I have just attended the Polish premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11 and it compelled me to restart my blog.
What can I say about the film? That it’s biased and one-sided? Yes. That it’s manipulating facts? Yes? That it’s deceitful? NO! Michael Moore has done his best to manipulate the information that he has chosen to put forth in a manner which communicates a specific message. He has done exactly what the television channel FOX News has done during it’s war coverage, he has done the administration of George W. Bush has done before the war. He only did it in the other direction.
There is one thing which I would like to add to the film, because I feel it is important and I feel it has been left out. It concerns the vice-president Dick Chaney and of course his former employer Halliburton.
When the first George Bush was president Dick Cheney was in charge of defense and when the first war in Iraq started he decided to hire a private company to conduct some of the services the army needed, such as food, communication, logistics. Soldiers of course could be used for all those purposes, but there aren’t that many soldiers to go around and a private contractor would potentially be more economical. It seemed like a good idea and the company Halliburton was hired to do the job.
When president Bush’s term of office ended Dick Cheney was hired by the company he hired as it’s chairman C.E.O. All’s well that ends well, right?
Not quite. Eight years later, amazingly another man named George Bush was elected president of the United States. And in an even more spectacular twist another war in Iraq came about. This time around Dick Chaney was the second-in-command, the vice president. As should be expected he hired his own company to do the reconstruction and war-assistance work in Iraq. The money involved is astronomical, go ahead and Google it up.
And this time Halliburton was not just cleaning latrines and cooking. The firm was hired to do everything from oil-drilling and reconstruction to active military service. This means that armed employees of Halliburton are working alongside regular soldiers. The main difference between them is that the mercenaries are there of their own accord, they earn about three times as much and are able to leave whenever they wish.
The reasoning behind the decisions which led to this situation is well in line with the ideals of the American Republican party. They wish to eliminate ‘big government’ in any form and to privatize everything from health insurance to… war.
There is just one problem with this situation, because it creates a new class of people on the battlefield. People who earn their living thanks to war, people who have no reason to wish the war would end. In fact it would be much more beneficial for them if the war lasted, because otherwise they are out of an extremely lucrative job ($10’000 per month does not come easily, with no higher education required).
This is an extremely dangerous situation!!!
On a somewhat different note: Do you know the American word “cronyism”? It sounds so nice, and is derived from the word ‘crony’, which means a close friend and sounds almost as cute as ‘pony’. It’s intriguing that that is the only term used in American public discourse to describe half-legal closeness of ties between giant business and politics and politicians.
I guess plutocracy is too hard a term to grasp.