Right Wing Nut House

Two stories. One about a TV docudrama. One about the putative end to a scandal that was to have brought down (at various times), the President, the Vice President, Karl Rove, and the Republican party.

What they have in common is that both are part of the carefully constructed Narrative of the Bush Administration told in storybook fashion by the left these past 6 years. In fact, they are the keystones to that Narrative and as such, their transfiguration from established fact to political myth undermines the entire rationale for the left’s opposition to the War on Terror as well as several vital themes in The Narrative that Democrats were counting on to bring them victory in November.

First, the docudrama Path to 9/11. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the 9/11 Commission Report knows of the Clinton Administration’s missed opportunities in the hunt for Bin Laden. And, although I haven’t seen it, I can guarantee FBI Director Louis Freeh and his stubborn refusal to fully support his number one counterterrorism agent Jack O’Neil (played by Harvey Keitel in the film) in his quest to get Osama will not come off well either. Evidently, Secretary of State Allbright and National Security Advisor Berger are also given unflattering treatment.

All of this destroys The Narrative, of course. How can you have Bush dropping the ball on terrorism that the Clinton Administration so ably managed during their years in the White House if those years are portrayed as a time of missed opportunities and unheeded warnings as well?

This part of The Narrative has always been problematic for the Clintonistas and they made a mighty effort during the 9/11 Commission public hearings as well as expertly managing the aftermath following the release of the report so that as little blame as possible accrued to them. It worked pretty well although the last polls taken on this issue that I could find were from 2004 and show the country convinced that both Administrations were equally at fault for the attack.

In truth, neither Administration served America well in the years leading up to and the day of the attack. The American nation was in a titanic state of self denial not only about al-Qaeda but also about the nature of the threat from Islamism. “Blame” is irrelevant when all of us were led to believe by both Clinton and Bush that America was safe and that there were no threats that could harm us. Sleepwalking through history like this is something we Americans have done many times. It wasn’t invented by Clinton. Clinton’s national security team may or may not have taken al-Qaeda more seriously than the Bush team. But neither recognized the existential threat that radical Islam posed to the nation and neither took the necessary steps either in homeland security or overseas intelligence gathering to mitigate the threat.

But for the left, the truth of the matter in blame for 9/11 endangers the “Bush Incompetence” part of The Narrative. People may not blame the President for 9/11 any more than they blame Clinton but when interwoven with other fact flakes, exaggerations, and outright lies, it buttresses their storyline by becoming one more example of the President’s critical lack of competence in managing the affairs of the nation.

The netnuts are pushing back against this threat to The Narrative by vowing to boycott the film. Meanwhile, the Clintonistas are playing a much different game. There is word that there is an effort by former officials to lobby The Disney Company to edit the film so that some of the scenes involving Clinton dithering on terrorism are excised:

I’m hearing all kinds of disturbing, though predictable, stories about a Clintonista offensive against “The Path to 9/11,” an ABC documentary written and produced by Cyrus Nowrasteh (”Into the West”), and directed by David Cunningham (”To End All Wars”). I haven’t seen it yet (although I hope to this weekend), but it is already drawing rave reviews from people who have (the piece is reviewed at FrontPage, here).

Apparently, the documentary recounts the bureaucratic bungling and lack of action against al Qaeda that was pervasive prior to the September 11 atrocities. It is by no means, I understand, pro-Bush. It is, instead, an effort to present history accurately. This evidently has many former Clinton officials and apologists in their default kill-the-messenger mode. Great pressure is being brought to bear on ABC and Disney to reopen the editorial process at this late stage (the documentary is supposed to air on September 10-11) so that the years 1993-2001 may remain forever airbrushed.

Lest anyone think the Bush Administration is treated with kid gloves, read this piece at Patterico’s by Justin Levin who has seen the film:

The ironic part is, the critics of this movie who haven’t seen it yet are going to have egg on their face. This film in no way ”blames the entire event on Clinton” as some falsely claim. “The Path to 9/11″ absolutely slams Bush in a number of ways:

1. It depicts Condi Rice ignoring Richard Clarke’s advice about Al-Queda and undercutting his authority within the White House.

2. It depicts the August 6th “Presidential Daily Briefing” wherein Rice is explicitly warned before 9/11 that Bin Laden intends to hijack American airplanes.

3. It makes Richard Clarke look like a tragic hero (even though everyone knows that he later went on to become one of Bush’s biggest critics).

4. It contains an epliogue that cites 9/11 Commission members giving the current government a failing grade in implimenting their recommendations.

There’s more, I’m sure. If it is at all accurate, it will portray the military, the FAA, and others as paralyzed by events.

And that’s all the right wants - accuracy. But apparently the Clintonistas have other things on their minds; namely, Hillary in ‘08 and how anything reflecting badly on the Clinton years will hurt her chances in the Presidential election.

A fascinating historical counterpoint to this effort by the Clinton mafia to airbursh history is the remarkable story that involved the great historian William Manchester and his searing account of those horrible days in November 1963 that saw the assassination of Kennedy and its aftermath. While Manchester claims that the Kennedy family did not have an absolute veto over what went into the final draft of Death of a President, his story (found in his expanded essay Controversy) about the back and forth between he and the Kennedy family about details in the book was both poignant and, at times disturbing.

Bobby Kennedy had yet to break with LBJ and was worried that the disdain portrayed in the book by RFK and his people toward Johnson would precipitate a split before he was ready. Bobby was running in 1968 and thought that the book made him look petty and vindictive. The enormous pressure exerted by the Kennedy family on Manchester to change much of the book’s treatment of the relationship between RFK and Johnson almost gave the author a nervous breakdown. In the end, most of it stayed.

This puts the Clintonista effort to lean on ABC to edit Path to 9/11 in a little different light. They are not so much concerned about Bill’s legacy as Hillary’s future. In this respect, it makes Sandy Berger’s trip to the National Archives for which he was convicted of destroying secret documents all the more interesting.

And it highlights the necessity for the left to try to keep the underpinnings of The Narrative intact by keeping the focus of failure squarely on the Bush Administration. If that block were ever removed from the edifice holding up the storyline of Bush incompetence, The Narrative itself is endangered.

And that brings us to the end of the Wilson-Plame Affair and how the left is scrambling today to salvage the fragments of that scandal and try and reweave The Narrative to cover the gaping hole left by the total and complete discrediting of liar Wilson.

The Washington Post administered the coup de grace:

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

The loss of the Wilson portion of The Narrative is a much more devastating a blow. Upon the Wilson house of cards was built the entire “Bush lied, people died” meme as well as much of the rationale for the anti-war movement in the first place. It’s like the old nursery rhyme “For want of a nail, the war was lost.”

If Wilson lied, the uranium story is true.
If the uranium story is true, Bush didn’t lie.
If Bush didn’t lie, Saddam was a threat.
If Saddam was a threat, following 9/11, he should be dealt with.
If we were going to deal with Saddam, we had to invade.

In addition to the anti-war part of The Narrative, the Wilson imbroglio also contributed mightily to the “Bush is dictator” portion of The Narrative. The fact that Karl Rove and others in the Administration told tales about Valerie Plame is now placed in an entirely different light not to mention Fitzgerald’s investigation being undercut substantially. What was going to be “Fitzmas” with White House officials being frog marched to jail willy nilly is now seen for what it always was; a witchunt carried out by an out of control federal prosecutor, egged on by partisans who hoped to use what Fitzgerald uncovered in an impeachment move against the President (and perhaps the Vice President as well). This is still a possibility but its success has become problematic.

The initial “reweaving” of The Narrative comes from Wilson himself. Here is a portion of a letter he had published today at Democratic Underground (no link to DU, please):

I want to let you know how much Valerie and I continue to be buoyed by your support and your dedication to getting the truth out and holding the administration and its lackeys accountable for the terrible policies they have foisted on our country and on the world. We must keep fighting.

As you think about this, our website (Wilsonsupport.org) has a copy of the letter I sent to the SSCI when its report first came out, challenging some of its conclusions. The LeftCoaster has a terrific study by eriposte on the whole Niger forgery case from beginning to end. Firedoglake and the Next Hurrah both have highly informative analyses of the case by skilled researchers and former prosecutors. I recommend them all as resources to jog memories. by this afternoon, I expect that our own team will have an updated set of talking points to distribute for your use as well.

Each of you in one way or another has contributed to the public’s (and in many cases our own) understanding of the issues from the beginning. Thank you for continuing to do.

In short, they’re not giving up. It should be interesting over the next few days to see how the Plame story can continue without Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson as helpless victims.

What all of this amounts to is that the left has its work cut out for it. For nearly 5 years, The Narrative has proceeded relatively smoothly with the storytellers able to bat aside challenges to the fable rather easily. These are the first real cracks in the facade of lies, exaggerations, false allegations, witchunts, and sometime laughable sometimes serious attempts to undermine the credibility of the President of the United States during a time of war. It all adds up to politics trumping truth. And if these two events contribute in even a small way to undermining The Narrative, we may be at a turning point that could eventually reveal the perpetrators of this myth making as the cads and calumnious haters they truly are.