Foresight
Foresight
Updated 10:21pm (Mla time) Sept 28, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 29, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I'M glad "Fahrenheit 9/11" will finally be shown in Philippine movie houses. Better late than never. The (pirated) DVD, of course, has been around for some time now, something I hope Michael Moore, whose website has had the most visitors for some time, will condone. I do know folk who are deep into the Web are possessed of the spirit of freeware and shareware. I can attest to that: the best video and audio software out there is free. In any case, Moore has always professed a desire to spread the Bad News about George W. Bush.
Nowhere should that have a more missionary effect than in this country, bastion of pro-Americanism in Asia. No, in all the world: you cannot find a people more in love with their former colonial master, as witness the witless coverage of Bush's visit to this country last year. You can't have a bigger exercise in obsequiousness, on the part of Malacanang, the media and the public.
I personally would be curious to see how "Fahrenheit" fares locally. It enjoyed a tremendous run in the United States, the documentary crashing into the Top 10 Movies list for several weeks, holding its own among big-budgeted blockbusters. Truly, truth is stranger than fiction, or more dramatic. I wrote about "Fahrenheit" a couple of months ago, suggesting that Congress make it required viewing in aid not just of legislation but of improving its members' minds. The suggestion, I understand, was received well: I learned that several senators and congressmen were looking for a copy of the documentary. (So much for Edu Manzano's crusade.) I still think the foreign relations committee of the House and Senate should watch it en banc. Preferably in the movie house, to give Moore some income.
Its showing could not have come at a better time, though any time would always be a good time in this country for things that disabuse it of its illusions. It comes not just on the eve of the US elections but at a time when we are groping for a policy to replace the disastrous one mounted by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo over the last three years since 9/11, which brought Angelo de la Cruz close to losing his head. It is a sublime irony, a government losing its head and nearly causing one of the governed to lose his. There is a lesson to be learned there, for those willing to heed it.
As "Fahrenheit" shows (which has been obvious to most of the world all this time but will probably still come as a surprise to many Filipinos), George W. Bush is to the war against terror as the Colombian cartel is to the war against cocaine. He is not its biggest prosecutor, he is its biggest obstacle. Bush owes his fortune, if not his fame, to the very family that bred Osama bin Laden, which is the Bin Ladens of Saudi Arabia. That explains in part his eagerness to turn his gaze away from Osama bin Laden and shift it to Saddam Hussein, even if the latter had nothing to do with 9/11 or with al-Qaida. As Bush's campaign to justify the war on Iraq further shows, he isn't just the biggest obstacle to the war against terror, he is the biggest contributor to terror. To carry out that war, he terrorized the American public, he terrorized the United Nations, and he terrorized the world.
A few days ago, I heard Roilo Golez being interviewed on TV. He was asked at one point if recent developments in Iraq were not a reason for him as former national security adviser, and the other members of Arroyo's war council, to admit they were wrong to have ardently supported that war. Golez answered that we could not afford to make judgments from hindsight, everyone was always right in hindsight. Where we were last year, he said, we had no choice but to support that war. We based our position on US intelligence reports, and "we had no reason not to believe them."
Why so? Why did we have no reason not to believe the lies issuing from the bowels of the Pentagon and the White House? Except for a few countries that formed the so-called "coalition of the willing" (Moore has some truly funny things to say about them in "Fahrenheit"), the whole world was against it. The UN was against it. Even the very UN inspectors of weapons of mass destruction were against it; they found no evidence of those weapons in Iraq. All we had to go on was the weird logic of George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that if the UN couldn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it must be because Saddam had managed to hide them!
Why did we have no choice but to support the occupation of Iraq? What is this--in the event of doubt, "sugod mga kapatid" [forward my brothers]? No, this isn't a matter of making judgments from hindsight, this is a matter of looking at things with foresight. Or never mind foresight, just using common sense.
"Fahrenheit" should help drive home the folly of that tack, for those who still haven't seen it. It should also remind us of why De la Cruz was abducted to begin with, something we seem to have forgotten in the blaze of government's self-congratulatory, rescue-mode, chest-thumping afterward. I heard in the news some days ago that the government still refuses to send OFWs to Iraq on the ground that what happened to De la Cruz could still happen again. Well, we continue to defend that war, it will happen again. We condemn it as the immoral occupation it is, it won't.
I wish they would show "Bowling for Columbine" along with "Fahrenheit 9/11." The first is just as insightful, if not more so, and should have something to say about the deeper sources of the war in Iraq. But that can wait, maybe until "Fahrenheit" proves commercially successful.
But, no, a great deal of what is right and wrong we can see not just from hindsight, we can espy it from foresight.
Or never mind foresight, from just using common sense.
Updated 10:21pm (Mla time) Sept 28, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 29, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I'M glad "Fahrenheit 9/11" will finally be shown in Philippine movie houses. Better late than never. The (pirated) DVD, of course, has been around for some time now, something I hope Michael Moore, whose website has had the most visitors for some time, will condone. I do know folk who are deep into the Web are possessed of the spirit of freeware and shareware. I can attest to that: the best video and audio software out there is free. In any case, Moore has always professed a desire to spread the Bad News about George W. Bush.
Nowhere should that have a more missionary effect than in this country, bastion of pro-Americanism in Asia. No, in all the world: you cannot find a people more in love with their former colonial master, as witness the witless coverage of Bush's visit to this country last year. You can't have a bigger exercise in obsequiousness, on the part of Malacanang, the media and the public.
I personally would be curious to see how "Fahrenheit" fares locally. It enjoyed a tremendous run in the United States, the documentary crashing into the Top 10 Movies list for several weeks, holding its own among big-budgeted blockbusters. Truly, truth is stranger than fiction, or more dramatic. I wrote about "Fahrenheit" a couple of months ago, suggesting that Congress make it required viewing in aid not just of legislation but of improving its members' minds. The suggestion, I understand, was received well: I learned that several senators and congressmen were looking for a copy of the documentary. (So much for Edu Manzano's crusade.) I still think the foreign relations committee of the House and Senate should watch it en banc. Preferably in the movie house, to give Moore some income.
Its showing could not have come at a better time, though any time would always be a good time in this country for things that disabuse it of its illusions. It comes not just on the eve of the US elections but at a time when we are groping for a policy to replace the disastrous one mounted by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo over the last three years since 9/11, which brought Angelo de la Cruz close to losing his head. It is a sublime irony, a government losing its head and nearly causing one of the governed to lose his. There is a lesson to be learned there, for those willing to heed it.
As "Fahrenheit" shows (which has been obvious to most of the world all this time but will probably still come as a surprise to many Filipinos), George W. Bush is to the war against terror as the Colombian cartel is to the war against cocaine. He is not its biggest prosecutor, he is its biggest obstacle. Bush owes his fortune, if not his fame, to the very family that bred Osama bin Laden, which is the Bin Ladens of Saudi Arabia. That explains in part his eagerness to turn his gaze away from Osama bin Laden and shift it to Saddam Hussein, even if the latter had nothing to do with 9/11 or with al-Qaida. As Bush's campaign to justify the war on Iraq further shows, he isn't just the biggest obstacle to the war against terror, he is the biggest contributor to terror. To carry out that war, he terrorized the American public, he terrorized the United Nations, and he terrorized the world.
A few days ago, I heard Roilo Golez being interviewed on TV. He was asked at one point if recent developments in Iraq were not a reason for him as former national security adviser, and the other members of Arroyo's war council, to admit they were wrong to have ardently supported that war. Golez answered that we could not afford to make judgments from hindsight, everyone was always right in hindsight. Where we were last year, he said, we had no choice but to support that war. We based our position on US intelligence reports, and "we had no reason not to believe them."
Why so? Why did we have no reason not to believe the lies issuing from the bowels of the Pentagon and the White House? Except for a few countries that formed the so-called "coalition of the willing" (Moore has some truly funny things to say about them in "Fahrenheit"), the whole world was against it. The UN was against it. Even the very UN inspectors of weapons of mass destruction were against it; they found no evidence of those weapons in Iraq. All we had to go on was the weird logic of George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that if the UN couldn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it must be because Saddam had managed to hide them!
Why did we have no choice but to support the occupation of Iraq? What is this--in the event of doubt, "sugod mga kapatid" [forward my brothers]? No, this isn't a matter of making judgments from hindsight, this is a matter of looking at things with foresight. Or never mind foresight, just using common sense.
"Fahrenheit" should help drive home the folly of that tack, for those who still haven't seen it. It should also remind us of why De la Cruz was abducted to begin with, something we seem to have forgotten in the blaze of government's self-congratulatory, rescue-mode, chest-thumping afterward. I heard in the news some days ago that the government still refuses to send OFWs to Iraq on the ground that what happened to De la Cruz could still happen again. Well, we continue to defend that war, it will happen again. We condemn it as the immoral occupation it is, it won't.
I wish they would show "Bowling for Columbine" along with "Fahrenheit 9/11." The first is just as insightful, if not more so, and should have something to say about the deeper sources of the war in Iraq. But that can wait, maybe until "Fahrenheit" proves commercially successful.
But, no, a great deal of what is right and wrong we can see not just from hindsight, we can espy it from foresight.
Or never mind foresight, from just using common sense.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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