xtcian

Iraqmaninoff

6/28/04

One of the commenters asked why there was no discussion of "Fahrenheit 9/11" on the blog, which I just saw this evening. I feel like the Web is so chock of armchair leftist pundits dying to register their intensely-held feelings on their weblogs for their small, disturbed following, so me discussing the film is a bit of a cliché before I even start.

All I can say is that the movie made me unbelievably sad. It's a pretty joyless affair, and it makes the current polls – showing Kerry and Bush in a tie – seem incomprehensible. After watching this film, you wonder how a country as enlightened as America fell for something so cruel and cynical, and how this administration is still in the running.

Michael Moore tends to pick easy targets, is endlessly manipulative with his edits and background music, and occasionally blurs a fact or two en route to his bigger point. That drives some people bonkers, but for me, I'm just glad he exists. I don't mind that he's a clown, because he's our clown. Critics say that us liberals should be held to a higher standard, fight calumny with nobility, but that hasn't worked so far. Rush Limbaugh sways millions of Americans by being a fat populist playing loose with the truth, so why can't Moore get a pass when doing the same?

It all raised a bigger question for me. The movie assumes that the Bushes, Cheneys, Saudis and everyone with $$$ all colluded to bring Iraq to its knees. The question is whether or not that should be a "conspiracy," when really, the entire debacle looks like a few powerful people utterly blinded by their own nepotism. Seriously, these are a bunch of morally repugnant oil guys who have terrible friends: each other.

I'm not convinced this war was fought over oil, but it doesn't matter one way or the other. I'm much more fascinated in how disastrously incompetent these folks are at controlling the world. Seriously, if they had their act together, there would be no Michael Moores making films. Bush would be ahead by 25 points in the polls, and Iraq would already have the Playboy Spice Channel.

No, the great thing about these bastards is their unique mix of hubris and ignorance. The gamble they took on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" was right up there with the Battle of the Spanish Armada, Napoleon (and Hitler's) decision to invade Russia in late autumn, and New Coke. I'm sure they thought "well, he has to have at least ONE canister of mustard gas in there," and even that would have been enough to convince ill-informed Americans that the war would be justified.

I wonder when it dawned on them that they would never find anything. Was it a slow revelation or a bolt-upright-in-bed epiphany?

The fact that "F9/11" was made, that Kerry is running with Bush neck-and-neck, that Iraq is a disaster area... I dunno, if I'm going to have a conspiracy, I want the perpetrators to be slick, secret, all-knowing and full of charisma, not these numbskulls.