JoseCuervo
New member
In the Merry old land of Oz, Dubya is losing support....
Whose lies hurt more?
July 29, 2004
MICHAEL Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which officially opens today in cinemas across the nation, is a polemic. It mercilessly reveals the inadequacy and, at times, immaturity of US President George W. Bush and, in doing so, turns the tables on the farce we often get when watching television news.
We got it last October when John and Janette Howard climbed up the steps of Air Force One instead of waiting at the bottom to welcome George and Laura Bush to Canberra. All four turned to wave under floodlights to a nonexistent crowd in the middle of the night to beguile Australian TV audiences next morning.
We got it when the terracotta pots and plants were stacked outside Parliament House so the cameras would not see Bush exposed to thousands of Australians protesting against his Iraq war down the slopes of Capitol Hill.
Remember how the Australian people were locked out, TV cameras banned and the elected representatives gagged while the non-elected Bush gave his speech in our House of Representatives instead of in the perfectly adequate Great Hall next door?
What about Bush's scrambled eulogy to Howard in Canberra in which he claimed that the term "man of steel" was the Texan equivalent of the Australian fair dinkum. Howard would have vetted the speech. He let the gaffe stand -- it made him feel so good. That helps answer Moore's question: "How is it that someone like John Howard could get in bed with George W. Bush?" Which begs the question: Has our Prime Minister seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and did he feel as good afterwards?
Moore a villain? How about Howard's 2004 justification of the Iraq imbroglio despite his 2003 statement that: "I couldn't justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime"?
Moore takes licence, but his film is no match for the most fallacious polemic of the past decade: the weapons of mass destruction lie used by Bush, Howard and Tony Blair to justify the invasion of Iraq and the consequent death toll of tens of thousands of men, women and children.
Bush's moment of truth came when he sat reading My Pet Goat
to schoolchildren while the twin towers burned. Where was the maturity, intelligence and action to be expected of the most powerful human being on the planet in such a moment of peril? What do his defenders make of the gormless failure of the Commander-in-Chief to take immediate command in the crisis?
The office of the president is held in great respect by Americans. Maybe Moore's film is doing so well in cinemas because he shows how the office, not Bush, has been betrayed. Bush has purloined the office for himself and his rich cronies while poor Americans are sidelined, sent to the Iraq frontline or, worst of all, brought home secretly in body bags.
"I really hope they don't re-elect that fool," US soldier Michael Pederson wrote to his mother before he was killed in Iraq. Pederson was talking about Bush.
Now that Moore has made a film aimed to help Pederson's wish come true, the critics are howling from every fence. The problem for Moore's critics is Bush, not Moore. The documentary is successful not because Moore nails the President but because the President nails himself. No Bush absurdities, no Moore Palme d'Or.
Moore's earlier film, Bowling for Columbine, had a signal scene in which a boss at the nearby Titan rocket factory cannot comprehend how the boys who shot their fellow pupils at Columbine High could plan such a violent act.
Fahrenheit 9/11 has a signal scene in which Bush regales wealthy Republican donors with a toast to "the haves and have-mores". This, in a nation with 30 million people too poor to access hospital care. It is an unforgettable scene where Bush exhibits his unfitness as president of a great nation, let alone as world leader.
One is left wondering how else the US might be. What if the President, instead of spending $60 billion extra per annum on armaments for Iraq, had set up a new Marshall Plan to feed, clothe and ensure schools for the world's 1 billion citizens living in abject poverty
