>Michael Moore digs himself a deeper hole
>
>
>
> September 24, 2003
>
> Michael Moore digs himself a deeper hole
>
> By Stephen Gowans
>
> I was wondering how filmmaker Michael Moore would react to the avalanche of
>criticism, outrage, and shock set off by his paean to retired General Wesley
>Clark, the ex-Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, who's thrown his hat
>into the ring for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. >
> Moore had written friends and fans, urging them to pressure Clark ? a man
>the filmmaker says is antiwar, pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, and opposed
>to Bush's tax cuts -- to bid for the nomination.
>
> What Moore left out of his missive was that Clark -- a career soldier who
>had fought in Vietnam -- led NATO's 78-day air war on Yugoslavia, an illegal
>affair from start to finish, that saw the NATO commander order his bombers to
>destroy roads, bridges, factories, petrochemical plants, electrical power
>stations, telephone switching equipment, a radio-TV building and an embassy, in
>defiance of articles of war prohibiting the targeting of civilian >infrastructure.
>
> Hundreds, if not thousands of civilians were killed by Clark's bombs,
>missiles and cluster bombs, and many more were permanently disabled, in a
>campaign that Human Rights Watch (not known for going hard on Americans)
>condemned for grave breaches of humanitarian law.
>
> Clark ? the man Moore says is against war -- is a war criminal. >
> That, and other deplorable episodes from Clark's pro-war past (including
>British General Michael Jackson's revelation that Clark almost touched off
>world war three by pressing Jackson to order British paratroops to clash with
>Russian soldiers at Pristina) didn't, however, escape the attention of many of
>Moore's fans. Some were left dumbfounded by the filmmaker's warm words for a
>principal figure in one of the most egregious recent instances of US
>imperialism run amuck.
>
> When FAIR, the media watchdog, dug up Clark's pro-war newspaper columns,
>Moore looked stupid. When Clark said he wouldn't cancel Bush's tax-cuts, Moore
>looked dumber still. And when Clark said he probably would have voted for the
>war on Iraq, Moore looked like a man who had been bamboozled, or was in the
>bamboozling business himself.
>
> There was no question the filmmaker had dug himself a deep hole. The only
>question was, how was he going to get out of it? Would he say nothing, and
>pretend the whole thing hadn't happened, hoping that, after a time, everyone
>would forget? Would he say, I've learned when you make a bone-headed move, the
>best thing to do is fess-up? Or would he simply dig himself a bigger hole? >
> Turns out he's reached for the shovel.
>
> In a letter dated September 23rd, Moore dances around the issue of his
>supporting a war criminal, taking 13 paragraphs to finally get around to
>addressing what's on everyone's minds. What's up with the Clark love-in? >
> It then takes Moore 11 paragraphs to tie himself into knots of illogic, as
>he flings dirt pile after dirt pile from a hole that gets deeper and deeper. >
> Here's what he has to say:
>
> It's true that as commander of NATO forces, Clark led a bombing campaign
>that killed civilians, and it bothers Moore to this day that civilians were
>bombed. But it wasn't Clark's fault. If President Clinton and Defense Secretary
>Cohen had let Clark use ground troops (as Clark recommended), there would have
>been fewer civilian casualties, Moore argues.
>
> Problem is, they didn't. And still Clark ordered his bombers to target
>civilian infrastructure. It doesn't matter what Clark wanted to do. What
>matters is what Clark did do. (And did Clark want to deploy ground troops to
>minimize civilian casualties, or to achieve the war's objective -- to drive
>Milosevic's forces out of Kosovo? I'd say Clark was more concerned about
>military objectives than minimizing civilian casualties.)
>
> Even so, if Clark had his way on ground troops, would that have made the
>war any less illegal or any less a war of aggression? And would Clark have been
>any less a principal figure in the exercise of American imperialism on >steroids?
>
> And what of Moore -- did the Kosovo war itself, apart from the civilian
>casualties, bother him? It doesn't look like it. Moore defends Clark as a man
>who recommended the right ? that is, civilian casualty limiting ? tactics,
>without uttering a word of disgust for the whole sordid exercise, or Clark's
>role in it. In this, he's like Clark: Not opposed to war so much as opposed to
>wars that aren't carried out the way he would carry them out.
>
> And Moore says Clark needed to "stop Milosevic's genocide of the people in
>Kosovo." Moore should know there never was a genocide, and at the time, he
>challenged the claim. I recall him ridiculing a NATO propaganda exercise
>involving before and after satellite photographs. Look, in this photo the
>ground is undisturbed, NATO spin doctors said. But in this photo, taken hours
>later, there are signs of a disturbance. Could mass graves have been dug here?
>We were supposed to answer the question with a resounding yes.
>
> But Moore, exercising a skepticism that seems to have melted away with the
>first kind words he received from Clark, asked pointedly: If they can take
>pictures before the graves are dug, and pictures after, why can't they take
>pictures during?
>
> Perhaps Moore has a short memory. The original charges against Milosevic in
>connection with Kosovo, brought by the NATO controlled tribunal at The Hague,
>concern incidents, with one exception, that happened after the bombing began.
>And the number of deaths in those incidents is in the hundreds, not hundreds of
>thousands and not even tens of thousands. The one pre-bombing incident, the
>Racak massacre, involved fewer than 50 deaths, most, if not all of which, it
>now seems, were KLA guerillas. So how could there have been a genocide in
>progress if the bulk of the charges against Milosevic ? involving only
>hundreds of deaths ? happened after Clark ordered his bombers to take out
>bridges, roads, factories, power plants and other civilian targets? >
> In the months following Clark's destruction of a country, forensic
>pathologists roved widely over Kosovo, to document the genocide NATO assured
>them had happened. They left in disgust, complaining they had been deceived by
>NATO's war propaganda. Rather than finding mass graves containing tens of
>thousands of bodies, they found a few thousand bodies, most buried
>individually, the kind of low-level carnage that attends a civil war, but
>hardly amounts to genocide. Before there were weapons of mass destruction that
>couldn't be found, there was a genocide that couldn't be found.
>
> (This is true and I recall the news never followed up on the mass graves in
>KOSOVO because it was all BS. From the Hun bayoneting French babies to Iraqis
>stealing Kuwati incubators to WMD, when will stupid Americans wake up? Snipe) >
> Still, Moore seems to have decided that reviving tall tales about genocide
>that even NATO won't back up any more, will help his case. And the motivation
>seems to be to polish up the reputation of a war criminal and hit man for
>American imperialism, so that he ? Moore ? doesn't seem like such a dumb
>ass or fraud (take your pick) for taking a shine to him.
>
> The next step Moore takes as Clark's unofficial spin doctor is to brush
>Kosovo aside as water under the bridge. "The war we are in NOW is not called
>Kosovo," he thunders, "but Iraq."
>
> "If we have a former general, who may have done some things that some of us
>don't like ? but he is now offering to be an advocate for peace ? why would
>any of us want to reject this?"
>
> "May" have done some things, that "some" of us don't like? There's no
>question about what Clark may or may not have done. The facts are plain. And
>Moore's point about Clark doing things "some" of us don't like," raises the
>tantalizing question: Is Moore among those who don't like what Clark did? These
>days, one would be inclined to say he's not. And what makes a general a better
>advocate for peace than anyone else?
>
> Moreover, it's doubtful Clark has turned into an advocate for peace. Even
>Moore points out that Clark's problem with the Iraq war is that it doesn't
>follow the Powell doctrine, that is, it doesn't have an exit strategy. Clark's
>expressing reservations about the war isn't advocating for peace; it's
>advocating for the Powell doctrine. Moore seems to have mistaken a difference
>of opinion over military strategy, with advocacy for peace.
>
> The filmmaker's last shot at defending a war criminal is to invoke the
>biblical, "Let he who is free from sin, cast the first stone." They all have
>blood on their hands, Moore says, referring to Clark's rivals for the
>Democratic nomination. Kerry does ("he killed people in Vietnam.") Kucinich
>does (he once voted "for laws restricting a women's right to an abortion,
>potentially forcing women back to the alley and, for many of them, to certain
>death.") And Dean does, too (he was in favor of war on Afghanistan and would
>execute people on death row.)
>
> Incidentally, we learn earlier in the letter that Moore isn't opposed to
>capital punishment either. In the filmmaker's view, the state's taking of life
>is all right if "the problem of potentially executing the innocent can be
>solved." Well let's see. Since there's no doubt Clark is a war criminal, and
>that the blood of hundreds, if not thousands of Serb civilians is on his hands,
>shouldn't Clark, if we follow Moore's reasoning, be headed for the execution
>chamber, not the White House? After all, in Clark's case, there's no risk of
>executing the innocent. Oh, but I forgot -- that Kosovo thing is all behind us.
>And all the candidates have blood on their hands. It's quite a sign of Moore's
>desperation ? and it's grotesque to boot ? that he should put Clark's
>ordering bombers to target civilian infrastructure on the same moral plane as
>Kucinich once voting against abortion rights.
>
> What's most troubling about Moore ? apart from his ignorance, his silly
>arguments, and his unrequited love for the Democratic Party ? is his failure
>to grasp the enormity of who Clark is, what he has done, and what he has
>participated in. There seems to be an unshakable belief, residing deep in the
>filmmaker's soul, that Americans have the right -- no, the obligation -- to
>meddle in the affairs of others, that unspeakable crimes are beyond the
>capability of Americans, (especially Democrats), and that monsters, thugs and
>brutes live half way around the world, in countries the US must takeover and
>control, but not at home, and certainly not in the Democratic Party. >
> What's more, Moore's distaste for Republicans, and his "any Democrat but
>Bush" attitude is dumbfounding, not so much because it clashes violently with
>his belief, loudly trumpeted in the last election, that the Democrats and
>Republicans are the same, but because the Democrats and Republicans, on matters
>of foreign policy, are the same. Exactly what is Moore's trouble with Bush's
>wars, that doesn't, in the end, boil down to a difference over tactics? >
> He seems completely untroubled by Washington having waged a war of
>aggression on Yugoslavia (apart from the civilian casualties that bother him to
>this day.) So how is he any less pro-war, pro-imperial and anti-international
>law, than Bush? Neither Bush, nor it seems, Moore, is especially bothered by
>the US waging wars of aggression and neither regard UN sanction for war as
>essential. (Compare Kosovo and Iraq. On these grounds, they're no different.)
>Trampling international law is also all right. (Again, no difference between
>Kosovo and Iraq.) And neither is particularly troubled by the deliberate
>destruction of civilian infrastructure. (War crimes were carried out as
>unreservedly by Clark as by Bush's commanders.) What's more, neither have any
>qualms about telling tall tales (in Moore's case, about mass graves that never
>existed, and in Bush's case, about weapons of mass destruction that don't
>exist) to justify war to advance the United States imperialist goals. >
> Except for mostly non-economic differences on domestic policy ?
>affirmative action, a moratorium on capital punishment, abortion rights ?
>Moore, the die-hard Democrat, affirms what he argued so vigorously four years
>ago. Democrats aren't really all that different from Republicans, after all. >
> ...
>
>
>
>
>
>Let there be no more Generals for president
>of the United States. Let there only be men of peace and
>not war. It is time to put war, and all things warlike,
>behind us. It is time to beat our swords into
>ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.
>It is time to dedicate ourselves and the honor of
>this great nation to the peace and brotherhood
>dreamed of by our forebears.
>Then God truly will bless us!
>
>JO
>
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