Jacob Segal wrote:
>
> ;
>
> The ends justify the means? Nothing succeeds like success? Color me
> unimpressed.
>
> Why can't Moore try to show the interrelation of American foreign/military
> with oil interests without the implications that the Afghan war was
> primarily about oil? The Afghan war maybe was wrong but it surely had a
> legitimate purpose, along with being part of the expansion of business
> interests. Can't Moore hold two ideas in his head at the same time?
>
(I agree with everything C.G.E. said in his post.)
See Moore's film as half of an agitational leaflet -- the color, the slogan that catches the eye as it is handed out. It needs to be completed by a leaflet handed out by people representing some local anti-war group. It's up to the various local groups to decide what they want to emphasize.
I don't believe films (or any other kind of art) by themselves can have much if any political impact. However strongly the audience is impacted, after they go away the impact will gradually wear off.
In the mid-70s my classes regularly had an extremely strong impact on a goodly scattering of students. (I didn't politicize them, I presented the material historically.) They would come to my office and engage in long and fascinating conversations. Some of them would proceed to argue left positions in the class room. And then they would go on with their lives and that would be that. It's the same with a movie like Moore's. It may have an impact, but that impact disappears unless it is first translated into practice and that practice then incorporates propaganda through which they deepend and broaden their understanding. (I am using the words agitation and propaganda as they were used in the Second International.)
The errors or extravagances of Moore's film will be quickly forgotten.
And who the hell reads Hitchens that we should give a damn what points he scores.
It's hard to pin down the immediate contingent reasons for actions in defense of the empire. Oil is as good a peg as any. And the Afghanistan War had about as many good sides as the Manson gang. It would be a serious mistake to acknowledge any redeeming features whatever of that war. It was a simple crime against humanity (whereas 9/11 was a simple and horrible crime against a few thousand people).
Probably Oil is as good a peg to hang that war and the present war on as any. Certainly the beginning of the War, the overthrow of Mossedegh 50 years ago, was about oil.
Carrol
Carrol