Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11

Selling of American Empire

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Hermann Goering

It was with disbelief and shock that people around the world saw footage of the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001 when the planes-turned-missiles slammed into the World Trade Center towers and damaged the Pentagon. The horrific terrorist attacks led to a mixture of political, social and economic reaction around the world. Hatred and anti-Islam sentiment increased, even though most of the Muslim communities around the world condemned this act.
There was no question that there was going to be some response from the United States. It was obvious that they wanted to take revenge. However, the fear was in what form this revenge would be and how it would be carried out as well as what the impact on ordinary Afghans would be, who have already suffered at the hands of the Taliban and outside forces for years. The events of 9/11 resulted in the US declaring a “war on terror” on September 17, 2002. In response to that Michael Moore, a controversial filmmaker, has made Fahrenheit 9/11, a kind of attack on Bush and his administration for their handling of both the "war on terrorism" and the war in Iraq.
Fahrenheit 9/11 starts with an investigation why George W. Bush won the presidency while it was apparent that it was Gore who should have won it. Michael Moore names the following key factors of Bush’s success: first of all, the man at Fox News, who proclaimed the winner that night, was Bush's first cousin, John Ellis; secondly, Bush’s brother is the governor Florida, the decisive state in the elections; thirdly, the chairman of his campaign is also the vote-count woman. Moreover, he had the support of his father’s friends on the Supreme Court.
On the day George W. Bush was inaugurated, tens of thousands of Americans poured into the streets of D.C. with the protest. For the next eight months, it didn't get any better for George W. Bush and he decided to go on vacation. According to The Washington Post, during the first eight months in office before September 11th, George W. Bush was on vacation 42 percent of the time.
Further Michael Moore moves to the events of September 11th, 2001, when nearly 3000 people, were killed in the largest foreign attack on American soil. The targets were the financial and military headquarters of the United States.
Michael Moore pays attention to President Bush’s reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center. When he was informed of the first plane’s impact, he decided to continue a Kindergarten class. That was a bizarre decision, but what followed was even stranger. When he was informed of the second impact, and he was told that the US was under attack, he continued to sit at the front of the Kindergarten class reading a book to the children. He showed no emotion, no surprise and no concern. He continued to sit there for at least another seven minutes. What Fahrenheit 9/11 failed to show was when, and under what circumstances he finally left.
There is yet another unanswered question: what was Bush thinking about as he was sitting in the classroom and reading with the children. Michael Moore makes his suppositions and suggests that Bush might be thinking about his old friends, the Saudis, which might be guilty of the terrorist attack.
Following the events of September 11, 2001, 26 members of terrorist Osama Bin Laden's family were allowed to leave the country. Moore looks at how and why Bush and his inner circle avoided pursuing the Saudi Arabian connection to 9/11, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and Saudi money had funded Al Qaeda. They were, however identified at the airport and allowed to leave the country when all the flights were canceled. Michael Moore proceeds his investigation with finding links between the Bush family and the Saudis which explain the reason of that situation. He finds the link between George W. Bush and James R. Bath, the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens. Bush and Bath had become good friends when they both served in the Texas Air National Guard. After they were discharged, Bath opened up his own aviation business after selling a plane to a man by the name of Salem bin Laden, heir to the second-largest fortune in Saudi Arabia. W. Bush at that time was just starting his career as a businessman. As he always tried to emulate his father, he decided to go into the oil business. He founded an oil company in west Texas, called Arbusto, which was very good at drilling dry holes that nothing came out of. But the question has always been: "Where did this money come from?" Although his dad was rich, he never sponsored him so much.
One person who did invest in him was James R. Bath. James Bath was hired by the bin Laden family to invest their money in businesses in Texas. And James Bath himself, in turn, invested in George W.
As Michael Moore asserts, there has always been a suspicion that there has been Saudi oil money involved in all of the Bush companies. When they got into trouble, there were angel investors who provided money to the companies. Here the question arises, why would Saudis, who had all the oil in the world, go to the United States to invest in those unprofitable oil companies? The thing is that the farther of George W. Bush was president of the United States at that time...
After the 9/11 Bush tried to stop Congress from starting its own investigation. As Michael Moore suggests, it was done in order to conceal the relation of the Bush family to the attacks. When Congress did complete its own investigation, the Bush White House censored 28 pages of the report.
Then Michael Moore provides some even more worrying information: two nights after September 11th, George Bush invited the ambassador Bandar Bush over to the White House for a private dinner and a talk. This again emphasizes the close links between the Bush family and the Saudis.
The United States began bombing Afghanistan just four weeks after 9/11. Mr. Bush said he was doing so because the Taliban government of Afghanistan had been disguising bin Laden. However, what they did was obviously insufficient. They put only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan. There are more police in Manhattan. By the way, the U.S. Special Forces didn't get into the area where bin Laden was for two months.
Further Fahrenheit 9/11 takes the viewer inside the war in Irak to tell the stories we haven't heard, illustrating the awful human cost to US soldiers and their families.
On March 19th, 2003 George W. Bush and the United States military invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. “A nation that had never attacked the United States. A nation that had never threatened to attack the United States. A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen”.
Michael Moore shows us the numerous victims of the invasion, the ruined cities and mourning relatives of the dead. He shows the soldiers as well who share their impressions of the events and describe their emotions during an attack.
In contrast to the general accepted way of covering the events in Iraq by the media, Michael Moore looks at the dark side of the war in relation to common citizens of the US: a poor woman having lost her son, numerous young people going to war only because they have no work in their native towns. Moreover, President Bush, despite professing his love for US troops, proposed cutting combat soldiers' pay by 33 percent and assistance to their families by 60 percent. He opposed giving veterans a billion dollars more in health-care benefits and he supported closing veteran hospitals.
Thus, through a great number of archival clips, interviews and news articles, Moore presents the President as an arrogant leader who may have ignored the warnings about a domestic terrorist attack that would claim 3000 lives in one day, and in charge of an administration that lied to the world in order to invade another country that posed no immediate threat to America.
By means of the movie Michael Moore gave clear assessment of Bush’s administration and its war on terror. He does have a strong bias against Bush but he has a lot of good reasons for this and, probably, no one will be able to provide any convincing counter-arguments against what Moore is saying. He provides a lot of