A much more thorough, point-by-point refutation of Hitchens’ article is available here.

Christopher Hitchens is often referred to erroneously as a “liberal,” so when his review of Michael Moore’s documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, titled “UnFairenheit 9/11: The Lies of Michael Moore” came out the week before the film opened, it was joyously recieved — as so much of Hitchens’ work is — by the conservative right as evidence that even liberals hated Michael Moore.

I loved Bowling for Columbine, so I was shocked by the charges I first heard that Michael Moore had lied in the movie. Being one to do my own research and look into primary sources, I found that the most comprehensive source of this information was a review by Dave Kopel in a notorious conservative rag, the National Review. The review, of course, was far more deceptive than Bowling for Columbine, and I gave a paragraph-by-paragraph dismantling of its myriad misleading statements in one of my classic mega-posts in a thread at IshCon. Unfortunately, my response came months late and was posted in a rather obscure corner of the internet, so it did little to help the widespread slander of Michael Moore as deceptive or misleading. With half-truths and blatant deceptions, the right managed to play the ignorance of the public such that Michael Moore was labeled with the false reputation of a dishonest filmmaker.

So, when I found Christopher Hitchens’ review, I expected more of the same. But being more on top of things this time, I knew I had the ability to respond in a timely manner, in a way that might have more of an effect in raising the level of debate and maybe even helping those of us who care about the truth to debunk the lies of the conservative right. As I read Hitchens’ rambling piece of vitriol, I knew I was in for another Kopel. Even on my first reading, two days before I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on its opening day, I could already identify a number of deceptive, manipulative statements by Hitchens. But I decided to let it be until I had seen the movie. Now, I have seen it; and now, I will proceed to dismantle Hitchens.

I could argue in the manner to which conservatives have become accustomed by impugning Hitchens’ character, or attacking him on some personal level. I refuse to sink to that level; it is the logical fallacy of the ad hominem. A person’s character does not affect the truth or falsity of his claims; the logical argument either stands or falls on its own, and should be evaluated independently of whoever happened to say it. Suffice to say that Hitchens is no more a liberal than Tucker Carlson, on whose new television show Hitchens is a regular guest. While Hitchens shares a few ideas in common with the American left — such as the blindingly obvious, even self-evident conclusion that Reagan was a terrible president — just as many of his ideas are shared with the conservative right. Moreover, it should be noted that the “increasingly polarized” nature of American politics is not because of the left and right both becoming more extreme; it is because the right is becoming much more extreme. By all worldwide standards, the Democratic party is quite centrist. Only in America, by comparison to the extreme, radical right of our conservatives, can Democrats be considered in any sense “liberal.” Howard Dean and John Kerry have both been accused of being “too liberal” in the past year, and yet both would be considered centrist — if not outright conservative — in most other Western countries. So, that Hitchens shares some ideas with both of America’s major parties would actually place him significantly to the right of the political spectrum. Hitchens is a conservative; his criticism of Michael Moore is not a liberal civil war, it is a partisan attack.

A paragraph-by-paragraph dissection of “UnFahrenheit 9/11″ would not be useful, as the bulk of the article contains nothing more than Hitchens’ opinion. That opinion, based as it is on disinformation and half-truths, is no more or less valid than mine. What can I say to a statement like, “(t)o describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability,” except to say that Hitchens is a master of sophistic demagoguery? Rather, I will limit myself to the “facts” Hitchens cites, and explaining why they range from blatantly false to simply misleading.

After an introduction nearly as long as the foregoing where Hitchens states in no uncertain terms that he didn’t like the movie and considers Moore to be the root of all evils in modern society, Hitchens digs into his first argument, that Moore has “flip-flopped” on his ideas of Usamah bin Ladin’s guilt. Besides the obvious stupidity of criticizing someone for being willing to change their mind in accordance with new information, there is also the idea of “for the sake of argument.” Moore’s documentary is less about providing answers than raising questions. Many criticize Moore for providing no solutions; do these critics really expect one man, one film, to solve all the world’s problems? Without the right questions, we can never have the right answers; critical questioning forces us to refine our thoughts and ideas, challenges us to defend what we believe, and can sometimes expose fallacies in our thinking before they become disastrous. This is what Moore does; this is the obvious goal of Fahrenheit 9/11; not to provide some grand solution to one of the greatest, most complicated problems Western civilization has ever faced, but to ask the questions that will change the way we think about these things. So long as we actually believe in the two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of good and evil — rather than two complicated sides, both with complicated people pursuing real (and even laudable) goals — the “War on Terra” is doomed to failure. To date, very few have been asking questions; we have acted as sheep. We have done as we have been told. Our ignorance has been staggering.

Michael Moore asks questions; he leaves it to us to answer them. And he asks very good questions. During the Democratic primaries, Dean made a very wise statement that as President, his first duty would be to uphold the law; and that the law requires that everyone be held innocent until proven guilty by a jury of her peers. Thus, Dean said as president he would do everything in his power to bring Usamah bin Ladin to trial, but he would not presume his guilt. This was misrepresented by the conservative right and used as another example of Dean as leader of the “loony left,” showing that he thought bin Ladin was innocent. Dean was quite clear that he personally believed him guilty, but that a President’s first duty is to the rule of law, not vengeance. Though I have only Hitchens’ account to go by, I see Moore’s position at the Telluride debate with Hitchens in much the same way. Hitchens was arguing for vengeance; Moore was arguing for justice.

Hitchens tries to break down six main points from the film, and then criticizes them for being contrary to the beliefs he projects onto Moore, such as in the claim that, “Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all — the latter was Moore’s view as late as 2002 — or we sent too few.” This is hardly a contradiction, of course; the view of the left has consistently been that we should not go to war, but if we’re going to do it, let’s send our children in with everything they need to do it quickly and come home safely. The position has consistently been that war must be all or nothing.

If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don’t think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn’t do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar — an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building — is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left — like the parties of the Iraqi secular left — are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

It would be hard to argue that the United States is not the leader and most prominent member of NATO. NATO may be the broadest military alliance in history (I have no reason to doubt that), but it also exists under the shadow of the world’s first hyperpower — a nation whose military spending dwarfs the five-century military regime of the Roman Empire, and far exceeds the military spending of all past and present nations both absolutely and per capita. When the United States wants something, it must be very extreme for NATO to refuse. Hitchens does not contest that Afghanistan’s government represents American rather than Afghan interests; instead, he points out that by happy accident, a few good things have come of this development. As one would expect, domination by corporate colonialism inspires a more secular left than a rigid theocracy. While the pipeline may not yet be under construction (I don’t know this to be true or not), the fact remains it was one of Kharzai’s first actions in office. So, yes, Hitchens’ facts here are actually true, and they were left out of the film. They are also entirely irrelevant.

In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore’s triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush’s former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that — as you might expect — Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment.

This is an extremely deceptive passage. Moore finds the removal of the Saudis and bin Ladins suspect, but does not go beyond that (I would hardly call this “paranoid”). Personally, I find nothing wrong or suspect with this particular episode; the ties between Usamah and the rest of his family are tenuous at best. However, to say that Clarke and Clarke alone was responsible for this is not only misleading, it is outrageous. As you might recall from his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Clarke began by taking personal responsibility for the events of 9/11. “To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed,” Clarke said, “And for that failure, I would ask — once all the facts are out — for your understanding and for your forgiveness.” Clarke is a man who takes responsibility for things that go wrong on his watch. As the man who authorized the flights, he took full responsibility for that action. However, his first response was to not authorize the flights. But, after asking the FBI to look into the matter and recieving the go-ahead from Dale Watson at the FBI, Clarke did authorize them. Hitchens tries to pin all of this on Clarke, and tries to pass off the idea that Clarke conceived and executed the entire plan alone. In fact, he only rubber-stamped it; and then took full responsibility for it when things went less well than he might have hoped. For Hitchens to malign a man of such character simply to get a jab in at a documentary is outrageous.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that’s what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his “Let’s roll” and “dead or alive” remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say–that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn’t wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR’s collusion over Pearl Harbor.

This is the very definition of a straw-man argument. Hitchens is comparing Moore’s actual opinion to the opinion of the hypothetical Bizarro Moore from a parallel dimension where things were different. The logical fallacies of this statement make my head reel, and should be self-evident to any critical reader.

Personally, I find nothing suspect about Bush’s immediate reaction. There was nothing he could do, and as politically embarrassing as it has been for him, leaping out quickly would have only served to alarm the children. At the same time, I found nothing wrong with Moore’s handling of the situation; it is primarily a hypothetical question of what Bush must have been thinking at this moment.

FDR’s pre-knowledge of Pearl Harbor is, at this point, not only a valid historical theory, it’s almost accepted as a historical fact. Will we, in retrospect, see Bush’s actions on 9/11 in a similar light? Only history will tell that; we are all too close to the matter to ever really know. It is something our children will have to figure out. Given the plans of the neoconservatives over the previous decade and their hopes for “a new Pearl Harbor” to accelerate their campaign for the new Pax Americana enforced by American military hegemony, and Bush’s own ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Ladins, it is a possibility that should not be immediately ruled out.

Hitchens then moves to arguing against Moore’s treatment of pre-war Iraq. His lack of any mention of Saddam’s cruelty is somewhat suspect, I agree; on the other hand, it was refreshing to see a different view of pre-war Iraq. In every country on earth, most people are just trying to get by. In every country on earth, there are children playing on nice days. Every country on earth, no matter how despotic, has its idyllic moments. Even in 1984, Wilson and Julia could escape into the countryside for an afternoon, or find a moment of carnal love in an upstairs apartment. No dictator rules through cruelty alone; Saddam introduced many secularizing, Western reforms, including greater rights for women and reform of the old land ownership laws. This is one of the many reasons he was so hated by Islamic fundamnetalists the world over, such as in Iran — and why, when it formed, one of al-Qaida’s most prominent reasons for being was the destruction of Saddam’s regime.

Hitchens describes Moore’s treamtent by saying, “In fact, I don’t think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic.” This ignores the fact that, while it is seen as an anti-American organization in the West, Al Jazeera is more often called a mouthpiece of American imperialism in the Arab world. In fact, Al Jazeera’s coverage has sparked riots in some cities — because it was so pro-American! To be reviled equally by such opposing, fanatical ideologies suggests, to me, that Al Jazeera may be one of the last dependable news organizations. We’ll see more of Al Jazeera’s “rock and a hard place” conundrum in another of this year’s anticipated documentaries, Control Room.

Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible.

Hitchens is here referring to the three lines of the movie that were, for me, the most debatable of all. But the passage above is an outright, flagrant lie. He sticks his own words in Moore’s mouth in order to set up another straw man argument. In actuality, Moore’s words were very carefully weighed; he said that Iraq had never attacked America, never threatened to attack America, and had never murdered an American. These statements reminded me of Bush’s case for a connection between al-Qaida and Iraq: statements that were literally true, yet could only be taken to mean something entirely false. I found these lines highly objectionable, and thought Moore’s treatment of pre-war Iraq was overly simplistic. There was plenty here to criticize; but rather than pick up that valid thread of reasoning, Hitchens decided to argue a straw man of his own deceitful invention, rather than Moore’s actual argument.

Hitchens cites Abdul Rahman Yasin’s brief stay in Baghdad as proof of Iraq’s terrorists ties, despite the fact that he was arrested in less than a year. While Saddam’s image as a pan-Arabian figure was polished by his support for the Palestinians (which greatly improved his image throughout the Islamic world), that is a threat to Israel. Last I checked, Israel and America were still technically separate countries. We generally do not consider war deaths, such as those Hitchens discusses, to be “murder.” And though Iraq did fire on planes enforcing the no-fly zones for the better part of the 1990s, whether this constituted an “attack on America” or continuing conflict from Iraq’s attack on Kuwait is a matter of debate. Perhaps most egregious of Hitchens’ deceptions in this section is his citation of al-Zarqawi’s pre-9/11 operations in Iraq as if it somehow proved that Iraq was laying plans against the United States. Al-Zarqawi is fomenting a religious civil war between Iraq’s Shiites and Sunnis — a cause that involves the United States tangentially at best — and he began this movement as part of the anti-Saddam resistance! That Saddam wanted to get WMD’s from North Korea only highlights the fact that he didn’t yet have them; and even having them does not constitute a threat to attack the United States, anymore than Pakistan and India’s recent acquisition of such weapons constitutes a threat to attack the United States.

The same “let’s have it both ways” opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings — not exactly an original point — the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been “fear” if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic “security” staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can’t tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don’t have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn’t enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So — he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who’s counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again — simply not serious.

Moore is asking questions, not giving answers. He is not calling for contradictory policies, he is pointing out contradictory priorities. When he points out that matches and lighters are allowed on board, how can we reasonably jump to the conclusion that Moore would like them removed? All it highlights is the hypocrisy of the administration; that they say they are looking after security, and yet leave so many holes open. They will harass you at the airport, and leave eight state troopers in all of Oregon on duty one night; they want the freedom to use “racial profiling” to stop all Arab men from flying, but will let you take four books of matches and two butane lighters on board. Moore’s not giving us a policy, he’s pointing out that we don’t have a policy. He’s pointing out that, for all its rhetoric, Bush has done nothing to stop terrorism. Instead, he’s only used it as an excuse to accomplish anything he wants to do, no matter how outrageous.

Hitchens next calls Moore to task for pointing out that the army pulls most of its recruits from poor, black neighborhoods. Hitchens’ arguments completely miss the point. It has always amazed me, as Moore says it has always amazed him, that those who gain least from our society are the very people who work hardest to maintain it, and volunteer to die for it when called. They are the ones who believe in it the most, even though it never fails to crush them for that faith. I do not understand how such a huge pool of people could be played for centuries on end so effectively by a gang of thugs whose membership is in constant flux. That civil libertarians fought for the rights of blacks to serve is irrelevant to this wonder. Again, Hitchens lays into Moore for not being an omniscient font of answers for all the world’s ills. Hitchens demands that Moore — and I suppose all of us — never ask any question for which we have no answer. In short, to never question anything, to accept all we are told, and to do whatever we are commanded to do by our betters. The world Hitchens implies is a world of blind, unquestioning obedience, a dark age of unquestioned authority and the end of human knowledge. It is not a world I want to live in.

Indeed, Moore’s affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes — we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting “Let’s roll,” rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only “overseas” or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

I almost want to applaud such sophistry, and yet, I cannot help but suspect a bit of psychological projection on Hitchens’ part here. Yes, the actions of those passengers who took the plane down in Somerset, PA — only an hour’s drive from my home in Pittsburgh — is extraordinary. It is also irrelevant to what transpired on three other planes.

Hitchens then attacks Moore for having assembled a team to defend him against lies, slander and libel — in the selfsame article that proves the need for such a team. Hitchens’ review is not just deceptive, it is libelous. After the half-truths and deceptions men of Hitchens’ ilk hatched in response to Bowling for Columbine, and the unrelenting savagery of Bush’s mafia-like administration, such a move on Moore’s part was very prudent. Hitchens proved it true days before the movie was even released.

But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your “narrative” a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don’t even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft.

Hitchens has totally missed the point of Fahrenheit, and now indicts it based on criteria for the sort of film he wanted it to be, rather than the film it was. Fahrenheit does not throw everything out to see what sticks as Hitchens alleges, it systematically spotlights the hypocrisy of Bush’s “War on Terra” to prove a single point: that Bush doesn’t care a bit about terrorism, but rather, is using terrorism in true Orwellian style as the never-ending war that will justify every excess and measure the government or corporate power would want.

I will end with Hitchens’ own shrill crescendo of logical fallacy, a perfect example of the straw-man arguments that permeate the entire piece. Throughout Hitchens relies on such sophistry to buttress a case that is utterly devoid of all merit, and here it reaches a crest of inanity that speaks entirely for itself:

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.