RE: [Marxism] Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory?

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie writes--cogently IMHO:

There is nothing wrong with emotional appeals, as long as they are 
not in service of dangerous illusions -- in the case of Fahrenheit 
9/11, the illusion that one of the interviewees -- a disabled veteran 
of the Iraq campaign who suffers from nerve damage -- sums up.

Speaking of "some of the 4,000-plus American casualties" who are 
interviewed in the film, Frank Rich notes: "They talk about their 
pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. 'I was a 
Republican for quite a few years,' one soldier says with an almost 
innocent air of bafflement, 'and for some reason they conduct 
business in a very dishonest way'" ("Michael Moore's Candid Camera," 
New York Times, May 23, 2004). The soldier goes on to say, "I am 
going to be incredibly active in the democratic party down where I 
live once I get out. So . . . I'm going to definitely do my best to 
insure that the Democrats win control." However, after four years of 
wars and fiscal austerity under the next President of the United 
States, who is likely to be John Kerry, won't the same soldier end up 
saying in 2008 what Michael Pedersen said in his last letter to his 
family: "I'm so furious right now, Mama"?

Maybe, there is no other way of learning than learning the hard way, 
for most people in society like this are denied historical knowledge.


>From a previous post (Jim C):

I remember vividly, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I worked
with VVAW and other grass-roots organizations to develop outreach
programs to those currently serving in the military, that among the
anti-War Vets, there were still many harboring many illusions about what
they had really been doing and for whom they had been doing it. I
remember that many were still stuck on the personal and self-absorbed
level (" I fought for freedom--[bullshit]--and now I have been dumped
like garbage, the government refuses to recognize/pay for the effects of
Agent Orange, I'm not getting the benefits I was promised, I lost some
limbs or buddies and now I am against the government and its war...").
But few I knew, ever read the Pentagon Papers that told, from inside the
U.S. imperial machine, what the real interests, motives, intentions etc
of the Vietnam War were really about. Few that I knew, really considered
how many victims they had left and created with as much intensity and
pain as they considered their own victimization and scars; many were as
self-centered/absorbed as the culture from which they came--whose media
only talks about American dead or the dead from a particular State or
city on the local news. Few I knew considered--and took some personal
responsibility for--how there own self-imposed/assisted backward and
false consciousness contributed to their own victimization--and the
victimization of so many innocents on "the other side"--as tools and
dupes of U.S. imperialism.

And from another previous post (Jim C):

Once in, then you get the full dose of ideology designed to help you
rationalize why you went in in the first place. Although you went in for
strictly mercenary reasons like help with college tuition, and didn't
give a fuck or thought about what and whom you might be really serving
or whom you might really be hurting--and in whose interest--now comes
the icing on the cake to ease your cognitive dissonance problems--if you
are not some kind of sociopath and actually have such problems. No, you
are among the elite. You are fighting for freedom. You are the cutting
edge of the most powerful military machine ever known and you are
sacrificing--perhaps life and limbs--so that those at home can live in
"freedom." And you also get a full dose of what it takes to get anywhere
significant promotion-wise. In Army terms, you need a patch on your
right shoulder (unit in a combat area), you need horizontal bars on the
right sleeve (each is six months in combat zone), you need a CIB (combat
infantryman's badge) or combat medic badge, a purple heart is excellent
(particularly if you can get one without too-damaging wounds), a Bronze
Star with V-cluster or Silver Star will take you far coupled with
theater and combat campaign ribbons. And then there is further
specialized training, networking, good performance reviews and most of
all, demonstrating unquestioning loyalty to and being on the same page
with the ideology, mission, goals, objectives and dominant values of
your superiors. All of this is understood and the best evidence is to
look at the ribbons of those at the top and/or look at what the likes of
Haig et al did to get combat decorations they clearly did not
deserve--why did they go after them and engage in all sorts of phony and
desecrating stuff (to those who might have deserved some special award)
to get them?

I know not only from the research, but I was one of them once. And no
amount of liberal hand-wringing and solicitous
"these-poor-souls-with-nowhere-else-to-go-to-escape-poverty" will ever
rationalize or let me off the hook for my having once been a willing
tool, dupe and instrument of U.S. imperialism like so many other willing
accomplices. I am responsible for what I did, whom and what I served and
what victims were created by my own complicity with U.S. imperialism.


Jim Craven



Yoshie writes:

Lila Lipscomb learned it the hard way:

The day Michael decided to join the army, she says, "I was so proud 
of him, so proud of him. It was the first grown-up, manly decision 
that he'd ever made in his life." She knew the risks -- her daughter 
Jennifer served in the first Gulf war -- but she also thought it a 
smart career move for people in their position, a low-income family. 
Then, over Christmas 2002, on his last home visit, Michael said 
something surprising. "I so vividly remember. I walked out of my 
bedroom and we have a long hallway upstairs and he was standing there 
and he said he would have to go to Kuwait and then to Baghdad. And he 
said he didn't support the war, that he didn't know why he had to go 
over there. We talked about fear. I was petrified, because in my mind 
I was thinking that's where Bin Laden is, because that's what we'd 
been told."

She knows better now, she says, about the failure to find a 
connection between Bin Laden and Iraq, about the failure to prove the 
existence of weapons of mass destruction.  (Emma Brockes, "The Lie 

Why should we quietly let her or the disabled soldier learn the hard 
way without giving them a fair warning, even if the warning is 
probably lost on the majority of people to whom we say that the 
Democratic Party is not only not the solution but in fact one of the 
most difficult obstacles to overcome if we wish remake the United 
States into a nation that can stay out of any war even for one year, 
to say nothing of anything better than that.

Yoshie

>From a previous post (Jim C): 

If I had been in the position of interviewing that mother who was at the
White House asking why her son was dead in Fahrenheit 9-11, I would have
had no choice but to have asked her if she had ever considered how many
innocents her little Johnny had killed before he himself had been
killed; I would have had to have asked that question if for no other
reason than respect and sorrow for the victims of the imperial machine
of which her little Johnny had once been a willing part and accomplice.

Jim C.


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