Reading notes

Frank Rich reviews Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11:

“In your wildest dreams you couldn’t imagine Franklin Roosevelt behaving [as Bush did on camera] 30 seconds before declaring war, with grave decisions and their consequences at stake,” said Moore in an interview before his new documentary’s premiere at Cannes last Monday. “But that may be giving him credit for thinking that the decisions were grave.” …

Wasn’t it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on “Nightline”? In “Fahrenheit 9/11,” we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. …

The movie’s second hour is carried by the wrenching story of Lila Lipscomb, a flag-waving, self-described “conservative Democrat” from Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, whose son, Sergeant Michael Pedersen, was killed in Iraq. We watch Lipscomb, who “always hated” antiwar protesters, come undone with grief and rage. She clutches her son’s last letter home and reads it aloud …

Sergeant Pedersen thanks his mother for sending “the bible and books and candy,” but not before writing of the president: “He got us out here for nothing whatsoever. I am so furious right now, Mama.” … Speaking of America’s volunteer army, Moore concludes: “They serve so that we don’t have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?”

[via Atrios]

2004-06-14 update: I’m just now seeing Roger Ebert’s detailed review that appeared shortly before Rich’s (on May 18): Less is Moore in subdued, effective ‘9/11’.