Fahrenheit 9/11 - The Tom View

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. It was pretty much as we had anticipated, no big surprises. I don't think it was as good as Bowling For Columbine and occasionally covered some of the same ground.

Like Bowling For Columbine it highlighted the culture of fear in America, something that has become more and more prevalent in Britain. Just like America we're being told practically daily that a 'terror attack' is on the way. Moore's film indicates that Americans were kept in constant fear in order that they blithely go along with any Bush led invasion plan. Fear is a big money maker and Fahrenheit 9/11 shows this, just as its Oscar winning predecessor did.

It raised some excellent points though and highlighted some very worrying things. It perhaps focused too much on making Bush look like a buffoon, not that difficult. It also sometimes seemed cartoonish and slightly flippant.

Good political satire like Hicks and Stanhope points out bullshit, explains why it is bullshit and does it in a funny way. Moore does this when he's attempting satire, though sometimes I felt that it wasn't hitting hard enough. However the movie does have some genuinely sad, affecting moments that drill the message home without ever resorting to the heavy handed tactics elsewhere in the picture. I'm thinking mainly of Lila Lipscomb, who lost a son in Iraq. Mrs. Lipscomb was exactly the type of 'patriot' that Bush is targeting. A woman who puts the stars and stripes out every day, who thought that all anti-war protesters were an affront to her family and their militaristic tradition. However since her son's death, she still puts the flag out, but knows that you can be a patriot and be against war. The scene where she goes to look at the White House, feeling that values she once held dear have been crushed, is particularly moving. There also comes a horrible moment when she's heckled by a passer-by for questioning the Government over the death of her son.

It was interesting to note the dichotomy between the pre 9/11 Bush and the Gung-Ho War President of its aftermath. Before the attack Bush seemed like a college student slacking off, spending more time in the sun than in class, forgetting what it was he had actually chosen to study. That doesn't seem familiar to the stern faced 'us or them' Bush we've come to know today.

Only recently it was announced that the 900th US soldier had been killed since the war began. What the film highlighted was the utter pointlessness of the war in Iraq and that soldiers who headed over there thinking they were doing something for a good and just cause were beginning to wonder why they were there at all. The thought that one man and his cronies cost thousands of people their lives, just to line their pockets or let them feel that they're at all worth a fuck is stomach churning.

As Doug Stanhope put it "GWB milked the raw cow-tit of 9/11 to legitimize himself as a leader."

At one point a simpering Bush has another half hearted attempt at convincing people that Saddam is a danger, citing the alleged assassination attempt on Bush Snr "He tried to kill my Dad."

Here's Bill Hicks "I knew Clinton was one of the boys when he bombed Iraq, killing six innocent people, in retaliation for the failed assassination attempt of George Bush. You know what should have happened? We should have assassinated Bush and said "that's how you do it towelheads, don't fuck with us". And then.............there would have been no loss of innocent life..."

It's not the best documentary ever made, it's not even the best documentary this year, (see Capturing the Friedmans for that title) but the subject matter affects a giant part of the planet, and that's why it resonates so.

One of the things we see is the peculiar trait of Americans, in that if you're against an American led war, then you're against America. Just like the Independent Thought Alarm that Miss Hoover keeps under her desk in The Simpsons. What Fahrenheit 9/11 shows is a number of people changing their minds on this score, though most have been directly affected by the lunacy of Bush and his pals.

Generally most people believe you don't go to war without good reason. The Second World War is still foremost in people's minds and the simplified basis of that conflict - good versus evil, remains most folk's criteria for any war. But this isn't a war to stop an evil empire hell bent on mass exterminations, forced labour and world domination. Iraq never were and never would have been a threat to America or Great Britain. Stanhope again - "Anybody too scared to start their car this morning in case Iraq might have been around?"

What Jo and I came away from the film discussing was why incompetence, gung-ho machismo and war mongering seems to be largely ignored. It's less than a week since The Butler Report indicated that Britain went to war on flimsy, at best, intelligence, and it's practically off the newspages already. Only that self serving hypocritical, reptilian cretin Michael Howard is still banging on about it. While I'm at it, Blair gets off lightly in Fahrenheit 9/11 because the documentary was made for an American audience. However even if the only thing Blair's involvement has done is to provide a handful of people a reason to vote for that odious man Howard, then he should resign right now.

At least America can vote for John Kerry, what's our alternative to Blair? Howard? Charles Kennedy? We can only hope for change from within the Labour Party and since Blair seems to dodge the bullet time and time again that'll be a long time coming.

I'd love some of our guys to have a proper go at Blair and his lot for their involvement in all this. Armando Ianucci's been away for too long. Mark Thomas? Of course I'm really wishing that Britain's finest satirist would get back in the saddle. Chris Morris is certainly no fan of Moore or Mark Thomas and knows how to employ subtlety to induce the reactions he needs as opposed to Moore's sledgehammer tactics.

Whatever you may think of him though, we need guys like Moore shouting about this kind of thing. I'm not saying he's 100% on the money, people with an agenda generally aren't, but if the lies and deceit from the people up on high that he shows in Fahrenheit 9/11 are even half of what he claims they are, then we all should be shouting about it.

The saying that Bush verbally gropes his way through at the end of the film should read. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."