Three Lies of Saint Ronnie And One Truth From Michael Moore

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Nov 08, 2008 at 09:22

George Washington couldn't tell a lie.
Richard Nixon couldn't tell the truth.
And Ronald Reagan couldn't tell
The difference 'tween the two

The Friday before the election--Halloween--Michael Moore appeared on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.  Among other things, she went through his ten proposed decrees for a new administration's first ten days in office, one which was this:

AMY GOODMAN: Michael, your sixth presidential decree for the next president's first ten days is to defeat al-Qaeda and the next generation of America-haters by building wells.

     MICHAEL MOORE: Well, there's over a billion people on this planet that don't have access to clean drinking water. You know, what if we made it an American mission to make sure that the entire third world had clean drinking water? One of the statistics I read was it would cost about $10 per person in the third world of people who don't have the clean drinking water right now. So, that's--geez, that's $10 times a billion people? $10 billion. That's just October in Iraq. For the money that we're spending in Iraq in October, we could provide clean drinking water to most of the people that don't have it. And I, as an American, would rather be known by the people who are struggling to survive in the third world as the country that gave them clean drinking water or gave them other things that they need to help them in their daily existence to survive. I think most Americans would rather be known for that. Instead, we're known as the invaders and the occupiers and the people who prop up the regimes in these countries, and I'm tired of that. I'm really tired of it.

This proposal is, quite frankly, an act of genius--defending America by drawing on our deepest and truest strengths, rather than responding exactly as al Qaida would have wanted it, destroying our freedoms as well as our good name.  If anything could show the way out of the terribly self-destructive path Bush chose in response to 9/11, it is precisely this sort of sweeping, simple, yet visionary act.  If he has the wisdom and courage to take Michael Moore's advice during his first days in office, Barack Obama will almost certainly be well on his way to fulfilling some of the most extravagent hopes that he and his election have inspired.