When viewing documentaries, it is usually best to separate the finished product from the personality who presents it to us, lest we abandon objectivity in favour of analysis that is removed from the argument offered. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 poses a complex problem in this regard: it is difficult to separate the man and his ideologies from what amounts to little more than an ad hominem attack on Republican President George W. Bush.

The failings behind Moore’s film are demonstrated even before the opening credits, in a sequence revolving around the voter fraud in the state of Florida of the 2000 election. It is a sequence based entirely on conjecture, designed to agitate the anti-Bush crowd rather than present any coherent argument to a sceptical, undecided voter, or indeed a Republican follower who may be swayed by compelling evidence (and there has to be plenty of that lying around). It is the first, but not last, moment in which analysis of the facts is discarded in favour of simplified, subjective statements. Whether it is true or not is unimportant, as Moore either can’t or won’t explain why this is the case. What follows is a series of seemingly incomplete arguments, with extremely tenuous links at best. One can see this merely through his treatment of the difficult subject of terrorism, which necessarily crops up on many occasions throughout.

In perhaps the best segment of the film, adverts for meaningless anti-terror equipment for the home are displayed, before showing interviews with entirely secure rural Americans who nevertheless appear to be living in a state of constant fear. It gets straight to the heart of the ludicrously propagandistic War on Terror, showing how the concept of terrorism is manipulated to keep American citizens in a state of constant fear, so as to push the goals of the ruling class forward with greater ease. It is a strong argument, and one which could easily anchor the whole film, but Fahrenheit 9/11 remains frustratingly inconsistent on the issue, ranging from the outset where Moore argues that Bush didn’t spend enough time dealing with the terror threat, to the idea that terrorism is over-emphasised and not dealt with correctly. Instead of exploring the intricacies of a delicate subject, Moore rants at Bush from both sides, which only ends up being self-defeating.

Other points raised in the film are potentially interesting, but are handled in such a trivial manner that they come across as flatly superfluous. The amount of money Saudi Arabia pours into the US economy is indeed staggering, but Moore does nothing of any note with this information, which can be summarily dismissed by stating the obvious: Saudi Arabia is a heavy hitter on the world market for oil, and most of the big oil companies are situated in America. His attempts at adding intrigue to this situation should be summarily dismissed: surely anybody with a conception of how the world works could understand why governmental agents would be wary of people filming the Saudi embassy, soon after 9/11, and without attempting to gain any permission? Similarly juvenile is the montage of American officials shaking hands with Saudi officials, set to the R.E.M song ‘Shiny Happy People’, in an attempt to belittle the players involved. But isn’t this what diplomats do? To say the point is contrived is generous, because there is no point.

It is not enough to merely point out that the Saudi royals invest this sort of money (is Moore planning to expose the Chinese and Japanese governments in a similar way?), but Moore again fails to point out what this might actually mean. Perhaps this is because it would require a critique of capitalism and its need to feed the desire of the ruling class no matter what the consequences, and Moore is a Democrat, and Democrats are as capitalist as Republicans. This brings up the most galling aspect of Fahrenheit 9/11: the film indicts Republicans for crimes the Democrats constantly commit, and often improve on, yet there is only one outright criticism of a Democrat in the entire film; that of their eagerness to fund the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The criticism that documentaries should look at an issue from both sides has always been a highly contentious one, as every film possesses some sort of slant, but that nevertheless should not excuse Moore for his whitewashing of the Democratic Party. A perfect example is his attack on the Patriot Act, a rightfully reviled piece of legislation, which nevertheless has its roots in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act signed into law by Clinton, who himself admitted made a number of changes to American laws which had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, changes which severely restricted habeas corpus. Indeed, the examples Moore uses to demonstrate the attack on civil liberties the Patriot Act represented have nothing to do with that particular legislation: law enforcement’s infiltration of local activist groups and law enforcement’s questioning of the politically outspoken were practices firmly entrenched in American society during the 90s.

In fact, Moore seems unable to accept any wrongdoing that is not committed by a Republican: Iraq is ludicrously presented as an innocent place until Bush decides to invade, the phrase ‘immoral behaviour breeds immoral behaviour’ used to imply that the ‘otherwise good kids’ of the US army only perpetrated acts of torture against their Iraqi captives because the invasion was wrong in the first place, refusing to even attempt to get to the bottom of the military culture that festers in rotten capitalist society. He even hints at this point in the concluding monologue, making the excellent point that ‘war is fought to keep the structure of society intact’, without contextualising this statement in any way. He could, and probably should, have linked this to the deliberate targeting of the working class for recruitment to the army, by the way of promising them a life otherwise unachievable in the capitalist system, but he unfortunately leaves it as a non sequitur. This is unfortunate because it is the most intelligent point made in the film, and it is frustrating that viewers are not given enough information to explore this point further.

As undeniably talented a filmmaker as Moore is, his grasp of the political situation in America seems too modest for his grandiose aims, and he cannot tie all the strands together in a lucid manner. If he continues to act as nothing more than a shill for the Democratic Party, he will stand as an example of wasted talent.