Soccer Dad

The path to irrelevance

The question attending the upcoming movie "The path to 9/11" is how important is the accuracy of the movie? The Clinton administration and its defenders have gone on a crusade to stifle the movie because of its mistakes.

AmericaBLOG reproduced the letter the Senate Democratic leadership sent to ABC. And observes

The Senate Democratic leadership just threatened Disney's broadcast license. Not the use of the word "trustee" at the beginning of the letter and "trust" at the end. This is nothing less than an implicit threat that if Disney tries to meddle in the US elections on behalf of the Republicans, they will pay a very serious price when the Democrats get back in power, or even before.

The New York Times, of course, weighed in, objecting to this abuse of power and Disney's capitulation

Michael Eisner, Disney's chief executive, had expressed concern that the film might jeopardize Disney's broadcast license. If that is the reason for Disney's move, it would underscore the dangers of allowing huge conglomerates to gobble up diverse media companies.

On the other hand, a senior Disney executive says the real reason is that Disney caters to families of all political stripes and that many of them might be alienated by the film. Those families, of course, would not have to watch the documentary.

It is hard to say which rationale for blocking distribution is more depressing. But it is clear that Disney loves its bottom line more than the freedom of political discourse.

Oh whoops that's an adaptation of an editorial "Disney's Craven Behavior" from May 6, 2004 and it was responding to a charge - false as it turns out - that the Bush brothers had brought pressure to bear against Disney to prevent distribution of the phony "documentary" "Farenheit 9/11."

That charge - much like the charge that Rove avenged the President's honor by outing Valerie Plame - was false but it didn't much exercise the Times or many other media outlets who made issues out of the false charge. (I wrote to the Baltimore Sun's ombudsman who didn't respond to my e-mail.)

Given that it appears the "Path to 9/11" is deeply flawed as John Podhoretz notes (via memeorandum )

The one person who has no grounds for complaint is Bill Clinton himself.

"The Path to 9/11" gives the impression that, as president, Clinton never took bin Laden's declaration of war against the United States and the West seriously enough. And that is simply the unvarnished, undeniable truth.

Still, even here "The Path to 9/11" gets it wrong. The real truth about the failures of the U.S. government under both Clinton and Bush is not, as "The Path to 9/11" would have it, that the diabolical nature of the al Qaeda threat was obvious and unmistakable and that it was ignored by fools, charlatans and other downright unpleasant people who refused to listen to the Few Who Knew the Truth (meaning the late FBI official John O'Neill and that legend in his own mind, former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke).

The simple fact of the matter is that, with a million other things going on all at once - all of which seemed more pressing at the time, the threat went uncomprehended.

The 9/11 Commission rightly called this a "failure of imagination." It's the docudrama's failure to portray the False Peace accurately as a "failure of imagination" that makes "The Path to 9/11" entirely unworthy of your time on the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

(Why make up phony stories about Madeleine Albright when she advocated the coining of the term of "States of concern" to replace "rogue states?" I can think of no clearer demonstration of the "False Peace.")

But of course the hypocrisy surrounding "The Path to 9/11" is amazing. There are actually many more conservatives who actively criticize the inaccuracies of the movie than liberals who criticized Michael Moore's propaganda. (Oh right, it was a documentary, that means that it's true even when it isn't.)

More generally as Life of Rubin points out

The Left can dish it, but they can't take it.

The Left doesn’t want people to lay any blame or responsibility for 9-11 at their doorstep. They want people (and most importantly voters) to think that everything terror blame related should start with Bush. As if terrorism was invented Jan 20th, 2001 . 9-11 didn’t start on 9-11, it started decades earlier.

There is a double standard, in which the Left believes in "fake but accurate." It's how you get an entertainer like Katie Couric reading the news. Perceptions mean everything; facts are inconveniences.

Life-of-Rubin's conclusion is also worth remembering.

We are all to blame because no one, not the Right or the Left took Bin Laden serious enough. Bill Clinton needs to take some sort of responsibility for not realizing what was going on with Al Quada from 1992-2000. Al Queda, The Taliban and Osama were getting more organized, bigger and getting more prepared for wide scale attacks and war on us years before Bush took office.

So let’s not try to pretend, or worry more about Legacy then the truth. There is enough blame to go around on both sides of the political spectrum.

If President Dole had unseated President Clinton after one term, I believe there still would have been 9/11 as the bulk of the foreign policy establishment hadn't paid much mind to the growing threat.

What sets President Bush apart is that he said he was tired of America "swatting flies" and demanded a more comprehensive approach to fighting terror. His implementation may leave something to be desired, but he understood the nature of the threat better than most and has, for the most part, backed up his words with actions.

Unfortunately it does not appear that "The path to 9/11" will adequately illustrate the change in the nation's posture from pre to post 9/11.

UPDATE: See memeorandum.

UPDATE II: Conservative Cat makes the point about George Bush's contribution to the war on terror better than I did. (h/t Mensa Barbie.)

Responses to commenters:
Laura - the double standard I was referring to was the way the Democrats latched on to the phony Michael Moore documentary - members of the Democratic leadership attended the premiere, whereas there seem to be quite a few Republicans who criticize the path to 9/11 for its inaccuracies. The other double standard is that the Left, especially the media believed Michael Moore's bogus charge that the Bush brother's tried to intimidate Disney over F 9/11, but seem to have no problem with the actual bullying that Democrats are now engaged in regarding TPt 9/11.

No - Podhoretz criticized the film for inaccuracy. Read Podhoretz again. He only wrote that Clinton himself had nothing to complain about because he was as unserious as he was portrayed. Berger and Albright though, Podhoretz defends.

Bruce - Thanks.

UPDATE: The NY Times editorial did not concern itself with freedom of expression.

Perhaps the entertainment industry will come up with a few lasting lessons from the outcry over ABC’s “dramatization” of the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. One suggestion: when attempting to recreate real events on screen, you do not show real people doing things they never did.

Since the damage done was to the Clinton administration the Times wasn't happy with the false fictionalization. Unlike the case of Michael Moore's phony charge, the Times now is interested in setting the records straight. Then the Times was all too willing to repeat Moore's false charges and failed to apologize to President and Governor Bush for accusing them falsely.

Technorati tag: The Path to 9/11.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 8, 2006 03:14 PM | TrackBack