The Quest for Truth - Even if it's Awful

Excerpts from the five-day journal Mike kept when he rented a car to return to New York when the planes stopped flying on September 9th.

I am on the road, the only way to get out of L.A. and back home to our daughter and our friends in New York City. Oddly enough, I have never driven across this vast country.

The sorrow and anger builds across America. Talk radio tonight was filled with calls for carpet-bombing every Arab country. Many want revenge, blood. But a surprising number of people have called for us to not add to the killing of more innocent humans.

President Bush - back in May you gave the Taliban in Afghanistan $43 million dollars of our tax money. No free nation on earth would give them a cent, but you gave them a gift of $43 million because they said they had "banned all drugs." Because your drug war was more important than the actual war the Taliban had inflicted on its own people, you helped to fund the regime who had given refuge to the very man you now say is responsible for killing my friend on that plane and for killing the friends of families of thousands and thousands of people. How dare you talk about more killing now! Shame! Shame! Shame! Explain your actions in support of the Taliban! Tell us why your father and his partner Mr. Reagan trained Mr. bin Laden in how to be a terrorist! Am I angry? You bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the price with their lives.

I continue to be amazed at the large number of people - both on the radio and those we run into - who are completely opposed to some half-cocked military response to what has happened. No matter what the media tells you or shows you, I am convinced there is a majority of Americans who, though they want justice and want to be protected from further attacks, do not want George W. Bush to start sounding like Dr. Strangelove.

This past week began with one of the most powerful pieces on 60 Minutes in a long time. They laid it all out: How the United States -- and specifically Henry Kissinger -- plotted to overthrow the democratically-elected president of Chile in the early 1970s. The plot succeeded, President Allende was assassinated, and thousands of other Chileans were brutally tortured and murdered. Today, many within the new government of Chile would like to put Kissinger on trial for these acts of terrorism. Do you think the United States will give him up? Well, that story was forgotten, 48 hours later, as quickly as it had been forgotten 30 years ago.

No one wants to talk about politics right now - except our installed leaders in Washington. Trust me, they are talking politics night and day, and those discussions involve sending our kids off to fight some invisible enemy and to indiscriminately bomb Afghans or whoever they think will make us Americans feel good.

I feel I have a responsibility as one of those Americans who doesn't feel good right now to speak out and say what needs to be said: That we, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants. I know it's a hard thing to hear right now, but if I and others don't say it, I fear we will soon be in a war that will do NOTHING to protect us from the next terrorist attack.

I have received more emails this week than ever before - about 1000 every four hours. Ninety percent of them are from people who also refuse to be drawn into some form of senseless bloodletting, and who agree that we need to find the right way to bring those to justice who committed these acts.

We pass over the Continental Divide and Rush Limbaugh babbles on about whom we must bomb. He signs off, and I am sure he is on his way down to the nearest recruiting station to sign up - for surely he would not expect your son or daughter to risk their lives for freedom while he just sits back and enjoys his new half-billion dollar contract.

Three days ago, I learned from someone at ABC News that ABC had videotape - an angle of the second plane crashing into the tower - that showed an F-16 fighter jet trailing the plane at a distance. I didn't share this as I had not personally witnessed that tape myself and did not want to contribute to all the unsubstantiated rumors. It just came across on the TV that the government admitted they did dispatch fighter jets when they knew the planes were off course. Is it becoming more clear now that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was shot down to prevent it from attacking its destination?

The truth is harrowing, unbearable - but it must be told to us. A free people cannot make an informed decision if they are kept in the dark. Let's hear ALL the truth NOW.

As I write this late Sunday night, the captains of Capitalism are declaring that the stock exchange will re-open on Monday, even if they don't have running water and phones, just to show its enemies that NOTHING can stop the forward accumulation of wealth.

The vast majority of the dead are those who laboured to bring them that wealth, and it dishonours them and their families to so callously crank up the greed machine within days of this tragedy. Their bodies - thousands of them - are still buried under the rubble down the street, but, hey, why wait to give them a proper burial - let's get busy making some money! I can only hope that the stench from the rotting corpses of their former employees will haunt them for the rest of the day and remain in their consciences for the days to come...

Someone needs to get in charge and propose some real solutions to bringing the perpetrators to justice and preventing this as best as possible - from happening again. Instead, what we have is Bush speaking like a wind-up doll, mouthing a bunch of nonsense cliches, repeating them over and over and over.

Bush keeps calling what we are in "a war." Has anyone told him that the more he keeps using this word, the more HE puts US in jeopardy? A "war" implies that two sides are participating in an action to kill as many of the other side as possible. Bush and the pundits use the word like it's a one-sided deal, like we're going to be the only ones doing the bombing. War means we bomb them, then they bomb us. That's what war is, you idiots. We strafe Afghanistan, then the terrorists drop a canister of chemical weapons in the New York subway. We send in a group of commandos and wipe out a camp of Muslims, they take out the Sears Tower.

All of you who are screaming for war: are you prepared to pay the price, to take thousands of more casualties? Because, my big, macho-talking friends, THAT is what this kind of war would be like. America is a complex and open society with a massive and intricate infrastructure that is fragile and vulnerable and susceptible to easy attack and disruption. IT CAN BE BROUGHT DOWN WITH A BOX CUTTER. Let me repeat that: IT CAN BE BROUGHT DOWN - IT CAN BE BROUGHT TO A TOTAL STANDSTILL - BY A BOX CUTTER!

Nearly a week with no stock market, no commercial television, no professional sports, three days with no planes in the air (for the first time since 1911), no airports open, the country essentially shut down. A week later and the phone lines still don't all work. A box cutter, folks! Do not be misled into thinking he with the biggest missile is going to win this "war."

We will never be able to protect all of us from this kind of terrorism. Back and forth, more buildings bombed, more planes downed, more innocent American lives lost. When does this end? After we have killed every terrorist? When exactly is THAT scheduled to happen? Or is it just when we kill Osama bin Laden, then we win the war? Are you serious?

Bush now says this is "a war against the evil people in the world." Oh, really? THAT war! Yeah, we should be able to defeat "evil," oh, sometime in the next millennium or two. Get a grip. "War" is not going to get the justice we demand or make us more safe. You know it and I know it. There is a different way to go, and I will lay it out in a later letter, but to simplify it for now and put it in a nutshell, it goes like this:

One billion people on this planet have no clean drinking water. Two billion have no electricity. Three billion have never made a phone call from their home. We have the money and the people-power to alter ALL of this. We also have the moral imperative to stop supporting repressive regimes and corporations who exploit these people. When we decide to help improve these billions of people's lives, we will pull the rug out from under the terrorists who need those they send to their deaths to be poor and exploited and angry at us. The multi-millionaire bin Laden isn't going to give up HIS life!

When all the people in the Middle East have food on the table, a decent home, a good job, and democratic control over their own lives, who among them is going to be convinced to sacrifice his life by crashing himself into a tall office building? Sure, there will always be those who go insane and kill without reason. The British saw that in a Dunblarie schoolyard, we saw it in Oklahoma City. There will always be religious fanatics willing to kill and be killed because they believe God has so ordered them. Ask the families of the assassinated women's clinics' doctors in Buffalo and Florida about those willing to commit evil in the name of religion in America.

There IS a way to protect us from further attack, to lift the rest of the world out of its misery, but it requires some smarts and some guts, two things in short supply in Washington these days.

They are delaying the release of my book due to the events of the past week. No doubt, this book is going to ruffle some feathers, and in light of the attack in New York, the book suddenly gave everyone connected to it (including me) the heebie-jeebies. What a feeling to have in a free country! In a way, though, I was relieved with their decision - I have absolutely ZERO interest in going out on a book tour this week. Even though I have much I would like to say - opinions and thoughts that are NOT being heard in the media right now - I just can't go out there and have my name attached to something that is "on sale." I am very proud of this book, and I hoped it would stimulate a lot of discussion on various topics. I don't know now when it will come out maybe next month, maybe next year. In the meantime, I will continue to communicate on the Web and speak to any media outlet that will listen to - and report uncensored - what I have to say about the tragic situation in which we are now immersed.

I can't believe all the incredible letters you are sending me - over 41,000 letters in the last week. It is clear I am not alone in my sadness over this tragedy or in the anger I have for what is being proposed by our leaders. I will print these letters and let our elected officials see what the REST of America is thinking about the idea of war.

I received an e-mail from a radio station manager in Michigan. He passed on to me a confidential memo from the radio conglomerate that owns his station: Clear Channel, the company that has bought up 1,200 stations altogether - 247 of them in the nation's 250 largest radio markets - and that not only dominates the Top 40 format, but controls 60 percent of all rock-radio listening. The company has ordered its stations not to play a list of 150 songs during this "national emergency." The list, incredibly, includes "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Peace Train," and John Lennon's "Imagine." Rah-rah war songs, though, are OK.

And then there was this troubling instruction: "No songs by Rage Against the Machine should be aired." The entire works of a band are banned? Is this the freedom we fight for? Or does this sound like one of those repressive dictatorships we are told is our new enemy?

A college DJ defied instruction and played, "Hey, War Pig," by Katrina and the Waves, and he dedicated it to "all the war mongers out there." Yes, there is hope, the kids are all right.

My phone rings off the... whatever phones ring off of these days. Calls from the BBC, CBC, Canal+, ABC (Australia), Swedish TV, Dutch TV - all want me to appear live on their national prime-time newscasts. Not a single American network has called. Frankly, I don't want to be on anybody's TV show no matter where they are from, but I cannot help but feel this sinking feeling in my gut that the rest of the world wants to hear what I have to say, yet in my own country, I am to have no voice in the media (other than through these letters on the Web). This is MY country. I love MY country. Every channel and it's the same damn repetitive drumbeat WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR...

And yet, I have just driven 2,944 miles. I have heard the voices of the scores of fellow Americans I met, the average Joes and Janes, who are NOT screaming WAR WAR WAR! Why can't their voices be heard? Where is Noam Chomsky, or Howard Zinn, or the editors of "The Nation" or "Tikkun" or "The Progressive" or the thousands of college kids who protested at noon on Thursday on 148 American campuses? Don't they count? Is this still the America we believe in, the one we are being asked to defend?

Michael Moore is host of The Awful Truth and starred in The Big One.

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