by Helen & Harry Highwater, Unknown News
March 27, 2003
In numbers bandied about so often they're almost a cliché, it is estimated that a billion people around the world watched, as American filmmakers honored themselves with Oscars on Sunday night. A parade of movie stars blathered on for hours about their art. These representatives of one of America's leading exports -- entertainment -- had little to say about America's other leading export -- death.
And then came Michael Moore. When the director of Bowling for Columbine accepted his Oscar for Best Documentary, he used his brief allotment of time at one of the world's biggest microphones to say this:
On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada we would like to thank the Academy.
I've invited my fellow documentary makers [the other nominees] on stage with us and we would like to... They are here, they are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction.
We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it is the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts.
We are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush. Shame on you! Any time you have the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up ..."
As the music drowned out Mr Moore's words, the ceremonies returned to their long-established dullness.
All this has been very controversial, with some people criticizing Mr Moore for what he said, some praising him, and "moderates" claiming he's entitled to his opinion, but that politics are inappropriate for the Oscars ceremony. We haven't yet heard anyone state the obvious, though: Michael Moore saved lives on Sunday night.
Many Americans hate hearing this, but many, many people in many nations have profound and understandable reasons to hate the United States. America's foreign policy can be succinctly but accurately summarized as: "If you're not white, Christian, or rich, your freedom doesn't matter."
This policy has killed millions of people, with broad bipartisan American political support, under both Bush administrations, and under Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, et al. As you read this sentence, American foreign policy is killing people, and their survivors are crying out in anger.
Anyone who's ever seen a Hollywood action movie should understand the concept of vengeance. America's foreign policy might as well be subtitled, How To Manufacture Terrorists.
And of course, so long as this is American foreign policy, Americans will continue to be the targets of terrorists.
(A parenthetical aside, for the intellectually challenged readers who will send four-letter-laced emails: Writing that we can understand why terrorists hate America and target Americans is not the same as saying they're right to do so. Terrorism is bad, and wrong, and you may quote us on this. My apologies to intelligent readers, for this stupid but necessary interruption.)
And so, as America continues its decades-long policy of killing people who are not white, not Christian, and not rich, as the families, friends, and countrymen of the dead become furious... some become radicals... and some become terrorists.
And a big fat American in a tuxedo steps up to the microphone on the telly. And he says,
This war is wrong.
A billion people heard Mr Moore's comments, and many millions of others heard of his comments.
Fifteen years from now, as the orphans of Baghdad reach adulthood with a burning hatred for America -- the country that killed their loved ones -- at least a few of those would-be terrorists will have a nagging, gnawing doubt about simply killing random Americans for revenge. A few of those angry young men will remember that they once heard an American speak against killing their brothers, their sisters, their aunts, uncles, and friends.
Those kids will still be furious at America, of course -- who wouldn't be? But when they're recruited by their local branch office of al Qaeda, they might pause and remember that angry American ... and they might say no to terrorism.
Of course, in the places America has obliterated, is obliterating, and will be obliterating in the near future, more and more people will say yes to terrorism. They will try to kill Americans wherever they can. Despite growingly repressive policies "for security reasons" in the United States and elsewhere, terrorism will become more and more common. Within a few short years, the annual death toll of terrorism in America might make the destruction of the World Trade Center and the deaths of those few thousand innocent people seem like the good old days.
So it will be easy to overlook the terrorist incidents that won't happen. But amidst all the death and destruction coming to fruition thanks to US foreign policy, there will be a few explosions that won't explode.
The lives of those victims were saved on March 23, 2003, when Michael Moore spoke a few words.
© 2004, by the author.
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And so, as America continues its decades-long policy of killing people who are not white, not Christian, and not rich, as the families, friends, and countrymen of the dead become furious... some become radicals... and some become terrorists.
And a big fat American in a tuxedo steps up to the microphone on the telly. And he says,
This war is wrong.
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Fifteen years from now, as the orphans of Baghdad reach adulthood with a burning hatred for America -- the country that killed their loved ones -- at least a few of those would-be terrorists will have a nagging, gnawing doubt about simply killing random Americans for revenge.
A few of those angry young men will remember that they once heard an American speak against killing their brothers, their sisters, their aunts, uncles, and friends.
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