Australia's Bob Brown, leader of the rapidly growing Greens, reviews Fahrenheit 9/11:
"Bush's moment of truth came when he sat reading My Pet Goat to schoolchildren while the twin towers burned. Where was the maturity, intelligence and action to be expected of the most powerful human being on the planet in such a moment of peril? What do his defenders make of the gormless failure of the Commander-in-Chief to take immediate command in the crisis?
The office of the president is held in great respect by Americans. Maybe Moore's film is doing so well in cinemas because he shows how the office, not Bush, has been betrayed. Bush has purloined the office for himself and his rich cronies while poor Americans are sidelined, sent to the Iraq frontline or, worst of all, brought home secretly in body bags...
The problem for Moore's critics is Bush, not Moore. The documentary is successful not because Moore nails the President but because the President nails himself. No Bush absurdities, no Moore Palme d'Or...
Fahrenheit 9/11 has a signal scene in which Bush regales wealthy Republican donors with a toast to "the haves and have-mores". This, in a nation with 30 million people too poor to access hospital care. It is an unforgettable scene where Bush exhibits his unfitness as president of a great nation, let alone as world leader.
One is left wondering how else the US might be. What if the President, instead of spending $60 billion extra per annum on armaments for Iraq, had set up a new Marshall Plan to feed, clothe and ensure schools for the world's 1 billion citizens living in abject poverty?"
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