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July 02, 2004 - Image 75

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 2004-07-02

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

1

Last Call

Cheap-Shot Season

N

umbers
don't lie.
From a pool
of 202.6 million
Americans old
enough to vote,
54.7 percent, or
110.8 million
Americans, pulled a
HARRY
lever, marked a ballot
MRSBAUM
or hung a chad in the
Columnist
2000 presidential
election.
According to most polls, 80 percent
of voters, or 88.6 million if the 2000
numbers hold up, have already made
up their minds in this year's contest,
leaving 22.1 million Americans on the
fence.
So far, the election has been as nasty
as it's ever been since the Vietnam era.
Extremists on both sides of the political
spectrum have talked smack about the
other side on cable news programs.
The Internet is filled with sites that
support one candidate, and what's
worse, some have dug the extra mile
towards hell by using Hitler references
about the opponent. Classy.
The election's main focus is directed
towards the war on terrorism, and in
the last two weeks, the liberal side
spoke the loudest.
First came Bill Clinton's book, My
Lift, which soared in sales and put the
former president's face on the front
pages and as the top story on the news
for a week.
He claimed that Ken Starr and the
right-wing Republican obsession with
impeachment and the Lewinsky affair
kept him from acting against Osama
bin Laden.
Then came Fahrenheit 9/11,
Michael's Moore's polemic on the Bush
administration, the 2000 election and
the war on terrorism.
I was one of the 3 million people
who saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on opening
weekend.
Most critics were right to assume
that the movie was preaching to the
converted — I saw way more
Birkenstocks than dress shoes in the
crowd, if you know what I mean.
I was also prepared for the cheap
shots Moore made in the movie. He
spliced some out-of-context footage to
drive home different points:
• Bush referred to his supporters at a

Harry Kirsbaum's e-mail address is

hkirsbaum@thejewishnews.com

black tie fund-raiser as the "haves and
the have mores.
• Bush gave a serious statement on
terrorism at a golf course, then said,
"Now, watch this drive."
Moore said himself that the movie
wasn't a documentary, but his opinion
on the administration.
How much more powerful would
the movie have been without the cheap
shots?
The segment that follows Lila
Lipscomb, the Flint mother whose son
fights, then dies, in Iraq; or scenes of
the Marine recruiters stopping young
African Americans in a Flint shopping
mall; or the Taliban representative visit-
ing the United States are the most
powerful footage in the film.
The movie could have been much
more powerful if he would have left
out those cheap shots, but cheap shots
on both sides have become the bread
and butter of this year's election. With
the 24-hour news cycle, you don't have
to wait too long to hear one.
Most people would prefer the facts.
I read a transcript of NBC News
Andrea Mitchell's interview on June 24
with a CIA insider who criticizes the
Bush administration in a new book,

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Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing
the War on Terror. He says the war on

terror is being lost because the war in
Iraq has directed the fight away from
Al Qaida. The Iraq occupation has
even played into the hands of Osama
bin Laden, said the author,
"Anonymous", a current CIA officer.
He also said that the real war is
against radical Islam, not just its leaders
— and heavy civilian casualties in the
Muslim world are to be expected.
... there was multiple occasions
when we did not take advantage of an
opportunity to solve the problem [bin
Laden] because we were afraid of hit-
ting a mosque with shrapnel," he said.
"No one wants to be bloodthirsty, but
we're at a position in this war where
we've cornered ourselves in many ways,
to the point where only the military
option is available to us."
Anonymous might be trying to sell
his book, but he is also making a good
point — the situation in the war is
more complicated than one's political
views.
Right now, the race is a dead heat.
The first side to admit that they
don't have all the answers will have the
best chance of getting the majority of
those 22.1 million undecided voters. Fl

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7/ 2
2004

59

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