On the 20th Anniversary of “Bowling for Columbine” winning the Oscar, you can watch it for free-by Michael Moore. Thanks to Pam P.
Twenty years ago tonight, on March 23, 2003, our film, “Bowling for Columbine”, received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of the year.
But it was also the fifth night of one of the greatest war crimes of the new century — the illegal invasion and bombing of Iraq by George W. Bush and the people of the United States of America. A whopping 72% of the American public backed Bush and the war, as did the majority of Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Bush’s cronies — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, etc. — desperate to take control of Iraq’s oil and eliminate Saddam Hussein, concocted a lie claiming Iraq was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack and that it now possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 (Osama bin Laden plus 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia). And, of course, the U.S. invasion force never found a single weapon of mass destruction. They did manage to annihilate hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, a mass murder of human beings who never threatened any Americans. Nearly 5,000 American troops, sent to kill the Iraqis, were themselves sent to their own senseless slaughter. Their parents and families, to this day, have never been given a reason for what they died for, and no apology has yet to be issued to them for Bush selfishly sacrificing their lives for absolutely nothing but his own personal revenge.
The utter sadness over this premeditated war crime is felt to this day. Bush and Cheney have never been indicted by the International Criminal Court and they remain free to do as they please. Few Democrats have apologized for being their enablers. I find it difficult to celebrate today’s anniversary of us “winning an Oscar” when the only thing we should consider remembering of what happened 20 years ago this week is this crime against humanity, committed in our name against the Iraqi people.
This is most confusing:
Neither the author of the headline, nor of the narrative is cited here.
The headline is the NRA’s defense for gun possession.
Michael Moore’s film argues that guns are the lethal means by which mass murders are committed. Few murderers strangle masses of victims within minutes.
And suddenly we are reading about crimes with weapons issued by the Defense Department, in support of the defense industry. Recalling Tom Lehrer’s: “Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department….”, there are guns, tanks, drones, chemical agents – profit sources all.
Reminds me of the local elder who advocated so righteously for better medical care for the elderly and the mentally ill, while seeking top dollar for her large collection of Swiss & Wessons.
Would have made many fine pieces of “swords into plowshares” art.