Richard Bennett

Adam Michnik, a leading force in the Solidarity trade union movement, and the founder and editor of the largest Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, was an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq, along with Vaclav Havel and other leaders of the Polish Liberation movement. In this interview, which occurred in Warsaw on January 15, 2004, Michnik clarifies his position on the war and discusses the responses of other European intellectuals. The interviewer is Dissent Magazine’s Thomas Cushman.

Thomas Cushman: In your writing you often criticize utopian politics. It seems that George W. Bush’s vision (or that of his neoconservative advisers) is a utopian vision: destroying totalitarianism and instituting democracy. A large part of the reaction against Bush seems to be focused on his revival of some kind of American messianism. How do you reconcile your criticism of utopian thinking with support of this seeming American utopianism?

Adam Michnik: Bush has a utopian ideology . . . maybe not Bush, but maybe his circle. Perhaps I’m being na?ve, but I don’t think it is utopian to want to install democratic rule in Iraq. If it won’t be an ideal democracy, let it be a crippled democracy, but let it not be a totalitarian dictatorship. I don’t like many things in today’s Russia, but we have to say that there is a difference between Putin and Stalin. In my opinion, the religious visions of Bush’s circle are anachronistic. I can’t believe that John Ashcroft has personal conversations with God every day, who tells him what to do. But if God told him that he should destroy Saddam, then this was the right advice, because a world without Saddam Hussein is better than a world with Saddam Hussein.

Even God gets it right sometimes.

So the Michael Moore fans are backpedaling, and claiming that he doesn’t really say what he really says in Fahrenheit 9/11 about special treatment for the bin Laden family members in the US. See the next post by my Bolshevik co-blogger for a good example of this head-in-the-sand posturing.

I’ve seen Michael Moore on the Letterman show and on This Week with George Stephanopoulos saying that the president was paid-off by the Saudis to give special treatment to them; the figure he quotes is $1.4 billion, the alleged value of a series of business deals. The way he puts it is: “hey, if you paid me $1.4 Billion, I’d give you special treatment too.” In the movie, he uses Craig Unger to make this charge.

So we should be clear that Moore alleges special treatment was given to Saudis in general, and to bin Ladens in particular. This special treatment was in two forms, according to Moore: they were allowed to fly when others weren’t. Moore told Letterman he wanted to fly on Sept. 13th, when a bin Laden did, but that he couldn’t. He alleges that the Saudis weren’t properly screened, and quotes Unger in this connection:

I do argue — accurately — that the bin Ladens and other Saudis were whisked out of the country without being subjected to a serious investigation.

All in all, he alleges that national security was breached by President Bush in order to give special treatment to the bin Ladens, all in the interest of money.

So why is it that Moore and his stooges now want to back away from this charges?

Because they aren’t true, as the staff report (cited below) confirms.

Some of the dead-enders are still buying Michael Moore’s claim that bin Laden family members were whisked out of the country hours after the 9/11 attacks by the Bush family in order to prevent them from being checked by the FBI for complicity in the attacks. Moore goes into a lengthy analysis on his web site of business connections between Bushes and bin Ladens to explain such an event, which wouldn’t be appropriate unless you believe that it actually took place. But no bin Ladens or other Saudis were permitted to leave the US while the air space was closed, and none were permitted to leave without proper screening. Here’s the 9/11 Commission’s staff report on The Saudi Flights:

National air space was closed on September 11. Fearing reprisals against Saudi nationals, the Saudi government asked for help in getting some of its citizens out of the country. We have not yet identified who they contacted for help. But we have found that the request came to the attention of Richard Clarke and that each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.

No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace.

The Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security, and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country. Thirty of the 142 people on these flights were interviewed by the FBI, including 22 of the 26 people (23 passengers and 3 private security guards) on the Bin Ladin flight. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity.

The FBI checked a variety of databases for information on the Bin Ladin flight passengers and searched the aircraft. It is unclear whether the TIPOFF terrorist watchlist was checked. At our request, the Terrorist Screening Center has rechecked the names of individuals on the flight manifests of these six Saudi flights against the current TIPOFF watchlist. There are no matches.

The FBI has concluded that nobody was allowed to depart on these six flights who the FBI wanted to interview in connection with the 9/11 attacks, or who the FBI later concluded had any involvement in those attacks. To date, we have uncovered no evidence to contradict this conclusion.

Moore attempts to create the mistaken impression that bin Ladens were ferried out of the country improperly by citing a flight out of Tampa, Florida on Sept. 13th. This flight did take place, but on a date when commercial air traffic had resumed, and to a destination in Lexington, KY. You won’t hear any mention of Lexington in Moore’s movie, but you will be lead to believe that the Tampa flight was loaded to the gills with bin Ladens and that it headed for a foreign destination.

Once more, Moore lies, and the meme is out there.

BTW, you should see Jeff Jarvis’s review. He actually saw the movie, and deserves our sympathy.

Armond White’s critique – from the left – of Fahrenheit 9/11 is an excellent read:

Propaganda like Fahrenheit 9/11 won’t help today’s moviegoers gain political insight. Moore’s condescension settles on young GIs wounded in Iraq, now in a veterans’ hospital (where they face lost funding and benefits). One vet gives Moore what he wants: “I’m going to be very active this year and make sure that the Democrats take power.” We’re not supposed to remember the opening sequence that showed Democrats complicit with Bush’s ascension and the invasion of Iraq. Moore, as desultory as Jerry Bruckheimer, simply wants to get a rise out of us. Like Tarantino, he’s uninterested in making movies that show how the world really works.

Godard’s criticism of the film included at no extra charge. Via Winds of Change.

Athena has dug up this wonderful piece from Captain Ed on the non-cooperation between Osama and Saddam from The Guardian, that great and compliant organ of Republican propaganda (not):

Saddam Hussein’s regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.

The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad’s ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam’s most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.

The Saudi-born fundamentalist’s response is unknown. He is thought to have rejected earlier Iraqi advances, disapproving of the Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime. But analysts believe that Bin Laden’s bolthole in Afghanistan, where he has lived for the past three years, is now in doubt as a result of increasing US and Saudi government pressure.

News of the negotiations emerged in a week when the US attorney general, Janet Reno, warned the Senate that a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction was a growing concern. “There’s a threat, and it’s real,” Ms Reno said, adding that such weapons “are being considered for use.”

Impossible, right? Heh.

Christopher Hitchens certainly can turn a phrase:

To describe [Fahrenheit 9/11] as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.

Hitchens isn’t alone in his contempt for this movie; Ray Bradbury, the man who wrote the story whose title Moore stole, says Moore has no regard for truth.

But Moore has his fans as well as his detractors. Dan Gillmor, Joi Ito, and Cory Doctorow complain that Bradbury is victimizing Moore on the misleading use his title, and then there are these allies:

The movie industry publication Screen Daily reported, ?In terms of marketing the film, [distributor] Front Row is getting a boost from organizations related to Hezbollah which have rung up from Lebanon to ask if there?s anything they can do to support the film.?

Which side are you on, gentle reader?