Informed Comment

Fahrenheit 9/11

I saw Michael Moore’s new film in Ann Arbor at the midnight show last Thursday, thinking I might say something about it over the weekend. But social commitments of a pleasant sort kept me away from the keyboard, and I don’t know when I will get to posting extended comments.

The film is inspired polemic, and I enjoyed it (if that is the word–the second half was painful). It has some serious flaws of argumentation. I thought the best parts were where Moore just let the footage speak for itself.

It struck me during the second half how seldom one sees in mainstream US media any extended interviews with Iraqis who vehemently oppose the US occupation. Since these are probably by now a solid majority, according to polls, it is odd that we never hear from that point of view. There is an undertone of patriotism or even nationalism to national American news that is peculiar if one looks at the industrialized democracies in Europe, e.g.

The film has an affecting scene of a woman screaming that her innocent, civilian relatives had been killed, and calling down curses on the US (yikhrib buyuthum, may God demolish their houses). Given the thousands of Iraqis killed in the past 14 months, there must be a lot of persons who feel that way. Moore is the only one showing them to us, to my knowledge.

I thought the point that Bush spent a lot of time away from Washington in his first 8 months in office was well made, and dovetails with the revelations of former anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke about Bush’s unconcern with the terrorism threat. The way in which the Iraq war was a manipulated get-up job was also graphically and well portrayed. Likewise the cynical use of the “war on terror” to erode Americans’ basic civil liberties is appropriately presented in canny and strident tones (James Madison would have been strident about this, too).

The interview with Michigan congressman John Conyers in which Conyers reveals that no one in Congress was allowed to read the Patriot Act before voting on it was breathtaking. I recently sat next to Conyers on a plane, and he explained to me that the final version of the bill, which had been very extensively changed, was delivered the night before the vote. He said it wasn’t strange for a few minor changes to be made at such a late stage, but that it was his impression that virtually a new bill was dropped on the hapless Congress at the last moment. It is huge, and would have been impossible to read all the way through with attention under those circumstances.

The Patriot Act is so radical a departure from the American Civil Liberties tradition that if its most radical provisions are made permanent, as Bush desires, I think it would be legitimate to date from 2001 the Second American Republic. It is a much impoverished republic compared to the first, and ominously intertwined with Imperial themes. If Moore makes anyone angry about anything, I hope it is this.

I thought the bit connecting Bush to the Saudis was full of illogic. Wealthy people in the oil business are going to have relations with the Saudis, who at their best rates can produce 11 million of the 76 million barrels of oil pumped daily in the world. The Saudis can also get along with pumping 7 million barrels a day, so they are a pivotal swing producer and can affect the price deeply.

Another viewer asked me if it were true that the Saudis own 7% of the US economy, which was the impression the person brought away from the film. I’m not sure that is what Moore asserted, but it in any case cannot possibly be true. I think he said they had invested $700 billion in the US. Actually, total Saudi investments worldwide are about $700 bn., with about 60% in the US, or $420 bn. It is a nice chunk of change (and helps keep the US economy from collapsing from unwise US policies like running $500 bn. deficits–but note that one year of Bush deficits equals the whole value of all Saudi investment!). But even just the goods and services produced every year in the US amount to about $11 trillion. Moore seems to have started out by claiming that the Saudi investment equals 7% of the New York Stock Exchange. But NYSE investments amount to $15 trillion. My back of the envelope calculation is that Saudi investments are actually about 2.8 percent of that. Then Moore truncated that to “7% of the US economy.” But the latter is not what he really meant to say. To get that, you’d have to know how much all existing property in the US is worth, and figure the proportion of it represented by $420 bn. The Saudis don’t own more than a tiny proportion of the privately held wealth in the US. They are not even the major foreign investor in the US– The British, Dutch, and Japanese top them.

Moreover, if it is true that the Saudis have so much invested in this country, then it makes no sense for wealthy Saudi entrepreneurs and governing figures to wish the US harm. Can you imagine the bath Saudi investments took here after 9/11? The Saudi royals and the Bin Ladens lounging about in places like Orlando, who were airlifted out lest they be massacred after the attacks, didn’t know anything about the apocalyptic plots hatched in dusty Qandahar, and if they had they would have blown the whistle on them with the US so as to avoid losing everything they had.

The Saudi bashing in the Moore film makes no sense. It is true that some of the hijackers were Saudis, but that is only because Bin Laden hand-picked some Saudi muscle at the last minute to help the brains of the operation, who were Egyptians, Lebanese, Yemenis, etc. Bin Laden did that deliberately, in hopes of souring US/Saudi relations so that he could the better overthrow the Saudi government.

The implication one often hears from Democrats that the US should have invaded Saudi Arabia and Pakistan after the Afghan war rather than Iraq is just another kind of warmongering and illogical. There is no evidence that either the Saudi or the Pakistani government was complicit in 9/11.

The story Moore tells about the Turkmenistan gas pipeline project through Afghanistan and Pakistan also makes no sense. First, why would it be bad for the Turkmenistanis to be able to export their natural gas? What is wicked about all that? It is true that some forces wanted the pipeline so badly that they even were willing to deal with the Taliban, but this was before Bin Laden started serious operations against the US from Afghan soil, beginning in 1998 with the East Africa embassy bombings.

In any case, if Bush had been supporting the Taliban, why did he then overthrow them? If it was because they turned out not to be a Mussolini type of government that made the trains run on time, but rather to be supporters of international terrorism, then wasn’t it logical for Bush to turn against them? The mid-90s temptation to support the Taliban, who seemed to be bringing order to Afghanistan (albeit the order of the mass grave) was bipartisan. Moore says Afghan president Karzai had been involved in the earlier pipeline plan, and now is president. I still cannot understand why the pipeline is evil. Afghanistans would collect $2 bn. a year on tolls, and the Turkmen would be lifted out of poverty, and Pakistan and India might have a new reason to cooperate rather than fighting. I personally wish it could be built immediately. It doesn’t explain the US Afghan war (one thing cannot explain both the temptation to coddle the Taliban and the determination to get rid of them). The US only intervened to overthrow the Taliban reluctantly, and because it was the only way to get at al-Qaeda, which needed to be rooted out.

So, I think the second half the the film, on Bush’s Iraq policy, has virtues. He turns out to have been prescient about how fictitious the reasons for the war were. But some of the innuendo about the Saudis and Afghans just seems an attempt to damn by association, and seem to me to be based on faulty logic and innacurate assertions.

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$2 Billion Unaccounted for In CPA Handling of Iraq Finances

The BBC reports that of nearly $20 billion in Iraqi money that the Coalition Provisional Authority had authority over during the past year, some $2 billion is unaccounted for.

The report says, ‘ Helen Collinson, from Christian Aid, said: “For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq’s money.” ‘

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Iraq Haunts Bush in Istanbul

Nabil al-Tikriti, who teaches history part-time at Loyola University New Orleans, writes Sunday from Istanbul:

‘ Hello:

There are 15 million people in Istanbul who [are extremely hostile to] Bush. So that he could get a private tour of Topkapi and the rest of Istanbul during this NATO summit, they have closed the following for THREE DAYS: coast road from the airport to Dolmabahce, Galata Bridge, Taksim Square, Besiktas stadium valley, Sirkeci ferry terminals, and the first Bosphorus bridge. Last night we couldn’t cross the coast road to view the sunrise from the Marmara. Today we can’t get to the islands, because the ferry terminals are closed. Surreal. I’m trying to figure out how to leave my Sultanahmet hotel to get over to Beyoglu for the next couple of days. They recommended before the summit that everyone just leave town, and yesterday everyone I tried to contact was on their way to their summer holiday on the beach. It was like Thanksgiving Wednesday in the US.

Anyone who knows Istanbul knows that such a closure literally turns the city into an open-air prison. There are snipers posted on the next building to our hotel, constant military helicopters buzzing around, and naval craft cruising offshore. If only for sacrificing three days of their life for Bush’s secure comfort, people here are furious. The trend in the past couple of years has been to hold such summits in remote locations. What brainchild decided to hold this summit smack in the center of one of the world’s largest cities, with hostility running so high?

The bilateral meeting between Bush and Turkish PM Erdogan this morning was a thing of beauty. Bush said: “our disagreements in the past year are behind us, it’s time to look to the future.” That was diplomatic code for “I’m sorry I called you names last year when you stopped us from sending 40,000 troops across your territory to invade your neighbor. Help, for God’s sake!” The Turkish reaction was a rather smug and quiet sort of:

“You’ll not be taking me for granted anytime soon. Good luck in Iraq, my friend. There’s still that matter of billions of USD public debt you promised to forgive. Put up or shut up. Oh, and don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

I just spent three days at a conference entitled “A Future for Our Past,” which was the opening salvo of a group called “Istanbul Initiative.” The goal of the group is to advocate for protection of cultural patrimonies worldwide, starting with Iraq. All the heavy-hitters concerning the Iraq artifacts issue were present: Donny George, McGuire Gibson, and several others. There was a delegation of Iraqis . . . joined by lawyers active in fighting the artifacts dealers, representatives of the British Museum, Yale, Chicago, Dutch military, Turkish Foreign Ministry, and several Turkish scholars.

At the end of the conference, we were asked to submit suggestions for a common declaration. When I suggested that there should be a call for restitution to the Iraqi state by the UK and US governments, as well as criminal prosecution of the individuals responsible for bringing about the conditions leading to the wholesale destruction of Iraq’s cultural patrimony (archaeological sites, Baghdad Museum, manuscript collections, provincial museums — all burned and/or looted), there was a largely positive reaction (although as it was not complete consensus, it probably won’t make the final cut).

The Turks and Iraqis, none of whom had ever met, hit it off quite well — a relationship that should continue well into the future. When the declaration is finalized, I’ll forward it . . .

Cheers,

Nabil ‘

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Clarke: Invasion of Iraq an Enormous Mistake

In a speech in Orlando, former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke said, according to AP:

‘ The invasion of Iraq was an ”enormous mistake” that is costing untold lives, strengthening al-Qaida and breeding a new generation of terrorists, former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said Saturday.

”We did exactly what al-Qaida said we would do invade and occupy an oil-rich Arab country that wasn’t threatening us in any way,” Clarke said before giving the keynote address at the American Library Association’s annual convention in Orlando. ”The hatred that has been engendered by this invasion will last for generations. . .” ‘

”We won the Cold War by, yes, having good strong military forces but also by competing in the battle of ideas against the Communists,” Clarke later told the librarians. ”We have to do that with the jihadists.”

He referred to the Abu Ghuraib prison scandal in this regard.

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Attacks Target Party Offices in Iraq

Al-Hayat: Guerrilla attacks on Saturday concentrated on party offices of parties allied with the United States. Gunmen attacked the HQ of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in Baqubah, killing 4 persons. Others blew up the HQ of the Iraqi National Accord, the party of caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. In the northern Kurdish city of Irbil, center of the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Massoud Barzani, a car bomb exploded, killing one person and wounding 40 others, including the Kurdish minister of culture, Mahmoud Muhammad.

In the southern Shiite city of Hilla, a car bomb exploded in the center of the city, killing at least 32 and wounding 42, according to AFP.

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Should Cheney be Fined $275,000?

Vice President Dick Cheney shouted “go fuck yourself!” at inoffensive Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, at a photo opportunity on the Senate floor earlier this week. On Friday he told Fox Cable News, “I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it.”

Now, it seems to me that the Senate floor is public space, paid for by the public. And in this regard, there is no difference between it and the public airwaves, which the public also owns.

We know what the Republicans in the Senate think about the use of obscenities on the airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission under the chairmanship of Michael Powell, son of the secretary of state, has waged a campaign of harassment and persecution against broadcasters who use colorful language on the airwaves, especially Howard Stern. Clear Channel dropped Stern and had to pay $1.75 million in fines for his and other infractions. The Republican-controlled Senate even attached a rider to a defense bill (!) raising the fine for a single infraction from $27,500 to $275,000. What I take away from all this is that the Republicans in the Senate are against using the word “fuck” in public spaces of discourse, owned by the public.

Personally, I think people who don’t want to hear Howard Stern should change the channel. The one thing Reagan was right about is that there are areas where we should get the Federal government off our backs. Speaking as we please is one of them, and Jefferson and Madison thought so, too. If the Powell FCC is going to take public ownership of the airwaves so seriously, then it should restore them to us and take them away from the corporations to whom it is has given them away for practically nothing. They used at least to offer us something like real news in return for this gift, worth trillions, but now some of them take our airwaves and use them to feed us propaganda by persons dressed like news anchors but who are actually professional spinmeisters.

Howard Stern no doubt feels better when he gets some blue language off his chest, too. So I propose that Mr. Cheney be made to pay $275,000 for fouling the air of the Senate in the way that he did. Should he feel the need to feel good again, he should be aware that the second offense in the Senate bill costs $500,000.

And, I propose that the fine go to vocational training for the disadvantaged people that Cheney has made a career of stomping all over.

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US Kills 20 in Fallujah Bombing

Muqtada condemns Thursday’s Terrorism

The US air force bombed Fallujah again on Friday, hitting a safehouse of the al-Tawhid and al-Jihad organization of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and killing 20 fighters. Some reports, apparently based on aerial surveillance, suggested that they just missed Zarqawi. I’m not sure, though, how you tell that from the top of someone’s head, and remain skeptical about these kinds of claims. We on the outside don’t know where they come from or how reliable they are, and it is more convenient for the CPA to claim it almost got Zarqawi than to admit that they tried and missed (i.e failed). The US resort to bombing suggests how weak it is in Fallujah, since it means it could not commit troops to an attack on the safehouse. There is now a plan to set up a security perimeter around Fallujah to curb the activities of the jihadis based there. But I had read several weeks ago that such a security perimeter had already been implemented. Has it lapsed?

The American news media often phrased this bombing as an attack on “al-Qaeda.” But these al-Tawhid fighters never pledged loyalty to Bin Laden, and most probably never fought in Afghanistan. Zarqawi, who did, was never part of al-Qaeda and when he was in Germany he refused to share al-Tawhid resources with al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda anyway is not a top-down organization with a flow chart and a CEO. But I think it is downright misleading to call al-Tawhid by that name. Al-Tawhid is al-Tawhid. The Bush administration no doubt likes this shorthand because it reinforces the dubious point that the war in Iraq has something to do with the war on terror.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat: Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq until June 30, issued arrest warrants for three radical Sunni clerics in Fallujah on Friday. They include Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, the leader of the “Holy Warriors Front” in the city, Sheikh Zahir al-Ubaidi, and Sheikh Umar Hadid. All three have been accused of leading the resistance to occupation in Fallujah. Al-Janabi and al-Ubaidi in particular had been accused recently of being implicated in the murder of 6 Shiite truck drivers from the al-Rubai’ah tribe near Fallujah, and desecrating their bodies. They have denied the charge, which caused substantial Sunni-Shiite tension.

The Friday prayers leaders in Fallujah condemned the American forces for “engaging in acts of enmity toward the population” of the city.

Hamza Hendawi of AP reports that preachers throughout Iraq have been giving anti-American sermons for the past few weeks. Here are some quotes from his important piece:

‘ “American soldiers are infidels,” said Youssef Khodeir, a Sunni sheik and imam of Saad Bani Moaz mosque in Baqouba, scene of the heaviest fighting Thursday. “The blood that is being shed every day is because we are not closing our ranks. The source of all power comes from adhering to the Qur’an . . .”

[Speaking of America supposedly bringing freedom,]Mohammed Bashar, told worshipers in Mosul that what America really wanted was “the freedom to kill and arrest Iraqis . . .”

“Al-Zarqawi is a myth created by America,” sheik Aous al-Khafaji told hundreds of worshipers in Sadr City, where U.S. troops and al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army have clashed for 2½ months . . .

“We hope that after June 30 Iraqis will be united, loyal to their nation and not allow foreigners to interfere in their affairs,” Sunni cleric Niema Hassan told a congregation at the Grand Mosque in Basra.

He also quotes a number of mosque preachers who condemned the killing of Iraqis by the bombings on Thursday (this is a critique of the foreign jihadis), and some who expressed hopes about the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi. (Recent polling in Iraq suggests that Iraqis are largely willing to give the caretaker government a chance, and want it to succeed in restoring security.)

Edward Cody of the Washington Post reports that Muqtada al-Sadr and his lieutenants joined in the condemnations. Muqtada ‘ ordered his followers to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi police in Sadr City to “deprive the terrorists and saboteurs of the chance to incite chaos and extreme lawlessness. ‘ The Mahdi Army distributed a pamphlet that said, ‘ We know the Mahdi Army is ready to cooperate actively and positively with honest elements from among the Iraqi police and other patriotic forces, to partake in safeguarding government buildings and facilities, such as hospitals, electricity plants, water, fuel and oil refineries, and any other site that might be a target for terrorist attacks.”

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat: Muqtada’s spokesman in East Baghdad, Aws al-Khafaji, affirmed that the Mahdi Army would not attack the US if the US did not attack it. In Najaf, followers of Muqtada prevented Friday prayers from being held for a second week in a row. The conflict has become a little bit bizarre and hard to follow. Earlier, the Sadrists had complained that the sermon was being given by Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, local leader of their rival, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But someone replaced al-Qubanji with Khalid al-Numani. A Sadr spokesman said that he talked to the son of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who insisted that Sistani still backed Qubanji for the job and had not appointed al-Numani. The Sadrists then demonstrated against al-Numani on the grounds that he had not been appointed by Sistani. (But they had also not let Sistani’s appointee, al-Qubanji, lead the prayers last week!) As with many reports from Iraq that make no sense on the surfance, it is certain that some complex back story has been omitted. (Do the Sadrists suspect that al-Numani has been placed in Najaf as an agent of the Americans?)

The WP also gives a more detailed overview of the attack in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad. It is still unclear who exactly launched the attack. The WP report says that the US troops counted it as a major victory that they killed a local leader of the Buhriz resistance, Husain Ali Sibti, last week. That is an indisputably Shiite name, which brought me up short. Diyala, where Baquba is located, is a mixed Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish region. If Sibti was leading the fighting in Buhriz, it was a local Shiite uprising of some sort. (But what sort? The Sadrists have largely stood down. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is strong in Baqubah,but it is allied for the moment with the Americans. It must be a local Shiite group with local grievances).

If in fact foreign jihadis allied with Zarqawi played a role in Thursday’s attacks in Baqubah itself, it means that the action was unconnected to the Shiite uprising in Buhriz. The Sunni jihadis hate the guts of Shiites. Al-Sharq al-Awsat/AFP report that local Fallujans are annoyed by the attacks–mainly on the police–and blame it on foreign Arabs. An eyewitness, Abdul Salam, said “The armed persons who attacked my house and burned it, and who entered it, were Arab terrorists, one of them Egyptian and another Lebanese, and there were Arabs among them of other nationalities . . . The problem is that there are people from among the inhabitants of the city who help and support them and give them refuge in their homes. If it weren’t for that, it would be difficult for them to continue with their work.”

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