Joe W.
>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Double Standard: Israel and Saudi Arabia
>Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:57:36 -0400
>
>>[lbo-talk] Double Standard: Israel and Saudi Arabia
>>Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
>>Fri Jul 9 13:26:29 PDT 2004
><snip>
>>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>>>If Michael Moore or anyone else made a film similar to Fahrenheit
>>>9/11 about Tel Aviv and Washington, employing the same techniques of
>>>suggestions and insinuations he employed regarding Riyadh and
>>>Washington, I'm sure that there will be a loud chorus of boos and
>>>hisses against Moore, including from you.
>>
>>What in god's name are you talking about? I'd hiss if Moore or anyone
>>said that a Zionist cabal controlled U.S. policy. But if someone made the
>>point that the U.S. and Israel have collaborated for decades in a violent
>>project of repression, I'd applaud in agreement. And what "insinuations"
>>about Riyadh and Washington? The film took the position that there was a
>>deep collaborative pursuit of oil-based accumulation that joined the U.S.
>>and Saudi ruling classes. Are you somehow claiming there's something
>>anti-Arab about criticizing the Saudi regime as the corrupt and
>>reactionary thing it is?
>>
>>Doug
>
>Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory?
>
>Some left-wing viewers of Fahrenheit 9/11 -- perhaps out of wishful
>thinking? -- believe that the film makes an argument that Riyadh and
>Washington "have collaborated for decades in a violent project of
>repression" (Doug Henwood, LBO-talk, July 9, 2004) based only on
>well-checked facts provided by credible experts (Dennis Redmond, LBO-talk,
>July 9, 2004). I wish that Fahrenheit 9/11 made such an argument, but it
>doesn't, even though, if only Michael Moore had wanted to do so, he had
>mountains of indisputable facts readily available to all that he could have
>used to provide historical analysis, which, with his talent for sharp
>satire, he could have also made as entertaining as the film he did make:
>e.g.,
>
>As Saudi Arabia's longtime chief of intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal
>helped nurture the Afghan resistance movement that begot the country's
>Taliban leadership. . . .
>
>Saudis trace their policy to the early days of the anti-Soviet resistance
>in Afghanistan after the 1979 invasion. The call to fight with the Afghan
>mujaheddin rang loud here in the 1980s, echoing from mosques, government
>offices and local charities, through upper-class homes and rural villages,
>and prompting an estimated 15,000 Saudis to join the resistance against
>Soviet occupation of Muslim Afghanistan. Among them was bin Laden, who
>joined fundraising activities in Pakistan and later fought in Afghanistan.
>
>Money flowed from the coffers of the oil-rich kingdom -- by some accounts,
>as much as $1 billion -- to supply and arm fighters gathering under the
>tutelage of U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services. Volunteers simply
>signed up for "relief work," one Saudi recalled, and flew off on deeply
>discounted air tickets, courtesy of Saudi Arabian Airlines. National guard
>members could even take paid leave to join the fight.
>
>"We helped them with everything," said a high-ranking Saudi intelligence
>official. "They thought it was Islamic war, and Muslims wanted to help."
>(Howard Schneider, "Saudi Missteps Helped Bin Laden Gain Power: Kingdom
>Funded Taliban, Predecessors," Washington Post, October 15, 2001, p. A1)
>
>That, by the say, is is a fact that Prince Bander does not hide (because he
>doesn't need to, as there is no American consensus about the evil of having
>teamed up with Riyadh, Islamabad, etc. to fight against the Soviets),
>frankly discussing it on Larry King Live:
>
>KING: What was the circumstance under which you met him?
>
>PRINCE BANDAR: This is ironic. In the mid-'80s, if you remember, we and the
>United -- Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen
>to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He came to thank me for my
>efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the
>atheists, he said the communists.
>
>Isn't it ironic?
>
>KING: How ironic. In other words, he came to thank you for helping bring
>America to help him.
>
>PRINCE BANDAR: Right.
>
>KING: And now he may be responsible for bombing Americans.
>
>PRINCE BANDAR: Absolutely. ("America's New War: Responding to Terrorism,"
>Larry King Live, October 1, 2001)
>
>Moore includes this clip in Fahrenheit 9/11, but he doesn't follow it up,
>because he cannot afford to. In order to analyze the problem of decades of
>collaboration between Washington and Riyadh as well as other unsavory
>allies, fighting against the Communists, nationalists, and other official
>enemies of Washington during and after the Cold War, he would have to go
>beyond the crimes of the George W. Bush administration, but doing so would
>implicate Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (as well as all presidents of the
>United States, especially the ones who came into power after the US
>decidedly replaced Britain and France as the hegemonic imperial power) in
>the violent project of repression inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
>
>Instead, Michael Moore turns to conspiracy theory based upon the weakest
>contentions made by Dan Briody, Jack Cloonan (a former senior agent on the
>joint FBI-CIA Al-Qaeda task force), Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota),
>James Moore, and Craig Unger, making suggestions and insinuations that lead
>the audience to suspect that George W. Bush is guilty of protecting --
>because of his business ties -- the other bin Ladens and Saudi royals who
>are implicated in aiding Osama bin Laden's terrorism, including the 9/11
>terrorist attacks. If it may be said that there is an "argument" in the
>part of the film that concerns Riyadh and Washington at all, it goes
>something like this:
>
>* Many if not all of the bin Ladens are probably guilty of aiding Osama bin
>Laden financially and otherwise, at least all the way up to the
>masterminding of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Why, some of them attended the
>wedding of one of Osama bin Laden's sons in Afghanistan: "In the summer of
>2001 just before 9/11, one of Osama's sons got married in Afghanistan and
>several family members showed up at the wedding" (Craig Unger, Fahrenheit
>9/11)!
>
>* Riyadh and Washington know that at least some -- perhaps many -- of the
>bin Ladens are guilty, in league with Osama bin Laden, so they went out of
>their way to protect them after the 9/11 attacks, facilitating their safe
>departure from the United States after only cursory questionings by the
>FBI.
>
>* Since Saudi investors have invested in the US economy to the tune of $860
>billion (in total, according to Unger in the film) and maybe even $1
>trillion (in the US banks alone, according to what Moore says he heard from
>an unnamed source), and some of the bin Ladens, through James R. Bath and
>the Carlyle Group, have had business ties with the Bushes, the Bush
>administration cannot afford to get tough on the Saudi financiers of Osama
>bin Laden.
>
>* The best way to combat Al Qaida and other extreme Islamist cells and
>groups is to cut off the Saudi financing of them.
>* Since Bush is incapable of biting the Saudi hands that have fed him, we
>must "re-unelect" him and elect John Kerry, who, unlike the Bushes, will go
>medieval on the Saudi rich and stop Saudi-financed international terrorism.
>
>Now, the Bushes have had business ties with some of the bin Ladens and
>political ties with the Saudi royals, but the "experts" to whom Moore turns
>don't have the goods, so to speak, to make a solid case that any of the bin
>Ladens other than Osama was implicated in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and
>that Bush nevertheless protected them, knowing that they were really
>guilty.
>
>In short, Moore refuses to build his case on the known facts about the long
>historical relation between Riyadh and Washington to which Prince Bander
>admits publicly and instead goes after speculations about Bush's secret
>conspiracy to protect the guilty bin Ladens and Saudi royals -- and perhaps
>also himself -- from the FBI's questioning concerning the 9/11 terrorist
>attacks, in the process indulging feverish imaginations of 9/11 conspiracy
>theorists among the audience. Why? Because Moore of Fahrenheit 9/11, in
>contrast to Moore of Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine, is interested
>in protecting the Democratic Party from responsibility -- especially its
>responsibility for the consequences of decades of collaboration between
>Riyadh and Washington in particular and US foreign policy in general: the
>decline of secular left-wing movements and governments, the rise of extreme
>Islamist organizations, and increased dangers of lethal terrorist attacks
>everywhere.
>
>That said, let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the
>allegations mentioned in Fahrenheit 9/11 concerning the ties among the
>Bushes, the Saudi royals, the other bin Ladens, and Osama bin Laden are
>100% true, and that John Kerry will indeed take a much tougher stance on
>the rich and powerful in Saudi Arabia than Bush would. Still, I don't think
>that Kerry can solve the problem of terrorism at all, as terrorists do not
>need big money to commit mass murders, as Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the
>federal building in Oklahoma proved to us. All they need is brains and
>discipline.
>
>Besides, for the reasons that Ashraf Fahim mentions in his article "John
>Kerry's Sucker Saudi Punch" (Asia Times, June 10, 2004), I believe that
>Kerry's anti-Saudi posturing will remain just that -- posturing in an
>election year. As long as Washington, be it under the Republican or
>Democratic White House, is committed to keeping its status as empire,
>running on deficits to police the capitalist world order fueled by oil, it
>cannot countenance democracy in the Middle East, least of all in Saudi
>Arabia, as there is no guarantee that democracy will bring about even more
>pro-American allies than the existing pro-American regimes in the
>predominantly Arab states. More likely than not, more democracy in Saudi
>Arabia and the rest of the Middle East would create new governments less
>cooperative with Washington. Moreover, destabilization of the existing
>regimes -- especially the one in Saudi Arabia -- may even endanger not only
>the US but also the world economy, which Washington under any
>administration can ill afford.
>
>To conclude, Fahrenheit 9/11, a fascinating populist work of art, at times
>falls for conspiracy theory, not because Moore doesn't know any better, but
>because he has skeletons in the closet -- not his own skeletons, but the
>Democratic Party's.
>
><http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/why-does-fahrenheit-911-pursue.html>
>--
>Yoshie
>
>* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
>* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
>* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
><http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
><http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
>* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
>* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
>* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
>* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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