Poetic Justice as Fairness

God help us all.

I am shocked, shocked to find polemic going on in politics. Hyperbole too. Politics is war by other means. Get over it.

To steal from Woody, politics is dirty only if it’s done right. Real blood, and other bodily fluids.

Switching to a British context for a moment….

I had, up until now, thought it permissible to make cheap jokes about vampires when discussing the current leader of the British Conservative Party. But thanks to Tim B, I now realise that I mustn’t do that, in fact, that it is really really bad to do so. In future, I’ll confine myself to sober, grown-up analysis of his fiscal policy.
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And another thing. “Preaching to the converted” is often just a disparaging way of describing “Rallying the troops”. And rallying the troops gives them confidence, makes them believe they can win, a belief that might just actually contribute to their winning. Indirect effects are important too.

And no one can remember when it started, but the other side started it.

In the USA, it started with McCarthyism, the chief purpose of which was to portray traditional, loyal liberals as subversives and revolutionaries.

And, really, if the choice is between degrading the discourse (not that I for a moment concede that Moore is), and allowing the right wing to remain in power, I don’t see why one even needs to think about it.

I agree that using fallicies is not justified by the oposition’s use of fallicies, and Moore is guilty of using fallicies at times.

But it sounds here like one of the fallicies that being discussed, as when his film is called “propaganda”, is the fallicy of one-sidedness. However, in the context of what Moore is doing, I do not think this is a fallacy.

Analytic philosophers tend to see one-sidedness as a fallacy because they are trained (rightly) to give each side a fair and objective hearing. Journalists tend to see one-sidedness as a fallacy because they are trained (wrongly) to give each side equal time and not judge between them. I amd trained as a lawyer: presenting one-side is what we do. It is the SYSTEM that is supposed to fairly evaluate each side.

Many of Moores supposed fallacies and deceptions are not so when viewed as part of a dialectic system. Moore is entitled to show Bagdad residents before the war flying kites and eating at cafes, U.S. bombs killing women and children, and listing the coalition of the willing as including Morraco and Costa Rica, and assume that the viewer has been told by the “other side” that Saddam had torture dungeons for political enimies, our main partner was Britian, and most of our bambs killed members of Saddam’s Republican Gaurd. While I think it might have been more EFFECTIVE for Moore to mention this and deal with it, it was not a fallacy to exclude such information.

(All of the above seemed relavent when I started writing it, and it still seems vaguely so. But looking back, I’m not sure anyone here has made the precise point I am agruing against. If it is off-topic, I appologize.)

jholbo: the equivalence I was addressing was Burke’s and the like, no, you didn’t exactly say the same so my argument is in general with that view, not personal with you. But the phrase I quoted from your post and replied to was an instance of what I find absurd in that kind of reasoning.

I don’t mention Bush in the post and I don’t believe he has criticized Moore publically. So he wouldn’t personally be a good example of a Moore critic who is himself guilty of Moore’s sins. (Is that right? There are plenty of other hypocrisies to lay at Bush’s door.)

Er, I’m not sure I get your point here. I think there’s a misunderstanding here (among many others).

It’s not that Bush hasn’t criticised Moore (hasn’t? sure?) so he can’t be an “example of a Moore critic”.

It’s that I just find it totally absurd to posit Bush in the role of “Moore critic”, as if Bush was simply a columnist…!

It’s bizarre, sometimes I get the feeling not many people have got the news that Bush is the President. Of course, they know it, of course, like one knows that California is on the East Coast, it’s a fact, but they don’t quite take in the implications… and the implications are why the comparison Bush-Moore is absurd.

That’s not addressed to your statement in particular, just something I noticed having this sort of discussion with some people. I often feel like I stepped in another dimension.

Mostly it’s indignant pundits who might be equated to Moore, as per Burke’s passage

Maybe, but not really, because… see, I don’t really see the need for an equation to be able to criticise or judge someone and their work, you know? You don’t need to see “who’s on the other side of Moore” to state your opinion on him and his films.

I haven’t yet seen Fahrenheit either because it’s not yet been released in my corner of the world. It’ll be in September probably. I’ve seen Columbine, after I’d heard lots on Moore, mostly bashing. I was expecting something very different, especially, I was expecting him to be very different from what I actually saw in the movie. I thought he’d be doing things like sloganeering or shouting from a soapbox or something. I thought he’d be a comedian in there, like you say, funny. When I saw the movie, I couldn’t find a single funny thing about it, as in you know, things that make you laugh carelessly. I thought it was very sad. It also had a seriousness and sobriety to it I wouldn’t have expected. There were embarassing scenes, that made you wonder if perhaps they wouldn’t have been best left out. But then you watched it again, and no, they fit. I also realised the scope of the movie was much more specific than what some of his critics were accusing it to be. It wasn’t meant to be a portrait of America as a whole. It was meant to follow a precise question.

I don’t know if this last one is following the same patterns, I’ll find out myself. But I am quite suprised not that there is criticism, of course, but at the nature of a good deal of the criticism, especially the most heavily politically-based kind. It’s clearer and clearer to me that, like with Columbine, most of the people who accuse Moore of all sorts of things from manipulation to treason are really bothered by the fact those topics are _brought up in the open at all_, in such a huge medium as cinema, regardless of how they are brought up. The Moore-is-a-traitor crowd just don’t want the French, for instance!, to see (and award) a movie where the gun mentality of some sectors of the American population and the interests exploiting and feeding that mentality get exposed so bombastically. I would think more or less the reaction is the same for Fahrenheit. Let’s be honest, when was the last time those instant-critics demanded journalistic accuracy from tv reporters? so why should they demand even more from a filmmaker? Films, even documentary films, even documentary films about politics, work by asking questions and suggesting connections, they don’t necessarily sell a full political package with all the readymade answers. Films ARE manipulation of the audience, by definition. But. Short of making things up and presenting as true what is untrue, if you’re making non-fiction, you’re not lying simply by making a point and pressing questions and stating your opinions and pushing a few buttons. Instead, for the insta-critics, it’s like _anything_ that does not present the _same_ arguments they support has to be neutral, otherwise it’s invalid. The most common accusation to the film is it’s “one sided”. Since when does everything have to be both-sided? Can I vote for both Bush and Kerry? Can I be pro and anti-war at the same time? Some people manage it, but its not an especially admirable quality.

Sorry for long digression. I am not defending the film or Moore per se, like I said, still have to see it hopefully, without letting all the brouhaha about it influence the viewing. I hate reading too much about something before I get to see or hear it. But it’s been inevitable…

I’m just puzzled by the nature of much of the discussion around it. As for your “ (rather fine) point about mental ability to keep straight whether you think your argument is good because you are justified in defending yourself by means of rhetoric, and whether you argument is good because it is a good argument” – well, see above, a degree of rhetoric is inherent in any political argument, be it in speaking or writing or film-making with a political content.

For instance, in Columbine, Moore asking Heston about the 6-year-old girl who was shot by her 6-year-old classmate was rhetorics, was very tabloid-like, in a way, but it also had a point. Of course Heston was not directly responsible for that girl getting shot. Of course all the other indirect responsibilities before that trigger was pulled belonged with the context in which that child had grown up. And a lot of it was sheer bad luck too, because it’s not something that happens every day. But Moore’s questioning, even if it seemed crass and inappropriate, was also spot on, because the question is, how can these people not realise the wider social impact of what they do. The question on what really does make a certain environment more prone to violence than another is very much open and the answers can only be partial and multiple, and involve a lot of factors. There can be a lot of disagreemnt on that. I didn’t agree to all the opinions Moore seemed to prefer, nor to the way he discarded some others. But here was a man, Heston, who spoke of guns as if they were a divine thing, who equated the right to freedom with gun possession, who lived in a big mansion with bodyguards and all and overtly acknowledged he wouldn’t have “needed” a gun anyway ever, but he owned them _just because he could_. Fine, his “right” too. But he also promoted them, _just because he could_. He also went to Denver right after the shootings, _just because he could_. He rubbed it in, _just because he could_. That someone with such an infantile notion of what is a “right” to do things should be President of any associations, let alone a gun association, is mindboggling. Moore challenging him about the girl was highlighting that huge contrast, that detachment from reality, that total lack of responsibility for his role. So, it wasn’t inappropriate at all, in the end, to go tabloid-like on him. It showed that the man had no connection to his political role at all.

So, yes, it was “rhetoric”, but it was _not_ illogical, or manipulative except in the basic way every film, and every opinion, in general, is. Emotional, a trick, in a way, yet it had a purpose and a very strict relation to the film’s question.

If that’s the rhetoric of Moore, it’s only the rhetoric of fairly good investigative reporting (though he’s not a reporter, really, but for the sake of using a convenient definition) when it abandons hypocrite pretences of impossible objectivity (is it a coincidence that the phrase “fair and unbalanced” is copyrighted by Fox News, huh?). Just like an interview by Jeremy Paxman or Jon Snow is far more interesting than any interview by any deferential spineless reporter who pretends to be “impartial” and not “one sided”.

Sorry, I went on decidedly too long. Also, what Monbiot says. Because if there is a political comparison to be made here, it’s not between Moore and any politician but between Moore and the media treatment (or lack thereof) of the very same questions.

And here I thought John was just looking to get a rhetorical device named after him: “Look the first innovation in 2300 years, the ‘holbodoche'” or ‘holbochresis’, or ‘holbotaxis’ or something.

Or maybe just ‘the dozens'”

Hell, guys, we just passed the 200th aniversary of two genius founding fathers fighting a duel over political rhetoric.

I’ll get a transcript of a Limbaugh show and annotate it, calling my work:”The Rhetorical Devices of Demagogery:Antanagoge in the Afternoon”

steve – I still have to see this movie, and I’ve already said enough above. As for what you describe as “conspiracy theories, false facts, and self-contradictory statements”, well, it also seems bizarre to me that simply hinting at the Saudi connections, which are FACT, should equal “wacko conspiracy theory of the kind that David Icke and paranoid gun-toting far-right-wing nuts embrace”. It’s been established that not just some members of the bin Ladin family who were in the US but also their associates were flown out of the country, which one could simply explain as security measures, as indeed had been reported at the time (I still remember the tiny news bits about it in the papers). But, while accepting the security explanation, as it mustn’t exactly have been popular to be called bin Laden on 9/12 in the US, one might also legitimately wonder why the heck where they given the help they got from the government in getting out. It is established they were in business relations before, so it must have been a favour. NO, it does not necessarily mean that oh, bin Laden was doing Bush’s interests and they were all in beddy beddy together. It simply means the US government helped the bin Laden family members and associates avoid unpleasant experiences. Fair enough. But bloody hell, I remember that newspaper bit, it was a tiny box on like page 22 about how the bin Ladens and their entourage, for a total of 100-150 people, were given speedy air transport back to Saudi Arabia, and I thought, gee, one paragraph on page 22, like that’s not relevant at all? who exactly were they, how many, who’s the people in the entourage, what were they all doing in the US anyway? I remember reading some of the daughters and sons were attenting American schools and colleges. That still doesn’t make up for a hundred people. It is, I believe, a fairly legitimate question to ask. I accept they were speeded out for safety reasons. I do not accept the lack of explanations about it and the lack of information about who exactly was speeded out.

So I see even less rhetorics in bringing that up than the Heston and the girl scene, for instance.

Unocal. Oh, I know, I know, that’s another of those things that soon as you mention them, you’re instantly an anarchist or something. But wasn’t Unocal real? Was or wasn’t there a consortium to build a pipeline, whose president said very openly to the US Congress that the only way to connect the Asian market to the reserves in the Caspian Sea area was to go through Afghanistan, and that until Afghanistan had an _unfriendly_ regime there was no chance? Yes, google for “John Maresca statement to Congress”. Karzai is a former Unocal employee. The pipeline is now being built. That’s fact, not proof of any conspiracies, it just proves there were interests in that area. Its blindingly naive to think wars have nothing to do with financial interests. Doesn’t mean there’s all there is. Doesn’t mean a political strategy is not there. But for the life of me I cannot understand why the mere mention of Unocal is like raising a crucifix in the face of a vampire. It’s become a taboo to talk about it simply because most of those deferential media would never bring it up for fear of being read as suggesting the most horrible conclusions. I don’t assume highlighting the interests in Afghanistan EQUALS stating that 9/11 was done on purpose so the US had an excuse to go in Afghanistan. Does Moore say this? From what I read, no. So why should we assume he does? It’s simply quite legitimate to toss up a few questions about how those interests influenced the war, though, don’t you think? Or are we to pretend gazillions of dollars and the opportunity of opening entire new markets, like the Unocal president said, has no relevance to anything? I don’t think having read a huge bibliography on the geopolitical strategies about the Caspian area is required to talk about these things, but I don’t see why the very same questions should be more respectable and never criticised when theyre contained in academic books that take 400 pages to outline what Moore puts in a punchline and a few clips.

So he may have got the figures wrong about the exact amount the Saudi have invested in the US. A while ago I’d read it was $3 trillion. Like anyone counted the money, huh? I’m sure we’ll get a precise quantification from the White House, in a report, because they like to publish reports that include facts about the Saudis, don’t they.

Is it not a fact that the Saudis, and not only them but say, associates from Qatar or other like-minded regimes, have an incredible amount of money invested in Western corporations and financial enterprises and stock and so on? They even came up with Islamic-compliant bonds, the first issued last year, I think, for a value that was so incredibly high (the bonds can be divided) that I can’t even remember it. Murdoch’s own Fox has huge investments from Saudi businessmen. Berlusconi’s Mediaset has a Saudi associate with dodgy links to terrorist sponsoring. The biggest financial scandal of the 80’s involved the first Islamic worldwide bank thanks to which Pakistan managed to get the first Islamic nuclear bomb. That scandal brought up all sorts of very risky connections at top financial levels between western and Arab businessmen and politicians.

But no, if Moore brings up the staggering amounts of money involved in the financial relations between the US and Arab businesses from non-democratic regimes and with suspicious connections to certain terrorist-inclined groups, we’ve got to nitpick about the exact amount, because it’s not the point that matters.

It’s not the huge forest, but the tiny shrub that really counts. (was gonna say “the bush”…)

You know, I’m pretty sure Moore is not putting forth all the questions on these matters in a way that would suit the standards of accuracy required by *an intelligence report* used to push the case for a war, _for instance_. Does that mean he’s falsifying or manipulating facts?

I’ll let you digest the ton of sarcasm in there.

Oh, while I’m on a roll, and before the patient people at CT kick me out, I’d like to add that I would guess that the US-Saudi relations are and have been for decades a more complex matter than “how can one accuse the US of being too cozy with the Saudis when they also suport Israel and wage wars that the Saudis do not approve of”. If you really need to ask that question, you really need to to a lot more background reading.

– You’re setting up a false and absurd dichotomy: those of us who have been attacking Moore in places like CT or at Cliopatra are not doing so instead of attacking Bush. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a hotter topic than the Bush administration’s failings. But you can devote time to more than one thing, and devoting time to exposing the utter flimsiness, incoherence, and shoddiness of Moore’s film is time well-spent.

Yes, definitely more well-spent than exposing the utter incoherence, flimsiness and shoddiness of the arguments used to go to Iraq in the first place. Oh wait, the Butler report just did that last week. I’m sure the British public would have preferred their tax money be spent on an investigation into Moore’s film-making instead.

It’s not a false dichotomy. It’s sheer hypocrisy. Of course you don’t have to dissect what the government did, if you agree with it, hey, good for you. I’m not the one making the comparisons between Moore and Bush and respective tactics in the first place. I just think it’s another level of absurdity to totally ignore the questions put forth in the film, regardless of how they are put forth (which is indeed and should be the target of criticism of the film itself, not of the wider political discussion). Those questions may be put forth in a populist way. But they’ve never been put forth in any major way in the mainstream media; they’ve not been put forth in Congress; they’ve not been put forth by the party running against this administration. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

Whatever your political opinions, or views on the war on terror and Afghanistan and Iraq and the Saudis, a democracy means accountability of the executive and all other branches of power. Of course you don’t have to feel compelled to scrutinize your government. But you’ve got to live with the consequences of that. You make your bed, you’ve got to be prepared to lie in it.

Also. I can safely ignore Moore and the existence of his film. I can just not go see it. I can very well pretend he does not exist. I cannot do the same with the US government.

I strongly support your or anyone’s right to spend time writing and talking and asking questions about whatever in the world you prefer. But if you choose to be interested in politics at all, then I will very well support my or anyone else’s right to judge your selection of targets of indignation accordingly. If you shoot the messenger, you can’t blame yet another messenger for pointing that out.

– Why? Because Burke is right. If you’re an artist or a critic or a thinker, you have a responsibility (to yourself, if no one else) to say what you know to be true, and not what you know (or have excellent reason to believe) to be false

Indeed. And it’s not clear where Moore is selling falsehoods and lies. But the most important point is another. Now, I hate that comparison but there you go: what if you’re the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of the UK, or any political leader or any government member, what are your responsibilities in terms of truths and wilful deception of your “audience” a.k.a. citizens and voters and taxpayers?

*Isn’t that question the very one at the core of Moore’s films?*

How can one ignore that?

How amazing is it to throw the question back at him, when he hasn’t even had the equivalent of a Butler report concluding he lied on any facts whatsoever?

None of the accusations on Moore prove any crucial altering of facts. Also, ironically, while even Blair can get away with “collective responsibility” for outright lying, Moore couldn’t have got away what in a commercial, not political, context would have caused libel suits and endless litigations if he had really stated patently untrue facts. How’s that for a paradox.

– Moore fails on all these fronts.

I don’t know. I will watch the movie, and I will judge whether he failed to deliver a compelling documentary and maintain a cohesion and authenticity and honesty in his own argument. I will not be able, even if I wanted, to judge whether Moore misled an entire nation and entire world about a war or any other political topic, because that’d be projecting onto him something that belongs to someone else.

Whatever I’ll end up thinking of the film itself, I am aware it is a film.

But, again, if there were patent untruths in the film, how could they get past the lawyers’ toothcomb?

Last I heard, the only lawsuit Moore got was from the guy related to one of the friends of Mc Veigh, who appeared in the Columbine documentary, and then regretted it and found no better reason to express his regret than call his lawyers.

– It is a worse and weaker film, at least from the perspective of convincing those who are not already true believers of the perfidy of the Bush administration.

Really? so why are you that worried about it? Ha.

Might it be because indeed there’s reports of people seeing it and changing their minds or starting to ask questions they’d never asked before? hmm?

Might it be because it is having an impact?

If it affected no one but those who already hated Bush – OR, who already were asking questions about the US handling of the war on terror – , why, there wouldn’t be all this furore about it and Disney wouldn’t have refused to distribute it initially, would they? …

If phrases are allowed, there is no need for invention, because ‘what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ is still quite serviceable.

Those who decry this kind of ‘justice as fairness’ as some new phenomenon that threatens to degrade political discourse are probably more learned in philosophy than in history.

[Off-topic]
What DOES degrade the political discourse is the willingness of the press to withold important information from the public.

I have found the media critiques of Moore’s film conspicuously, amusingly lacking in discussion of that point, which is one of F-9/11’s central (and most effectively presented) themes.
[/off-topic]

MC, you seem to be under the impression that I’m a Bush supporter. I’m not, at all. You seem to be under the impression that I haven’t spent any time dissecting what the government did and critiquing it. I have. Both things are also true of Timothy Burke. There is no hypocrisy here. Moore’s spewing falsehood and innuendo, and he deserves to be criticized for it. That’s it. And he can’t — and nor can you — hide behind this “he’s just raising questions” shtick. That’s just a way of making an insinuating argument without actually having to stand behind it, and it’s a rotten rhetorical technique.

Your take on Columbine was fascinating. I noticed that in your discussion of the conversation with Heston about the 6-year-old girl, you didn’t mention that Moore plainly insinuates in the film that Heston went to Flint to hold a pro-gun rally immediately after the girl’s death, when in fact he went eight months later, as part of an election swing during which he was campaigning for Republican candidates in Michigan. Does that count as a lie in your book? How about Moore’s editing of Heston’s speech at the beginning of the film to make it look like Heston said the line about taking the gun from his cold, dead hand in Denver (immediately after Columbine), when in fact that clip came from a speech in North Carolina a year later. Does that count as a lie, or is just clever rhetoric?

As for your supposed “facts,” let’s see:

Karzai was never a Unocal employee.

Unocal had pulled out of the pipeline in 1998. It is not involved in any construction of any pipeline in Afghanistan.

You never read the Saudis had $3 trillion invested in the U.S. Or if you did read it, it was from someone who was a complete fool. The real number, according to all reputable sources, is somewhere between $450-$600 billion. That’s around 1% of the US economy.

The Saudis do not have an incredible amount of money invested in US corporation and financial enterprises. Certainly it’s much less than, say, the Germans or the Japanese have invested here. No one seems to think they’re calling the tune we’re dancing to.

Moore leaves the clear impression — because he says it — that it’s unusual for the Secret Service to be guarding the Saudi embassy. Since 1970, the Secret Service is responsible for guarding all foreign embassies.

As for the mainstream media not raising any of these points, that is simply nonsensical. Craig Unger’s book, from which the first third of Moore’s film is crudely lifted, was on national bestseller lists and featured on national television for months. for Richard Clarke. The same with John Dean. The same, for God’s sake, with Michael Moore’s own book.

Oh, and these reports of people seeing it and changing their minds? Are you citing anyone other than Michael Moore when you make that statement?

I don’t have an answer to the question, because I still haven’t seen the movie, but the fact that something has been “well-covered in the press and books” does not mean that all the people going to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” are aware of it.

Herr Steve Carr, if you may: I did say myself, yeah, I will comment on the movie itself proper when I see it. (Unlike those paid reviewers who wrote paid reviews overtly declaring they had not seen it. National Review springs to mind.) I can still comment on the nature of the discussion about the movie in general, though. Which was the topic, here, I think.

Additionally, I can also very well comment on the topics the movie touches on. If you allow me.

Don’t care if you or Burke are a Bush supporter or not. The discussion is a bit more specific. I don’t need to know your full background to think your arguments are poor. I don’t divide people into Bush-hater=good, Bush-lover=bad. (Ditto regarding Moore). I simply consider what they have to say and how they say it. There’s a lot of Bush-haters who also hate Moore. It’s not like Moore is the anti-matter to Bush in a parallel universe, is it? it’d be hard to like both at the same time, but its very easy to hate both at the same time.

My take is not “he’s just raising questions”. IF you feel the need to reduce my previous long posts to one phrase, go ahead, but don’t attribute it to me, please. That’d be very, hmm, Moore-like, no?

Heston and Denver and the timing. Honestly, I didn’t even think of that because I can’t even remember that, ie. I didn’t notice if Moore makes it look like Heston went to Denver the very day after the shooting, literally. I remember the chat with one of the South Park guys (cant’ believe I forgot his name. Matt. Something.). The protests. All those people must have really gotten the dates all wrong. The father of one of the victims of Columbine speaking. That’s what’s moore is showing. What do you think all those people’s problem with Heston’s visit was, really? Or did Moore manufacture all those scenes? Did he manipulate them?

“Over my dead hands” is a phrase that, in the context Heston used it, not temporal context, but topic-context, is to my own ears chilly enough without the need for it to have been pronounced a day after Columbine. (Again, and impression I personally did not get.)

In fact. Charlton Heston and his racist ideas are repulsive enough to me in themselves. (Oh, maybe there’s more violence in the US because we have “mixed ethnicity”. Crikey. The most repulsive thing is how he noticed he’d said something worthy of Moore’s attention and then dodged all futher questions to expand about it.)

I don’t have to convince you of the merits of Bowling for Columbine. Tastes. Just don’t tell me what you think that I think I saw or heard in it. ok? I’m quite capable of using my own eyes and ears, thanks.

– Karzai was never a Unocal employee.

No, you’re right. He was a consultant. My bad. Like Kissinger. And, even the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, used to be a UNOCAL consultant.

But hey, it’s not a big deal. The most interesting things regarding Unocal happened long before that.

More on the wonderful world of UNOCAL:

Telegraph article, from 1997, so, definitely not written in Moore’s defense

Maresca’s statement, including this: “From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.”

Compare with Tony-Blair-style press release on Unocal’s website: We had no “understanding” with the Bush Administration that once U.S. military forces removed the Taliban from power we would proceed with such a project. … During the mid-1990s, a Unocal subsidiary joined a consortium that proposed to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Negotiations concerning this project proposal were never concluded with representatives of these governments and no construction ever began.

Yeah, and this, which is true, but not the whole story, should be enough to claim there were never any American – not just Unocal, Unocal was American but America is not Unocal, right? – interests in the reserves in the area and the strategic position of Afghanistan in relation to the infrastructure potential for connecting Asia and Central Asia.

Why deny bare facts? Argue with the interpretation of them, by all means. You don’t need to conclude there was anything necessarily HORRIBLE going on there. If financial interests were not one of the selective motives for war, the US would be occupying a lot more countries than Iraq right now. If it was all about, you know, terrorism and WMD and democracy only.

Unocal had pulled out of the pipeline in 1998. It is not involved in any construction of any pipeline in Afghanistan.

Hehehehe…

You know, what I find funniest is, if anything, that would seem to lend even more credit to the “conspiracy theorists”. Because surely, when the Talebans, who were previosly courted by the US as long as they were open ot the project, suddenly said no thanks not interested (for whatever obscure reasons), then it made even more sense to push for a military intervention, no? I don’t necessarily subscribe to this view mysself, but just saying, if you follow that “hey, the Talebans said no so we gave up the project” explanation, it can lead even more directly to the hypothesis that there was no other way than remove that hostile regime. Like Maresca put it so eloquently in the passage quoted above.

This is the sort of ORDINARY crap that’s been going on for decades. Nothing “conspiracy” about it. Financial interests make politics and viceversa. I don’t see why pointing this out has to be some sort of blasphemy.

You never read the Saudis had $3 trillion invested in the U.S. Or if you did read it, it was from someone who was a complete fool.

You’re right, I may have confused the British or French with the American usage of billion, trillion, etc.

I just know the figure involved a lot of zeroes. Whether 12, or 18, can’t remember.

The real number, according to all reputable sources

All these numbers are estimates, obviously.

IS or is NOT the point that some of the richest and most powerful businessmen in the world ALSO happen to be from countries with Islamic regimes who also happen to have had debatable ties with terrorism and financial frauds and arms dealing? (Something that is NOT an issue with Germany, Japan, or whatever other democratic country invests in the US, doh?)

Is it not healthy to question whether perhaps there’s not too many cross-connections at financial level to maintain independent policies?

Saudi Oil? Is it taboo too, or can it be mentioned? Does it not make a hugely profitable business? Is it nowhere relevant to the US-Saudi relations and policies? Remember the oil embargo in the 70’s? What was that about, eh?

It really feels like that emperor’s clothes story sometimes.

Steve Carr:

Your third qualification is unjustified: “Not something that’s been well-covered in the press and books.”

Moore’s movie got a lot of stuff out to people who watch TV and movies, and listen to radio, but don’t read a lot of print. That is essentially the whole point of what Moore’s defenders have been saying.

There are rules. And conflict.
Then one side breaks the rules.
So is it OK for the other side to break the rules as well?
Aren’t those adolescent arguments? Made from within the shelter of paternal force. The kind of responses you get when the authority isn’t there to enforce its laws.
Lord of The Flies with talking points and sound bites.
We condone breaking the rules when the thing the rules are there to preserve is threatened badly enough. So then it’s a question of, was it threatened?
And that’s where a lot of this kerfluffle seems grounded, high-sided on the status quo.
Soon enough there won’t be nearly so much noise, and it’s the holding of that particular fort that’s causing most of the chicanery.
Would you burn Robert’s Rules of Order to save a drowning child? Break the law to feed your family?
Republicans, and conservatives generally, have inherited wealth and power from people who broke every rule and law to get it. Somewhere back there, in the seeds of each fortune, is amoral opportunism. The law is a gloss, a veneer. Rules aren’t as important as what they protect.
That’s where the conflict is now.
Anything to win.

“There is not one American who is on the fence about George W. Bush who is going to believe that Bush cares more about protecting Saudi interests than about the interests of the U.S., or who is going to believe that the war on Afghanistan was unjustified and was done purely for pecuniary gain”.

Steve Carr: This is just not true. A lot of people will think twice when they understand how tight the Bushes are with the Saudis, and how involved the Saudis are in Wahhabi terrorism. And frankly, I think that this is a legitimate issue. Bush really was not capable of seeing what the problem really was.

Considering Disney’s current market cap is $48 billion, I doubt the Saudis ever “bailed out” Disney. And this conflation of all Saudis with each other makes no sense, in any case.

That’s EuroDisney, and it wasn’t just any Saudi.

Disney seeks help from Saudi Prince
By Richard Verrier
Los Angeles Times

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Walt Disney Co. needs a real-life prince.

His name is Alwaleed bin Talal. His grandfather was Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch. With huge stakes in companies ranging from Citigroup Inc. to the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain [and Carlyle – s_b], he is one of the richest men on the planet.

That’s why Disney needs him. The company’s Paris resort is suffering severe losses. Alwaleed came to the rescue before and is being courted once again. …

I have gone after Unger’s book. But Moore’s version of the Saudi-Bush relationship is, if anything, even crazier than Unger’s. In any case, how is the fact that George H.W. Bush served as a consultant to Carlyle from 1998-2001 germane to either the War on Terror or the war on Iraq.

Your “fact” is in error, but I don’t call it a lie.

8. Is former President George H.W. Bush affiliated with The Carlyle Group?

No. From April 1998 to October 2003 former President Bush was the Senior Advisor to the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board. He holds no other positions at Carlyle.
~~ The Carlyle Group

MC, you’re not strengthening your case here. You’re just tossing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks. What’s your point about the oil embargo? That it’s an example of how the U.S. does what the Saudis want? Obviously not that, so perhaps it’s the reason we now do what they want: like invade Iraq, depose the Taliban, and back Ari Sharon. If George W. is a pawn of the House of Saud, he must not be receiving their orders too clearly.

That’s for MC to answer.

As for the pipeline, Unocal, etc., why don’t you say what you mean? Do you honestly believe that the fact that the US may have had financial interests in Afghanistan had anything to do with why the US went to war there?Are you seriously arguing that if Afghanistan had had no natural resources, etc., but had still been harboring Al Qaeda, that after 9/11 the US would not have invaded and deposed the Taliban? That’s what Moore suggests, and it is insanity, pure and simple.

What I mean is that prior to 9/11, the US was willing to lavish the Taliban with various goodies, because we wanted the pipeline worse than we wanted “democracy” or Bin Laden. As of 2002, there is a Caspian pipeline under construction through Turkey, so we’re at liberty to let Afghanistan slide into chaos, but that’s not the end of the story. Even as we speak, we are in a diplomatic war with Russia, which already has pipelines that can carry Caspian oil to market, and more under construction through Iran. Did you know that the US provides military assistance (including personnel) to Georgia and Azerbajian? If I had time, I could weave a byzantine conspiracy theory about this, and few readers would know what to think about it, because nobody knows what we’re doing over there, much less why.

Oh, and as for Heston’s supposed racism, Moore is the one who makes the argument that the reason the US is so violent is because of its racial history and white people’s fear of black people. Heston was making the exact same argument: America is violent because it’s not racially homogeneous. I think both of them are wrong, but it’s absurd to attack Heston for saying the same thing Moore does. And the idea that Charlton Heston, who was one of the few Hollywood actors to march along Martin Luther King and SNCC during the civil rights movement, is a racist reflects nothing but your own ignorance.

Charlton Heston could kick Michael Moore’s ass, if he weren’t old and ill. Is there a name for this kind of argument?

So anyway, what’s the actual evidence that Moore’s movie is successfully ensnaring the “rednecks back home,” as mc so vividly puts it?

The war in Afghanistan conveniently allowed the US to build up a military presence close to China.

US Deployments – Central Asia Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan

Details – Footprints In Steppes Of Central Asia

It makes the Roman empire look quite small. How long before the Iranian state crumbles under the weight of circling forces?

Yes, it sure was convenient that Al Qaeda flew three jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, incinerating almost 3,000 people. Too bad our president took that golden opportunity and invaded Afghanistan. It would have been much better for everyone had he showed some restraint instead. No doubt.

Hmm. Irony, with undoubted mycterismus.

I thought we were doing holboeia.

It appears that our friend and dear President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyz is wavering in his support for NATO. I think we had better send him a few gifts – how about a trade deal to sort out the chronic unemployment?

I was going to post a link to a webpage at :
http://english.pladaily.com DOT cn/english/pladaily/2004/07/14/20040714001006_InternationalMilitaryNews.html

but it appears that a post with “com . cn” in it is defined as questionable content?

opposes establishment of US-Russian military base PLA Daily 2004-07-14

“The task of the military forces deployed in Kyrgyzstan by the US-led international anti-terror coalition and the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization is to deal with global threats and challenges instead of provoking antagonism, the statement said.”

Let’s be clear: there may be “universal agreement” that invading Afghanistan was the right course of action, but if so, Michael Moore was not part of it. He opposed the invasion in the weeks after 9/11, writing, “‘ Declare war?” War against whom? One guy in the desert whom we can never seem to find? Are our leaders telling us that the most powerful country on earth cannot dispose of one sick evil f—wad of a guy? . . . For chrissakes, call the Israelis and have them do that thing they do when they want to get their man! . . . But do not declare war and massacre more innocents.” And in late 2002, he was still saying the invasion was unjustified. So when he pretends to make the point that the war on Iraq drained resources from prosecuting the war against Al-Qaeda, let’s just say that he lacks credibility.

And let me say it again: our military intervention in Afghanistan had no financial motivation. Many other American military interventions have had financial motivations. Our invasion of Afghanistan had none. That is not a childish statement. It’s just true.

As for my supposed argumentative tactics, my question to Zizka was a serious one. If you think Bush has been too soft on the Saudis, then what would you prefer he do instead? What realistic alternative to the House of Saud would you prefer to be running that country?

How about the humanitarian case for war in Kyrgyzstan? They appear to have a problem with werewolves.

Kyrgyzstan Development Gateway (KgDG) – The foreigners to get protection cards against werewolves in 3 minutes (28 June 2004)

By engaging in Tactic A the playing field has been radically altered and old modes of civility have been damaged

This has nothing to do with civility.

I am one of those who haven’t seen the film. Most critics say that the film employs some demagoguery and manipulation, so I’m assuming that it does.

Now, I am, probably, in total agreement with Moore on every issue and I think Moore and I are on the correct side of every argument – from economic justice to firearms to foreign policy.

What being on the correct side of an agrument means to me is that you don’t need demagoguery to prove your point; your point is winnable on the merits; demagoguery is only going to weaken it.

It’s possible, of course, that I’ve been suckered by the US media and the film has no demagoguery or manipulations in it whatsoever, in which case – Viva Moore! I hope so.

Steve Carr, I don’t have a case to strenghten at all. I don’t have “the” answers to anything. The whole point is not having some prepackaged theory about everything but, as zizka and beth others have pointed out, the questions and the information and the discussion of it at public level, first and foremost at political level, and then at media level, because those are the interfaces for political discussion in any representative democracy.

If you’re happy with the level of information and accountability you’re currently getting, good luck. If you’re so happy with it you end up accepting all the PR at face value, what can you possibly understand about the notion of accountability at all?

I don’t necessarily presume that concealing information and lying has to involve dark horrible plots, every government conceals information but there’s a level where the intelligence/security excuse doesn’t cut it anymore. This, totally irrespective of what your position on Bush’s government is. Any government has to be responsible and accountable especially when the issues are so big and involve wars and terrorism and the entire management of foreign policy. US foreign policy vis a vis terrorism is a continuum that goes back a long way. The point about the oil embargo is not “the US do what the Saudis want”, that’s a 5-year-old’s way of reasoning. The point is a very obvious and simple one, that is totally redudant to make: those financial relations DO have a huge impact on worldwide policies as well as economy, so it’s totally LEGITIMATE to question how far the financial side influences the politics and viceversa.

As for the Talibans and Afghanistan, no I’m not arguing anything, I don’t know what the whole deal is, that is the point. Can you explain coherently why the Talibans were welcomed and wined and dined in Texas in 1997 and the only objection was they had some issues with women, and then a few years later whoops, suddenly the US “realises” they were a bit nastier than that. Why, then, did the Talebans get millions in funds right up to March 2001? Why the Afghan mujahedeens were trained and financed via the Pakistani services for anti-Soviet purposes without any concern about the future consequences, and why after bombing Iraq now the very same mujahedeens and warlords are back in power in Afghanistan and women still wear the burka but it’s supposed to be not such a big problem anymore, now that the bombing and occupation job has been done? If terrorism is the new enemy that replaced the Soviets, why are the very same cold war tactics being used with the very same lack of concern for future consequences? Why are other countries being supported even though they have repressive regimes and harbour terrorism? Why does the Saudi regime, which is the most repressive Islamic dictatorship on earth, get such preferential treatment? No, I’m not saying it should have been bombed, but perhaps investigations into the Saudi connections behind 9/11 could have gone a BIT further than they did, which was ZERO.

This shit is there and it does need to be “tossed up” because it’s very important, that’s the point. That’s what’s Moore is doing, I don’t care if he’s not doing it amazingly enough, it’s good enough for the level and medium he works in. We could spend hours talking about all this. We would need to quote long passages from books and articles to put those questions in more elaborate and less simplistic form. But even if you boil them down to the “crass” format suitable for a POPULAR FILM reaching audiences across the globe, they do remain legitimate questions. _That is essentially the strength of what Moore is doing_.

If you want some more background on the whole wider topic of US foreign policy and strategies regarding the Middle East and Caspian Sea area and Islamic extremism and terrorism, you’ll find a lot of interesting details in specialist magazines or articles or books than you get on CNN or in Moore’s film for sure, but you won’t really be getting any _final_ coherent picture because there’s this big void of official information. That, again, is the whole freakin’ point. Not every single fact mentioned in the film, for which there is ample opportunity to double-check from other sources. Anyone can draw any conclusions from facts, and those conclusions are called political opinions and they’re all up for discussion, but ascertained facts are not. And when you’re not making up facts you’re not lying. Just because you may not like someone’s take on events, doesn’t mean you can accuse them of untruths.

As for Heston, no, I don’t think he was saying the same things as Moore said, duh. Moore was raising questions throughout the film about fear and racial tensions and the origins and main nature of the NRA itself in relation to that history of racism; Heston replied to the question “why more violence in the US” with “maybe because we have _mixed ethnicity_”, which clearly meant something quite different, unless you want to go for ridiculous sophistries and dissect every single word and expect everyone to ignore the whole background about the NRA fanatics and Heston and like-minded folks. Excuse me if I missed the part where Heston becomes the new paladin of human rights and equality and concern for the victims of violence. Oh, he marched with MLK? wow, I’m so impressed.

I don’t see what’s the point in discussing with someone who denies or distorts even what’s right in front of their eyes. You didn’t like the film, fair enough. I think it was good, and touched on a very troublesome topic, it doesn’t mean I agree with every single argument suggested in it, but I think it’s very relevant to raise questions like that esp. given the political and financial power the NRA has. Ditto for the big Arab kings of finance from dictatorial regimes that support terrorism, etc.. If you see “asking questions” about any government’s policy as “tossing up shit” for no purpose at all, or, as an inexcusable offence to the sanctity of the values America purports to defend, then I don’t quite see what those values of democracy are to you if they can be dismissed so easily in favour of… what, really? reassurances? Why not take the opportunity to question things, when you have it? In Saudi Arabia people don’t enjoy this privilege. Moore is not Salman Rushdie and the US government is not Mohammed, but for some people it seems that the mere act of daring to suggest not everything is peachy up there amounts to treason and blasphemy. I’ve read some good well-written and well-argue reviews that were rather negative about the film, I still don’t know how far I would agree with them because I’ll only be able to say after I watch it, but at least they accepted the main premise that it was ok for Moore to do a film on those topics. From most of the politically-motivated outrage at it, instead, I get the feeling that premise is not even being accepted, and that’s what’s sad. Calling something a bunch of lies instead of bothering to consider the questions even if you don’t like the suggested answers.

“Do you think the world would be a better place with a Islamic fundamentalist regime in power in Saudi Arabia?”

Huh, what else is Saudi Arabia right now?

It’s such a lame reply, Steve Carr. You don’t need to posit things getting worse than people getting beheaded for _adultery_, to pursue legitimate _investigations_ into the connections, financial and political, of terrorist organisations that attacked _your own_ very country as well as others.

s-bethy: Moore may have the wrong theory, but pretending that our military actions have no financial motivations is just childish. Our so-called “free press” indulges in this naive fiction for… what reason?
I find the strain of argument that poo-poos money as a cause for events on the world stage quite bizarre, and to the extent that it is actually serious, quite disheartening.

Exactly. The other disheartening thing is that the shock-horror reactions show how many people are really not very used to that issue being brought up _at all_, in any form, from sophisticated academic essay to media to blockbuster film.

From a historical viewpoint, it might be interesting to consider the role of the 1905 General Strike (Lenin describes the events of 1905 not as a revolution, but as a ‘dress rehearsal for revolution’) as a turning pointing in the radicalisation of the opposition to imperial rule in Russia prior to 1917.

The Middle Eastern and Central Asian adventures of 2001-4 have no doubt radicalised, organised and educated many “oppressed worker” Muslims in these poor countries. The next 20 years will contain much interesting reaction. It is this to which future historians may refer to as “the Poetic Justice”.

MC, the problem people on the left have with Moore isn’t the subject of his movie. Our problem is with the movie he’s made on that subject. That’s it. If you want to make a movie that seriously looks at how and why the US went to war in Iraq, how Afghanistan is really doing, whether Homeland Security is falling down on the job, with an eye to separating what’s true from what’s not, while not making outlandish charges for which you have zero evidence, I’d be glad to see it. That’s not the movie Moore made, and that’s why — to get back to the original subject of this post — we find him so appalling. But then you haven’t even seen the movie, so you wouldn’t know. You remind me of that blog post I saw a couple of weeks ago that said, “Moore’s movie or not I agreed with his opinions long before I stated them.”

Oh, and by the way, Hamid Karzai was never a consultant for Unocal. He never worked for the company in any way, shape, or form. So stop saying that he was. And as for the Taliban, the US was not funding them “up to March 2001.” The US money that went to Afghanistan was all humanitarian aid. If you think we should have let the Afghan people starve because the Taliban were repressive, say so. Don’t hide behind this sophomoric “isn’t it sinister” curtain.

Steve, your unequivocal statement that Karzai never worked as a consultant for Unocal is interesting. What special facts do you know that contract such claims as are made, for instance, by this Asia Times report on the relationship between Zalmay Khalilzad and Karzai?

http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/DA29Ag02.html

“The man who spotted Karzai’s leadership potential and recruited him to “the fold” was then RAND (the Santa Monica, California think tank, mostly conducting contract research for the Pentagon) program director, now US National Security Council member and special Bush envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad. Like Karzai, Khalilzad is an ethnic Pashtun (born Mazar-i-Sharif, PhD University of Chicago). He headed Bush’s defense department transition team, and served under present US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Reagan State and Bush I Defense Departments. Also like Karzai (whom Mullah Omar once asked to represent the Taliban at the UN), Khalilzad early on supported and urged engagement of the Taliban regime, only to drop such notions when the true nature of the regime became patently obvious by 1998. And one further thing both men have in common is that in 1996/97 they advised American oil company Unocal on the US$2 billion project of a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline. In 2000, Khalilzad invited Karzai to address a RAND seminar on Afghanistan; the same year, Karzai also testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and met periodically with Christina Rocca, then a Senate aide (to Kansas Republican Sen Sam Brownback), now the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs. “To us, he is still Hamid, a man we’ve dealt with for some time,” said a state department official.

Steve Carr: I have seen the film, and you appear to be attributing a number of statements to Moore which are not, in fact, made in the film. Am I to take it from this that you believe that comments on the Crooked Timber comments section should be held to a third standard of accuracy, more stringent than for declaring wars but less stringent than for making films?

The facts? Unocal has said that Karzai was never an employee, consultant, or adviser to the company. There’s no evidence that he was, other than a series of unsupported assertions (the first of which was made in Le Monde in December 2001, and that was then picked up all over the Internet). Look at even the paragraph you quote — there’s no evidence in it at all, just a statement. Khalilzad was a Unocal adviser — sort of, since he was working for Daniel Yergin’s outfit — but Karzai had nothing to do with the company.

Daniel, what are the statements I’m attributing to Moore that are not made in the film?

Steve: If you want to make a movie that seriously looks at how and why the US went to war in Iraq, how Afghanistan is really doing, whether Homeland Security is falling down on the job, with an eye to separating what’s true from what’s not, while not making outlandish charges for which you have zero evidence, I’d be glad to see it.

Wouldn’t you be glad if that “movie” had been screned on your tv news instead of cinemas?

I’m in Europe but get the US CNN and Fox and CBS and CNBC on satellite. The difference in the style of war coverage was impressive. Even the British Sky news, which is the same corporation as Fox, and was relatively the most overtly pro-war of the channels in UK, was like on another planet from the US networks.

The Unocal-Karzai connection were published in newspapers in Europe (and Asia), it’s not a rumour that started on the internet. Unocal may deny that but then, why didn’t the papers who published that story retract if it was patently false? Also, they never denied the US ambassador had dealings with the consortium. But this is a detail. It’s less important to me than the bigger question of how financial interests affect the way policies are handled. There’s a lot of other perfectly ascertained details about that, that were never touched on.

Why didn’t we see _this_ “movie”? ie. mainstream reporters truly investigate and truly report all-round? that’s the topic of Moore’s film, I gather.

If you want a different movie on the same topic that would suit your more sophisticated tastes, then tell me, how would you envisage it being more “serious” than Moore’s and how would you see it having a fraction of the resonance, impact and commercial distribution Moore’s is having?

And why is there no other big mainstream movie about the same topic, indeed?

Why are we getting a flood of films on ancient Greece and ancient Rome and comics heroes and sci-fi and period costume and no one dares make the kind of films that were made in the 70’s for instance? Not just documentaries. Films that touch hot political topics, in general. Big films. Clearly there is a demand, judging from Moore’s success. Why is he the only one left to reap the commercial success of satisfying that demand?

That itself is an interesting question.

I don’t argue with your dislike of the film. I just don’t see a valid reason why the fact other people enjoy it should irritate you so much. I don’t see why it should irritate you that it’s not the film you would have liked it to be, the perfectly “serious” documentary showing both sides of all stories and being fair and balanced and possibly quite boring, rather than the satirical infuriating populist blockbuster it was conceived as. Is it not a bit devious, to criticise something for what it is not? If you want more thorough, complete and non-satirical reporting, you should be demanding it from the media cos that’s their job.

You remind me of that blog post I saw a couple of weeks ago that said, “Moore’s movie or not I agreed with his opinions long before I stated them.”

No, I stated already it’s not a matter of agreement with every word Moore says, he’s not a prophet. I didn’t agree to all his interpretations in Columbine either. I thought his dismissal of the historical background of violence in America was too easy and quick, for instance. He discarded that to get to his point, his questions, more emphatically. Still, the question remains valid and the financial and political of the weapons industry is definitely even more relevant to today than history and past events. Likewise, I think the bigger questions on Afghanistan and Iraq are more relevant than how many moms lost their sons there and how many degrees of separation connected Karzai or Khalilzad to Unocal.

You’re on the left, you say? Well of course that doesn’t mean you have to like Moore or his films. I just find it curious that when you talk about it you end up sounding _exactly_ like the scribes at the National Review and the anchormen at Fox. Read that article abb1 linked to, it’s very much Moore-like in style so you’ll probably hate it, but doesn’t it cross your mind he may have a point?

Oh, lastly – I never used the word “sinister” nor asked the question “isn’t it sinister”, you seem to not even have got what I’ve been saying at all. I specifically said there doesn’t necessarily have to be anything sinister in the fact of there being huge financial interests connected with the US foreign policy. the only obviously “sinister” thing is why won’t these topics be dealt with more extensively at mainstream media and political level.

And as for the Taliban, the US was not funding them “up to March 2001.” The US money that went to Afghanistan was all humanitarian aid.

However it was officially labelled as, who did it go to??

If you think we should have let the Afghan people starve because the Taliban were repressive, say so.

Oh please. this is so Fox News like style of arguing.

People were starving all allong all the time anyway, that money never got to the _people_ of Afghanistan, it was a dictatorship. Remember? if any of those millions up until March 2001 had really gone to the Afghans, why were the atrocious humanitarian conditions and risk of starving still cited as a reason for speedier intervention to topple the Talebans in late 2001??

And what about today, even Karzai is still begging for the promised money that never materialised! How often did you read about that in the press lately? Why is Afghanistan still being sold by Bush as a model of success in exporting democracy, like hey we didn’t exactly turn it into Florida but look, aren’t they so much better off anyway now – and then you read or watch some real reporting about today’s Afghanistan and the Bush rhetorics certainly don’t match hte reality.

But somehow the biggest problem is Moore’s film is not quite serious and high-brow enough to properly discuss all this. I think, maybe, it’s better not to discuss it at all.

That article Abb1 linked to says that “Russians are far braver in their political discourse, even now under Putin’s crackdown, than Americans are . . .” Sheer crap. That piece is like everything The Exile has ever run: sophomoric, self-aggrandizing, hipster, pseudo-radical nonsense. So no, he doesn’t have a point.

Setting aside the factual disagreements, one thing I don’t understand is the assumption that a movie about Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., that was honest and serious would also have to be boring. Go back and look at all the material that is there to work with. Just a collection of Cheney’s endless misstatements on Iraq and Al-Qaeda, Bush’s shifting rationales, Powell before the UN, etc., would make for a satirical carnival. I’m not asking for a two-sided treatment: being objective doesn’t mean being neutral. I’m just asking for something that’s not shot through with deception and false innuendo.

Back on topic, I agree that saying it’s ok for Moore to lie because Rush did it first, is an example of “poetic justice as fairness” (or, as I prefer to call it, “just plain stupid”). Also the “it’s entertainment not journalism, so he can’t be held to account” argument makes no more sense to me when Moore’s defenders use it than with Rush’s do. Still, I think the biggest flaw in the Moore debate isn’t “poetic justice as fairness,” but “false balance” (basically, the argument that the Nazis were no worse than the Allies because they both killed people.) Yes, Moore and Rush are both populists. They both sometimes exaggerate and leap to false conclusions. That does not mean they are equally bad. Moore does not engage in the venomous attacks against conservatives in general, that Rush launches against ‘liberals’. He doesn’t refer to large segments of the population with an epithet containing the word, ‘nazi’. He doesn’t take nearly the liberties with truth and common sense that Rush does. The question of whether F911 is more accurate than the average Limbaugh rant isn’t even worth debating. (The question of whether it’s more accurate than the average newscast, sadly, is.)

Moore may indeed be ‘the Rush Limbaugh of the Left’ but considering how much more decent and honest he is than ‘the Rush Limbaugh of the Right,’ I see no hypocricy in praising the former while condemning the latter.

MC, I wasn’t setting aside the factual disagreements because I was trying to brush the facts away. I was setting them aside because every time I show that Moore (or you) are misrepresenting the facts, you either come up with some conspiratorial explanation or else say, “Well, what’s important are the questions being raised.” So:

Moore and you say Karzai was a consultant for Unocal. He wasn’t. I make this point and you write, “But this is a detail. It’s less important to me than the bigger question of how financial interests affect the way policies are handled.”

Moore has Craig Unger say that Saudi investments in the U.S. total $860 billion — and then Moore extrapolates that to a trillion. Unger also implies that the Saudis own 6-7% of the US stock market. They don’t. Not even close. I bring this up, and you write, “So he may have got the figures wrong . . .”

Moore says that the Saudis had invested $1.4 billion in businesses of the Bush family and its associates. They haven’t. I bring this up, and you protest against having to “nitpick about the exact amount.” And so on.

Moore is certainly offering debatable — as well as incoherent — opinions, but he’s also deceiving and manipulating. I’m not rehashing any meme here. I’m just saying what’s true.

Steve, actually, what you are saying about Karzai is this: Bob Lane, the publicist for Unocal, has denied that Karzai was paid to consult for the company or that he was paid by a consultant for the company.

Now, I should make clear that I don’t think the war in Afghanistan was about a pipeline. The big question is: is the reconstruction of Afghanistan about democracy? Is it even about American security? Knowing that, in Iraq, the U.S. has preferred to deal with swindlers (Chalabi) or brutes (Allawi), we are certainly justified in asking what the Bush policy has been in Afghanistan. Especially because the Afghanis, if not the Americans, are interested in the background of their leaders, and are probably going to deal with those leaders given what they think about their backgrounds.

Now, let’s parse the denial.
You do (rather grudgingly, for some reason) admit that in 1996, Daniel Yergen’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates hired the present U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to work on a deal for a consortium Unocal was part of, Centgas. This consortium was in competition with Bridas, an Argentinian company.

The question of Karzai’s position vis a vis Unocol is probably complicated by the fact that one could plausibly make a case that if Unocol did pass money to Karzai under one pretext or another, they violated federal law — insofar as Karzai was then a member of the Taliban government.

This is all undisputed. So the question is: what did Karzai do?
a. you seem to believe that the Le Monde story is the source for the Asian Times story. From my reading of the story, it derived from “anonymous sources” in Pakistan and Turkish intelligence. Perhaps you are right that it is all smoke — but it should be said that most of the stories about Iraq, in the rush to war, were also from these kinds of sources.
b. We know in March, 96, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan publicly urged Benazir Bhutto to go for the Unocol contract. To go public with the pressure like this means that the pipeline was seen as a big deal. At least at the time.
c. Unocol’s spokesmen has apparently a habit of saying things which it later claims it didn’t say. In October, 96, a Unicol spokesman said that the company supported the Taliban — a statement the company later denied.
which brings me to d. Why should I believe that Unocol’s statement, which is worded so that several caveats apply — for instance, money going through Centgas to Karzai instead of through Unocol –is the gospel truth, and Moore a liar? Your certainty on this topic isn’t convincing. Period. End of story.

Roger, this is classic. There is no evidence that Karzai worked for Unocal (and spell the company’s name right if you’re going to write about it), just unsourced assertions. As far as I can tell, no one’s ever even asked Karzai about it. The company that he supposedly worked for says he didn’t, and not in any carefully worded way, either, but in an unequivocal fashion (that is, he didn’t work as a consultant to a consultant, either).

Yet given this, you ask me why you should believe Unocal instead of Moore. This is crazy. Moore’s making an assertion, with absolutely no evidence to back it up. But the burden of proof is somehow on Karzai? And he meets that burden — with an unequivocal statement of fact from his supposed employer — and you’re still not satisfied.

Actually, this whole discussion has been a good one, because it encapsulates perfectly the Moore-an mindset. There is no way you will ever be convinced that Karzai didn’t work for Unocal — what could convince you? the no-pay stubs he got for not-working for Unocal? — even though the only reason you think he did was because someone printed a vague accusation in the Asia Times.

And you’re right: this story is like most of the stories about Iraq in the rush for war. And just like those stories were ideologically corrupted bullshit, so too is your story.

By some mysterious alchemy, we have arrived back at Mr. Holbo’s topic…

Mostly it’s indignant pundits who might be equated to Moore, as per Burke’s passage. And to say that they are equivalent in this one way – namely, there is one sin which some people on both sides have committed – is not to say that both sides are equivalent, or even that any individual on either side is equivalent to any other, except with regard to this one (rather fine) point about mental ability to keep straight whether you think your argument is good because you are justified in defending yourself by means of rhetoric, and whether you argument is good because it is a good argument. Clear?

Was the Afghanistan/Taliban/Pipeline snippet in the film an instance of ‘the means of rhetoric’, or ‘a good argument’? Moore was almost certainly aware that he was creating an impression that was at variance from the truth (whatever that may be), so the argument is not ‘good’ in the the sense that means ‘true’. The question then becomes did he think it was good in the holboean sense that means ‘a justified vendetta’, and the answer is, of course, yes. Now here’s where I get confused.

Moore thinks he has a good argument, based on the predicate that has been laid by Rush Limbaugh, or Dick Cheney, or whomever, so he is guilty of the fallacy of ‘poetic justice as fairness’. However, he is aware of his sophistry, so isn’t he guilty of mere garden-variety rhetorical hypocrisy?

Perhaps that’s not what matters. It’s probably more important to consider the question as it relates to Moore’s fans and critics.

Is it hypocrisy to forgive him a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand? Is it hypocrisy to blow a factual error into a denunciation of the entire work, and its creator?

If so, is it more intellectually honest to take these positions as rhetorical ramparts, in full knowledge of their defects, or as holy ground, sanctified by the sins of the enemy?

If the opponents decide that question differently, which has the advantage in the battle?

Steve, hmm — “And you’re right: this story is like most of the stories about Iraq in the rush for war. And just like those stories were ideologically corrupted bullshit, so too is your story.”

Well, I didn’t know I had a story. But if I had one, it would be: what we know is that the US ambassador to Afghanistan, a former lobbyist for Unocal (there, isn’t that spelling pretty?) to the Taliban (or Taliben — I do want to get those vowels right), elevated a man whose democratic principles were elastic enough to serve with the Taliban to the post of president of the country.

What is your story?

Your own precise reading of my questions boils down to: Moore distorted the relationship to Karzai by relying on “unreliable” journalists rather than on a spokesman for the company whose words you have not quoted, but in whose truth you have complete and touching faith. Now, I could rant that my bullshit, at least, comes with quotes, whereas your variety seems to come out of your … but lets do be polite and keep to the rules of good spelling, and only use the butterknives. Here is the Unocal’s statement: “Further, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, was never a consultant or adviser to Unocal, as Moore erroneously asserts.

During the mid-1990s, a Unocal subsidiary joined a consortium that proposed to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Negotiations concerning this project proposal were never concluded with representatives of these governments and no construction ever began.”

Now I take that statement to be credible, in its own terms. I think Moore was wrong to call Karzai a consultant for Unocal. I concede your point. But I am curious about the meaning of your point. The denial says nothing about monetary transactions, or about subsidiaries, or whether it was Karzai with whom Unocol (I had to do it) negotiated. It doesn’t tell us how Unocal determines its relationship to people — if a person works for Centgas in 1996, would he be considered a Unocal employee? I don’t know. Neither, Steve, do you.

However, I think the Burns article at the NYT (which we can surely trust — it isn’t one of those nasty third world organs, always spewing out rumors. They hire real journalists, like Judith Miller. And its spelling is perfect!) in 96 should be above anti-Bush conspiracy reproach, no? In that article, Burns talks about the suspicion in Afghanistan that the Taliban were American puppets.

So, to sum up, your reply to Moore seems to be: Karzai would never have soiled the integrity of his post with the Taliban, in 1997, by consulting for Unocal, or drawing up a “feasibility study” for them, as the Irish Times once reported. Leave that kind of thing to our present ambassador there, the good Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, who just happened to have chosen Karzai for his post.

I’m glad that is straightened out. For a moment, there, I thought business interests might be intruding on American foreign policy. I’m such a sap!

The rules of conduct, the laws of governance, the unwritten codes of gentlemanly conduct, that existed in the American colonies in the late 18th century, were all broken, or disregarded, by the colonists.
That’s how the US came to be.
Morality is important, but the rules are not as important as what they are designed to protect. We can easily lose sight of that.
And of course, if they are designed to protect villains at the expense of the innocent, then the rules are not important at all.

spacetoast – “Yeah, mc, there are plenty of documentarians we can look to as standard bearers of “seriousness,” for instance, Errol Morris.”

Errol who? I don’t dispute that this guy may be thousand times more brilliant and thorough while at the same time remaining as compelling and gripping and entertaining, but I’ve never heard of him. I don’t see his movie distributed anywhere within this side of the Atlantic. I don’t hear anyone talking about it.

The popularity of Moore is not a fault or a merit in itself, it’s just a fact.

To make a loose, and silly, comparison. If I was, say, a big fan of The Strokes, right, and someone told me, “oh but they’re really crap you should listen to [insert list of bands that, to this hypothetical advice-person in my example, are much more serious and proper and original than the Strokes, and incidentally far less popular]”, well, I would tell them, thank you for your advice, I may some day get to listen to those bands you mention, but what’s that got to do with me enjoying the Strokes? what’s your problem with me doing it? why on earth does the existence of a ton of bands that _you_ consider more worthy of _your_ listening time make the band I like listening to crap? they’re not the same, are they? so why should the Strokes be somebody else, otherwise they’re crap?

Very loose comparison, but hopefully you get my drift. Back to Moore. If I want “serious” – which in this context means journalistic – reporting, I go to journalistic sources that I appreciate and which provide me with interesting reports with more thorough analysis of historical backgrounds etc. etc. etc. I can find some good ones. Where I am, I have seen some such good reports. Video, or press.

I never ever considered Michael Moore as a reporter. So, while I certainly don’t expect him to be about fiction either, or to make up things, or to draw on untruths – enough with this extreme dichotomies, you know? it doesn’t have to be “Moore or else, boring”, but it doesn’t have to be “journalistic-style or else, crap and lies” either – I don’t expect him to give me what a reporter would give me. Columbine was not a strict journalistic documentary or sociological essay, it was a provoking polemical film. It wasn’t fiction, but it was not a report either. It wasn’t even the classic ‘documentary’ as, dunno, the BBC would do, though even BBC documentaries on political topics have a much more “lively” and polemical style than maybe was the standard years ago.

I don’t think Columbine was a masterpiece, I don’t think it was “the” standard for political documentaries, I don’t think it’s even important to categorise something so you need to define it within the supposed “standards” of a genre, you take it for what it is. Did it fail on the premises it set itself? I don’t think so, someone else may think otherwise, but I would think it’s kind of pointless to judge something for what it isn’t. There’s room for both Moore and Morris, but this Morris guy is not Moore and Moore is not Morris. Moore is inevitably going to be more popular because of the style he adopts, and that’s perfectly fine with me. It may not be to other’s tastes, and that’s perfectly fine with me too. What I don’t understand is why tastes should define the _nature_ of something for it to be “proper”.

AS for the political and not just commercial impact of the movie, oh I don’t know, don’t ask me, I guess you’ll have to read the papers for that.

I don’t understand how Moore’s “demagoguery” can single-handedly destroy the oh so HIGH standards of tv network news in the US, cos they’re notoriously so not demagogic and so “serious”, right, but hey if you can pin that responsibility too on to Moore rather than the media themselves, contgratulations.

“I’ll bet he makes more global skeptics than liberal converts out of non-partisans

Ha! and why would that be a bad thing? I don’t equate “liberal” with “holy” or “holier than everything else”, I don’t care what political opinions people have before or after seeing the movie. I think skepticism is a very positive thing in itself, whatever you decide to make of it when you go voting.

quoting the ineffable Steve Carr – “Roger, since you’ve conceded the point, I’ll leave the field”

Heh…

Roger: I just wanted to add I enjoyed your posts very much, both for content and style. And, of course, spelling. You don’t want to offend a corporation by spelling it wrong. You never know, you might get a lawsuit. (Funny enough, Unocal published that press release, but never sued Moore, why is that?)

spacetoast – the point about Morris not being as popular is indeed about the impact, not just political. Moore himself draws on sources that consists of books, articles, etc. as well as direct sources he interviews. There’s a whole lot more out there. So, people interested in reading about these matters have some access to information beyond CBS or CNN or the like. But a film is targeted to a much wider audience than specialist publications. What Zizka said above.

I am not arguing that you shouldn’t like Michael Moore or his movies, although I think you shouldn’t.

Erm, that seems to be the rhetorical figure of speech where you deny and assert something at the same time, forgot what’s it called….

I don’t understand why would you even think I “shouldn’t like” something. What’s it to you if I like something you don’t? What’s the problem with it? What’s the danger I may incur in?

I am questioning the link between Moore’s strategy of “provocation” and the attention he gets in virtue of that, and, on the other hand, his political effectiveness, however his defenders want to construe that.

I don’t understand your point here. To me, “political” in this context of impact of something doesn’t mean “with the precise result of inducing people to vote for x as opposed to z”, alhtough that has been declared, more or less provocatively, by Moore himself as part of his intentions. To me, “political impact” is in the widest possible sense. Ie. inducing people to take into consideration very relevant political issues. I don’t equate “political” with “party-political”. Being “political” is a lot wider than that.

You said you’re worried his effect is not to win over “liberal” converts but create more skepticism. I don’t see what the worry is about! unless you’re putting party politics before the basic notion of political debate and questioning and so on (that is what I mean for skepticism).

I think the target of Moores films and books in general is less the right wing than a whole system of politics, finance and media, if this leads people to question the system as a whole rather than just the _right-wing_ or _Bush’s_ management of that system, that is FAR better in my view than just inducing people to vote for someone else than Bush. Tons better.

The wider political impact of the film is already there in its being out and being talked about so much. I certainly don’t judge its entire effectiveness in terms of “will or will not Bush get re-elected”. That would seem very reductive. Although it’d be fun if it happened.

Also, you miss my intended point about demagoguery and skepticism. I don’t say that the mainstream media adheres to higher standards than Moore. I say that Moore inevitably undermines his own ability to make the case about their standards—that is, ability and not just credibility in some debate etiquette sense.

Oh, ok then, thanks for the clarification, I indeed has misunderstood. But I still don’t see the point there, like I said, short of telling untruths which he is not, Moore’s standards are not the same as a reporter – not in the sense of less accurate, in fact, his standards and modus operandi are far better than a lot of big news sources and I don’t mean just the ridiculous Fox – they’re different, different style, different context, different medium.

But I see his point about the tendency of the media’s subservience to power and manipulation of public opinion being made even stronger by the style and medium he operates in. His films and books are driven more by polemics than by journalistic-style reporting, because he is not a reporter; but paradoxically they often do a better job than some people who call themselves “journalists”. Just like satire, often, when it’s good, does a better job of exposing political and ideological manipulation. Yet no one expects satire to be journalism. (Another loose comparison, because Moore’s work is not exactly confined within satire either – satire targets ideas more than precise events or facts so it can take a lot more liberties).

The skepticism I’m talking about is one where people see different accounts of the facts as largely a matter of taste, and that is most definitely not a positive attitude to take voting.

Matter of taste? I don’t understand this either. Facts are facts, there’s different interpretations or conclusions that one can draw according to one’s prejudices, opinions, etc. Or, one can choose to ignore certain “unpleasant” facts altogether, as many people do. But I don’t see how questioning why weren’t certain facts widely reported, or what do certain facts entail in terms of political effects on certain policies etc., has to do with “taste”.

You don’t have to have a ready-made theory that explains everything, to ask questions. Otherwise, what’s the point of asking them?

Voting is something that entails a whole different set of considerations. You can only vote what’s on offer, not what you would like to be on offer. I’ve always seen voting as a duty, and always gone for the “lesser of evils” choice. By exclusion. In the absence of the realistic possibility to change an entire system, that’s all you got. Choose what stinks less.

That’s a more limited scope of consideration than wider questions on entire policies such as the US foreign policy that were not even limited to one government, or one political party only.

And it’s definitely a more limited scope than the effects a political-polemical movie can have on all sorts of levels.

Like I say though, I’d be really interested to see some actual data on what kind of an effect the movie is having.

And like I said, read the papers! There’s tons of articles about the audience’s response to the film, in the US or UK or elsewhere.

Carr, you are really funny.

You know the Bush finances????????

ARE YOU NUTS????? They are even more secretive than the Saudi paymasters not to mention the secretive Chinese communists who have put nearly every Bush on their payroll!

Incredible.

When we speak of the Bush billion we are talking about a CLAN who has mucho dinero. These people leach off of every possible venue which they learned to do from their Saudi buddies, the Saudi royals.

Just to stay with three of the original factual questions, because I don’t have time to enumerate the dubious sourcing that riddles the entire list of Moore’s “backup” that MC linked to:

1) Moore’s sources for the “$860 billion” that the Saudis have supposedly invested in the US, a number provided in the movie by Craig Unger, are . . . Craig Unger’s book (not really surprising he backs himself up), and a lawyer for people suing the Saudis, who obviously has an enormous financial incentive to pretend the number’s as high as possible. I’d say this is like pulling a number out of the air, but it’s worse.

2) Saudi investments constitute “roughly six or seven percent of America.” Now, the first number is wrong, so this is obviously way too high. But even on its own terms, this number was wrong, and Moore’s sourcing again effectively admits it. The “fact” he cites is the market capitalization of the NYSE, as if all Saudi money was invested only in NYSE stocks. This bizarrely omits the Nasdaq, to say nothing of corporate bonds, etc. “Six to seven percent of America” doesn’t mean “six to seven percent of the NYSE.” Again, this isn’t a fact, it’s a lie.

3) In the movie, the narration says that the Saudis “invest in you, your friends, and their related businesses $1.4 billion.” Set aside the fact that of this $1.4 billion, $1.2 billion went to the Carlyle Group before George H.W. Bush even worked for it. The narrator says “invest.” But if you look in the sources backing this fact up, you find this sentence: “This number includes investments made and contracts awarded at the time that Bush’s friends were involved in the Carlyle Group.” Okay, so it wasn’t “invest” in. It was buy stuff from. Here’s a lie Moore’s effectively admitting to while pretending to back up his facts.

considering the things Moore has said, … about Bush stealing the election, and the whole business with Cheney and Halliburton, the claim that Moore isn’t being venomous

And suddenly, ‘poetic justice as fairness’ doesn’t seem so bad, at least not compared to the practice you just illustrated of characterizing any accusatition — now matter how well founded — against any member of the administration as ‘personal’ or ‘venomous’ attacks. There is nothing ‘venomous’ about stating the truth, no matter how unpleasent it may be for you to hear.

That was fun.

I don’t agree with zizka that we couldn’t have wrung some philosophy out of it, but that’s okay. We learned lots of stuff anyway. Stuff about Hamid Karzai and Unocal, and Charlton Heston, and Euro Disney, and Kyrgyzstan, and Talibans, and even Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Other stuff too!

A nice polite, academically rigorous, slim and handsome documentarian would not have brought us so much edification.

Thank you, Michael Moore.

From Heinz Arndt’s Autobiography:

In my own case, these political prejudices (if not, I would like to think, the moral convictions) underwent great changes over half a century, from a brief youthful Marxist phase to decades of Fabian-Keynesian views which gradually gave way to … a sceptical-monetarist near-libertarian position … It might be thought that such an odyssey would induce a decent humility: if I could be so completely wrong earlier what grounds of confidence have I that I am right now? I can only shamefacedly report that that has not been my experience. What others may diagnose as a banal example of the common drift to senile conservatism, reflecting that gradual loss of openness to new ideas and sensitive compassion that comes with the hardening of the arteries, presents itself in my mind as a process of learning from experience, both in the general sense of discovering that the world’s problems.

At http://www.hansard.act.gov.au/hansard/2002/week05/1387.htm