Micheal Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary everyone should see. Pundits on the far right and in the corporate media who insist this film is 'liberal propaganda' are absolutely correct; if propaganda is the connective tissue which makes relevant facts accessible to the average person, then yes, this is certainly propaganda. That it stands alone as possibly the sole example of progressive commentary which has reached a mass audience lately is not only a testament to Moore’s genius, it is also a symptom the parched ideological landscape to be found in 21st century American media. Disney, who had originally been contracted to distribute it, declined upon learning of the films’ content. Of course the capitalists don’t like it; not only does it expose several unsavory examples of conflict of interest at the highest levels of the current administration, it is executed in the peculiarly effective manner Moore perfected in his previous films, Roger And Me and Bowling For Columbine.

The material mined by Mr. Moore will not be news to many in progressive circles. The facts that are building blocks for this work have been available for quite some time, but the intrinsic value of the film is Moore’s uncanny ability to link pieces of seemingly disparate snippets to present the average person (typically too pressed for time to digest the implications of sound-bytes) with the truth. As he assembles the newsworthy pieces of this puzzle the scenes that emerge are a damning condemnation of George W. Bush and his cronies.

I found Fahrenheit 9/11 to be an emotional roller-coaster ride. There is the black humor of Moore’s use of old Dragnet footage in reference to the Bin Laden family being flown out of the country shortly after 9/11, approved and effected by senior members of the administration, when every other flight was grounded. There is rage at the knowledge that our tax dollars are paying for the killing of Iraqi civilians, of which there are several disturbing scenes. There is the surrealism of an American soldier idly comparing the killing with his video games. In an especially wrenching scene, Donald Rumsfeld is shown discussing the 'incredibly humane care' exhibited by the military in its choice of targets, while interspersed scenes show people being cut down by machine gun fire and wounded Iraqi children screaming.

There are two important women in this film; an unnamed Iraqi woman who is insane with grief at the loss of her children, house, and village; and Lila Lipscomb, whose son, an American soldier, was killed in Iraq. These two women, from different cultures, wailing at the horror of war, serve to humanize the statistics so blithely reported in the corporate media; the US casualties are people’s sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers; the dead Iraqi children piled in donkey carts are what the Pentagon calls 'collateral damage,' and every one of them has grieving family.

Fahrenheit 9/11 also comes very close to identifying the real cause of the economic woes which feed the war-machine with a steady supply of new recruits, yet, sadly, stops just short of identifying capitalism and capitalist excess. The film is clearly a vehicle to unseat Bush and company in November, and barring a second coup by the radical right, it should succeed.



--Pamela Oswald can be reached at



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