Like many people in the Grand Rapids area, I went to the opening night of Michael Moore's new film Fahrenheit 9/11. Upon surveying the crowd it was like old home week, with familiar faces scattered throughout the theatre. Clearly, there was much excitement and anticipation that this film could be a significant contribution to ending the Bush regime.

In many ways the film was quite refreshing. It is always delightful to see Moore use satire as a means of making a point, something too often those of us who struggle for change fail to employ. He also touched on an array of issues, all of which could have been the subject of entire documentaries in and of themselves; the 2000 theft of the Presidency in Florida, the intelligence "failure" of 9/11, the push for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, War Profiteers, the Bush/Saudi relationship, the human cost of war, the war on civil liberties, and the war against the poor and minorities in the US.

While I think that Fahrenheit 9/11 is important for people to see, it can not be a cure all for understanding the problems that plague the US and the global community who desperately need Americans to have a more profound analysis of what this government is doing. What I intend to present in this essay are more details about the issues raised in the film and it's shortcomings. Any good organizer knows that one's analysis will always inform one's actions.

Possibly one of the most moving parts of the film was early one when one after another, members of the Congressional Black Caucus kept challenging Senators to sign on to their claims that voter fraud had occurred in Florida in 2000. I had read the essential investigative work by Greg Palast in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy on the voter purges in Florida, but to watch this litany of elected Black officials plead with members of the Senate to join them in demanding justice was powerful. The question that the film does not directly ask is "Where were Senators Kennedy, Clinton, Levin, Edwards, Lieberman......hell where was John Kerry? Why would none of them give the Representatives one signature, a signature that would affirm the need for democracy in Florida? This question is relevant even now as new information surfaces daily about voter fraud and efforts to continue that through the elections this November. See www.blackboxvote.org or www.gregpalast.com.

Then September 11, 2001 happens and Moore looks at the initial response by Bush and the administration's relationship with the bin Laden family. While the Bush/bin Laden connection is substantial and addresses the nature of these power relations, not enough attention was paid to why September 11, 2001 occurred. Author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in his book The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked provides us with more ammunition to understand the acts of terrorism that shook America. Mark Zepezuar does the same thing in Boomerang: How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America, but expands beyond Ahmed's look at just bin Laden and Al-Qeada to give details that supports the title of his book. Native scholar and activist Ward Churchill refers to how most Americans viewed the US prior to 9/11, with a kind of "exceptionalism." Most of us have not experienced the devastation brought daily upon much of the world's inhabitants as a direct result of US military, diplomatic and economic policy. For details see Churchill's On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of US Imperial Arrogance and Criminality. Noam Chomsky calls it US hegemony, which is just a nicer way of say US Imperialism. The point being that, if we don't come to terms with the fact that our government is, and has been for the better part of 100 years, bent on global domination our actions to change course will be inadequate. Looking at the recent US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq can help us understand this point.

Many of us have heard in recent months that our government had "bad intelligence" about Iraq and it's make believe WMDs. They didn't have bad intelligence, it was clearly a deceptive campaign to get public support for the invasion. John Prados from the National Security Archives has methodically dissected the Bush spin on the reasons for the Iraq war in Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War. The reasons given by Bush Inc. were just a smoke screen pretext for an invasion. Don't think so, then get your hands on Larry Everest's Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda, or Raul Mahajan's Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, or Nafeez Ahmed's sequel book Beyond the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq. In each of these texts the authors provide a cogent historical analysis of US policy in the Gulf region to show that the UNOCAL pipeline project in Afghanistan that Moore's film touches on has been the norm for US policy in the Middle East since the US, French and British created the borders of most of those countries in the early part of the 20th century. And make no mistake about it, these wars are not just about access to oil, rather the oil should be seen as only a resource that fuels much of the US economic and military power around the globe.

Moore also deals with some specifics surrounding companies making a profit off the war in Iraq, companies like Halliburton. Moore tells the audiences that deals were made to get Halliburton the contracts, since VP Cheney was their former CEO. While this is true it doesn't tell the whole story. Dan Briody, author of The Halliburton Agenda documents that some of Halliburton's biggest contracts came during the Clinton years. Briody, who appeared in Fahrenheit 9/11, shows that Halliburton made millions from government contracts during the years of conflict in the Balkans. To somehow say that these insider deals only exist now with the Bush Jr. administration is misleading. For more updated information go to www.warprofiteers.com and www.halliburtonwatch.org.

Back to the Bush/bin Laden/Saudi connection. Moore looks at the family relationships between Bush and bin Laden, which is true and well documented in Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud (he also appeared in the film). However, this close US administration/Saudi Royal family has been going on since FDR. Now it is true that the specifics of the relationship are heavily Republican because of the Carlyle Group's role with the Bush and the bin Laden's, but not exclusively Republican. Briody documents that international investor George Soros provided the Carlyle Group with $100 million and former Clinton appointed FCC chair William Kennard now works for Carlyle. As a side note, it is worth mentioning that another prominent Republican in the Carlyle Group is Thomas Hicks, a long time supporter of Bush who also happens to be the largest shareholder of LIN TV, the parent company of WOOD TV 8. Holy Tom Van Howe!!!

The other aspects of the movie that I found quite moving were the sections on the human cost of the war, both in terms of Iraqi civilian lives and US soldiers. As PR Watch founders and authors Rampton and Stauber revealed in Weapons of Mass Deception, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been completely sanitized. The Pentagon and many newsrooms have made it policy to not show the carnage wrought by the bombing and the US occupations of both countries. Fahrenheit 9/11 does an excellent job of looking at both the physical and psychological consequences that US troops and their families must endure. As a result of the growing disillusion amongst veterans and military families, a significant portion of the anti-war/anti-occupation movement is made up of both of these camps. The most visible expression of this movement is the Bring Them Home Now campaign, which can be found at www.bringthemhomenow.org.

The domestic consequences of the war on terror were also a part of Moore's film. The look at military recruiters and the men they targeted in Flint did an excellent job of highlighting the racist and class-based nature of who fights in wars. Many anti-war organizers for years have been pointing out that if you are poor and/or a minority, your economic options are limited. That the poor and minority males make up a disproportionate amount of the armed forces underscores what many refer to as an ?economic draft.? So the chain of logic follows like this - the economic policies of the country benefit the rich and creates poverty. The poor are then forced into the military to fight wars against poor people in other countries to secure that wealth for the rich here.

One area that Moore could have done more with was look at the role of the US media in all of this. He knows this, but maybe felt that it was taking on more than he could chew. Just let me say that the US media did not fail, they were complicit in what has been occurring in recent years. This is due in part to media ownership consolidation, but also because many in the news media have internalized the values of the wealthy and the powerful. Do you think for one moment that Tom Brokaw, who makes roughly $9 million a year to read the news, can understand what most Americans experience? We also need to recognize the sophistication of the Public Relations/propaganda systems in the US. For more details go to www.prwatch.org, read Nancy Snow's Information War, or Amy Goodman's The Exception to the Rulers . I would also encourage readers to seek out independent sources of information at www.mediamouse.org or the post 9/11 Indy news and analysis links at the GRIID site http://www.griid.org/terrorism.shtml#sources

Now comes the proverbial "So What Do We Do?" I wish I had an easy answer. I wish there was a ten-point plan. Unfortunately, real, long-term, systemic change is not simple, nor easy. I saw people outside the theatre after Fahrenheit 9/11 handing out Kerry bumper stickers. Fine, vote Bush out, but if you think that we can relax or that voting Bush out of office is enough, then you don't understand the nature of power in this system. Remember, one's analysis always determines one's action. We need to be doing the difficult work of building movements for social change, not just protest movements.

As Indian scholar/activist Arundhati Roy says "These marches and songs and meetings of today - they are beautiful, but they are often mostly for us. If all our energies go into organizing these things, then we don't do any real damage to the establishment, to the empire."

Michael Moore did something besides just complain about the way things are. He invested lots of time and energy into making a documentary that he hoped would motivate the rest of us to get off our asses and do whatever we can to work for change. So what are we willing to do?

Jeff played the security guard for Billionaires for Bush & Kerry and the CAFTA Chicken in recent theatrical performances at Blues on the Mall.