree with Christopher Hitchens. Why should Moore make an effort to take the War Party’s side? He thinks it’s disastrously wrong, and he’s not trying to report on history, he’s making a documentary. Hitchens has some advice for the flick’s potential audience:
“By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point.”
I shall fact check the dreary ol “Hitch” rant. Hitchens criticizes Moore for pointing out that Bush spent a good deal of his time until 9/11 on vacation, and asks “Isn’t he [Bush] supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?”
No, he isn’t. He’s a nincompoop, and this website has already gone into laborious detail about who the war planners are.
Hitchens may also be misrepresenting what may be an equivocal moment captured on video, of Bush just after he’s learned of the second plane crashing into the WTC. Hitchens writes:
“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.” That’s not what Ebert thought. He wrote:
“The look on his face as he reads the book, knowing what he knows, is disquieting.”
Hitchens then places himself alongside the liars who claim that Franklin Roosevelt had nothing to do with the Pearl Harbour attack. For those who have read the piece, the “scandalous recent book” Hitchens was referring to which makes the charge is Day of Deceit, by Robert Stinnett. Perhaps, if Hitchens had read the book, he
would come to the conclusion that Stinnett did, which is that FDR was justified in provoking the attack, because he had to stop Hitler from “taking over the world” – a feat some Americans believe enemies of the US always verge on accomplishing – because Hitler would never have attacked the US. The American people had to be “awakened” to the threat of an enemy whom would never attack them? At least Stinnett’s defence of FDR’s motives is logical, right?
Nevertheless, Stinnett proves conclusively that FDR provoked the attack, despite Stinnett’s failure on the issue of motivation. I do not believe that Bush arranged for the 9/11 attacks in a similar fashion, but he did use 9/11 as a pretext for the Iraq attack, as FDR used Pearl to attack Germany. And if Bush didn’t know in advance about the attacks, perhaps someone else did …
Hitchens goes on to unctuously justify the Iraq sanctions in the 1990s because Hussein, who was not being damaged in any case by the sanctions, was not complying with UN resolutions. Twentieth century “morality” rears its tiresome head again; murder the people because you don’t care for the dictator. Hitchens indignantly accuses Hussein of murdering Iraqi civilians and justifies such murders by the US, during the 2003 bombings, because they were, once again so tiresomely, ‘for a good cause’. Hitchens mentions that the only time Moore points out Hussein’s atrocities is when, during the 1980s “Washington preferred Hussein” to the Ayatollah. Let me translate: Washington sold Hussein weapons during a time of war IE. Contraband, and also, along with the British, got Saddam’s “WMD” program going – providing training and materials etc. All of these war crimes condensed into one sanitized word, preferred.
Hitchens accuses Moore of soft-pedaling the danger Hussein posed to the US, and his crimes, in the following ways:
– Hussein sheltered Abdul Rahman Yasin, a terrorist who
helped bomb the WTC in 1993.
– Hussein sheltered and assisted the families of Palestinian terrorists, including Abdul Abbas, who planned the Achille Lauro hijacking (which is what Hitchens’s “Leon Klinghoffer” reference means, and Abu Nidal.
– Hussein was trying to acquire North Korean nukes.
– Hussein tried to kill Bush, Sr.
– Hussein’s anti-aircraft fire targeted aircraft which patrolled the no-fly zones.
These allegations can be categorized thusly; 1. Lies, and 2. Irrelevancies.
As Jim Lobe pointed out:
“…the FBI and other intelligence agencies that investigated the 1993 bombing and the subsequent residence in Iraq of Abdul Rahman Yasin, a low-level suspect, found no evidence that Baghdad was actively protecting him or that he was linked to Iraqi intelligence in any way.”
One might expect foreign military aircraft to be fired upon, if only out of spite. One might expect the leader of a nation which launched a war on a bad guy to be targeted by the bad guy. Sheltering anti-Israeli terrorists is irrelevant, since those terrorists were not specifically targeting the US, although in the course of anti-Israeli terrorism they may have killed Americans like Klinghoffer. America can trace danger to itself from Palestinian attacks to it’s proximity to Israel’s “POV”. Distance from Israel, financially and otherwise, neutrality and free trade with all parties is the solution to such danger, not further attacks on Iraqi bystanders. If Hussein wanted nukes, how can he be blamed? The US had already supplied Israel, which can presumably do no wrong in Hitchens’s soused mind, with the weapons. Is Israel to be the only country in the region that can benefit from these dreadful things?
Hitchens writes a segment, lecturing Moore on filmmaking, which applies (hilariously) to Hitchens’s piece:
“… if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don’t even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft.” (Emphasis by Hitchens.)