Right Wing Nut House

The New York Times says of the debate over detainee rights: “It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as monumental as the politics.”

Indeed. And the fact that the debate is taking place almost solely and exclusively among Republicans and conservatives says volumes about the cynicism and lack of courage on the part of Democrats in both houses of Congress.

Perfectly content with throwing rhetorical bombs on the issue of detainee rights for months, not offering any solutions but rather tossing exaggerated epithets at the President and Republicans, Congressional Democrats are cowering on the sidelines as the most important debate in the War on Terror unfolds on the Hill:

At issue are definitions of what is permissible in trials and interrogations that both sides view as central to the character of the nation, the way the United States is perceived abroad and the rules of the game for what Mr. Bush has said will be a multigenerational battle against Islamic terrorists.

Democrats have so far remained on the sidelines, sidestepping Republican efforts to draw them into a fight over Mr. Bush’s leadership on national security heading toward the midterm election. Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s approach.

If Democrats think they are being clever by not falling into the Republican “trap” of engaging in a debate on this issue, they have outthought themselves once again. All they are doing is being made to appear as weak and vacillating on matters related to the war as Republicans say they are. They are proving to the American people that they are unworthy of ascending to power this November by sitting on their hands while some of the most important issues relating to both our national security and national identity are decided.

What kind of country do we want to be? How much is our view of ourselves tied up in how others see us? Can we still protect ourselves while desiring to be a “good citizen” of the world? Can our Constitution be stretched in order to recognize the rights of those who wish to destroy us? How much power should be granted the Executive during a time of war?

These are not “political” questions in the traditional sense. And I doubt very much whether any nation in history has had such a unique and soulful argument about many of these issues that go to the heart of our sovereignty as well as the core of our Constitutional form of government.

At issue is the law - international and domestic - and how it should apply to prisoners who fall into our hands. On one side is the President and an obedient Congressional leadership who seek to have the broadest possible interpretation of international statutes relating to torture and the incarceration of prisoners. The President wants to give the CIA the authority to use “enhanced” interrogation techniques on high value prisoners while adjudicating the cases of other detainees using the rather blunt judicial instrument of Military Tribunals.

The problem with the former is that those lining up in opposition - notably Senator McCain and Colin Powell - fear that any deviation from a relatively strict interpretation of the Geneva Convention protocols will place captured American military and intelligence personnel in greater danger of being abused (although it is hard to imagine no matter what our policy about interrogations, how much more danger our people would be in if captured by al-Qaeda or a state that supports the terrorists).

As for the latter, the President wants Military Tribunals to be able to withhold evidence of a classified nature from detainees during their judicial proceedings. McCain & Co. want rules of evidence more in keeping with American Constitutional protections.

On this issue, both sides have strong arguments. Given the nature of the war and how it is being fought, oftentimes the only evidence gathered against a prisoner is via other interrogations or informants whose lives would be placed in danger if their identity were revealed. On the other hand, unless a detainee attorney can assess the evidence against his client, it becomes virtually impossible to defend him. And if the purpose of the Tribunal is to establish the guilt or innocence of the prisoner - a process desperately needed given the uncertainty surrounding the circumstances where many detainees at Guantanamo were captured - then one would hope that the more rigorous standards of evidence would be adopted for the proceedings.

The good news is that the President seems willing to compromise:

“The most important job of government is to protect the homeland, and yesterday they advanced an important piece of legislation to do just that,” Bush told reporters. “I’ll continue to work with members of the Congress to get good legislation so we can do our duty.”

The re-interpreting of Geneva Convention protocols against torture has drawn the most fire from McCain and his supporters. What the White House calls a “redefinition” many experts on international law say is an attempt to circumvent the Geneva articles while immunizing American personnel (especially the CIA) from any charges of war crimes. This is extremely shaky legal ground for the Administration and it has apparently not sat well with lawyers at the Pentagon:

Senior judge advocates general had publicly questioned many aspects of the administration’s position, especially any reinterpreting of the Geneva Conventions. The White House and GOP lawmakers seized on what appeared to be a change of heart to say that they now have military lawyers on their side.

But the letter was signed only after an extraordinary round of negotiations Wednesday between the judge advocates and William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department’s general counsel, according to Republican opponents of Bush’s proposal. The military lawyers refused to sign a letter of endorsement. But after hours of cajoling, they assented to write that they “do not object,” according to three Senate GOP sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were divulging private negotiations.

It is likely that this “redefinition” will be altered or even jettisoned in any final version of the bill.

The Republicans certainly had ulterior political motives in bringing this legislation to the fore 6 weeks before a mid term election in order to highlight the Democratic party’s unfitness and irresponsibility on national security issues. But the fact remains that the heartfelt opposition to the President’s proposals by conservatives carries far more weight in this debate than anything the politically motivated Democrats could muster. McCain, Powell, and the rest have proven that they are not only good Americans. They have also proven that they are good Republicans as well. This despite the probability that their opposition to the President will not win Republicans any votes in November nor advance their personal ambitions with core Republican supporters.

It proves to me that there are still people of conscience in the Republican party. In that respect, it may be worth it even if their opposition costs the party control of one or both houses of Congress in November.

UPDATE

James Joyner is in basic agreement (and makes the same comment I did about McCain’s rational regarding torture):

On the merits, I agree with McCain and company, although not necessarily for the reasons they give. It is patently absurd to argue that our terrorist enemies are going to abide by the Geneva Conventions if we do so.

Graham is right that abiding by international law and our living up to our ideals sends the correct message. I’m more skeptical than he is about our ability to persuade Muslims that we’re the good guys, given that their information is filtered through al Jazeera, the mullahs, and others hostile to us. Still, every documented American attrocity fuels the propaganda fire against us with very little offsetting advantage.

McQ at Q & O:

I agree. Now there are certainly appealing arguments to be made on both sides of the issue, but to this point, that’s really not happened. It is indeed refreshing, as Taylor points out, to see a policy discussion happening which isn’t completely driven by politics. It is equally refreshing to see the president go to Congress to discuss the issues.

So for the time being ignore the press characterizations of this being a rebuff for Bush or a rebellion in the Republican ranks. It is something, had Congress been doing its job, which should have been settled long before this. And in this case, better late than never.

Sullivan (Hysterical as always but his heart is in the right place):

The sight of so many Republican senators and one former secretary of state finally standing up against the brutality and dishonor of this president’s military detention policies is a sign of great hope. It turns out there is an opposition in this country - it’s called what’s left of the sane wing of the GOP. Slowly, real conservatives are speaking out loud what they have long said in private. The apparatchiks of the pro-torture blogosphere can vent, but it is hard to demonize the new opposition as “leftist” or “hysterical.”

Andrew seems a little vexed that the President will use the issue as a club to beat the Democrats with. It is moronic to think the President would do otherwise. With the kind of opposition Republicans face - exaggerated and hyperbolic charges like those contained in Sullivan’s post - what does Andrew and the rest of the unhinged opposition think the President and Republicans are going to do? Sit back and let their opponents have an open field? Allow them the luxury of remaining quiet while they spout their nonsensical and unfair rhetoric?

As I point out in the post, Bush is in fact playing politics with the issue - any President of either party would do the same if placed in his position. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the major electoral dynamic that has been with us since Jefferson was elected: The best defense is a good offense.

It may be that one day, after the partisan dust has settled and 9/11 itself has faded in its emotional impact if not significance, that ABC’s docudrama The Path to 9/11 will be seen exactly as it should be; a sincere attempt to tell the story of how the tragedy came about and how our national leaders failed in the end to stop it.

The hatchet job done this past fortnight by the left in attacking the project as nothing more than a partisan witch hunt aimed at smearing President Clinton has been remarkable for the way that several different political interests fused to give rise to the major critiques used by Democrats to tar the film unfairly. These include:

* The vanity and sheer ass covering of Clinton aides and Clinton himself in not wanting to be portrayed in any kind of negative light.

* The potential candidacy of Hillary for President for which it is vitally important that the two terms her husband served in that office be seen as years of competent administration and successful protection against terrorists.

* Democratic electoral prospects in the 2006 mid terms which could be affected if the public sees the left as weak on terror.

* The threatening prospect that The Narrative the left has used to undermine the Bush Administration for the last 5 years was being challenged by the facts. A recent poll showing that more than 50% of Americans now blame Bush for 9/11, up from 34% in 2002 shows just how successful The Narrative has been at spinning history.

For all these reasons and more the left has thrown down the gauntlet from here on out regarding the showing of history in any form - documentary, docudrama, or even fictionalized accounts based on real events - and that not only will future projects involving Bush or Republicans be scrutinized with a magnifying glass but, more ominously, the political affiliations and even religious beliefs of the various producers, writers, and directors will come under the microscope as well.

The current avenue of attack by the left on the project is the alleged “religious right” cabal that directed and wrote the film. This theme was first presented at HuffPo by Max Blumenthal who wrote a laughably inaccurate and shockingly dishonest piece about 1) “a secretive evangelical religious right group” behind the film; and 2) the conservative leanings of writer/producer Cy Nowrasteh.

Blumenthal’s piece appeared in a slightly altered form in The Nation but still with its deliberate falsehoods and exaggerations intact. (Read my takedown of Blumenthal for an idea of just how inaccurate and dishonest his analysis is.)

The first question one may have is what is so “secretive” about the group mentioned by Blumenthal, the Youth With a Mission (YWAM), a world class, mainstream protestant missionary group? Blumenthal peppers his critique with idiotic scare words like “secretive” and “mysterious” in a juvenile attempt to make the perfectly legitimate associations of the film’s director look ominous.

The Guardian picks up on this ridiculous theme and goes Blumenthal one better; they redefine “extremist” Christian views:

The film’s director, David Cunningham, is active in Youth With a Mission (Ywam), a fundamentalist evangelical organisation founded by his father, Loren Cunningham. According to its publications, the group believes in demonic possession, spiritual healing and conservative sexual morality.

Last month David Cunningham addressed a conference in England organised by the group at its UK headquarters in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on the making of the film. His talk was entitled Christ-like Witness in the Film Industry.

The last time I looked, “demonic possession, spiritual healing and conservative sexual morality” were not beliefs limited to wild-eyed right wing Christians. Perhaps the Guardian should look first at the Catholic church (ever hear of Lourdes?) who believe in the very same things as well as most protestant denominations.

Not content with attacking mainstream religious people by comparing their beliefs to radical Christian fundamentalists, both Blumenthal and the Guardian question screenwriter Nowrasteh’s political beliefs.

Blumenthal in fact, goes to great pains to misquote Nowrasteh in an interview he did with Frontpage. Compare what Blumenthal quoted with what Nowrasteh actually said. Blumenthal first:

With the LFF now under Horowitz’s control, his political machine began drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh’s “Untitled” project, which finally was revealed in late summer as “The Path to 9/11.” Horowitz’s PR blitz began with an August 16 interview with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag webzine. In the interview, Nowrasteh foreshadowed the film’s assault on Clinton’s record on fighting terror. “The 9/11 report details the Clinton’s administration’s response—or lack of response—to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests,” Nowrasteh told FrontPageMag’s Jamie Glazov. “There simply was no response. Nothing.”

Here’s what Nowrasteh actually said:

The 9/11 report details the Clinton’s administration’s response—or lack of response—to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests. The worst example is the response to the October, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. COLE in Yemen where 17 American sailors were killed. There simply was no response. Nothing.

Blumenthal’s failure to note that Nowrasteh was talking about Clinton inaction regarding terrorism only as it related to the USS Cole bombing while making it appear that the screenwriter was condemning Clinton for having “no response” to terrorism in general is incredibly dishonest. How a supposedly mainstream publication like The Nation allowed this calumny onto its pages is a mystery. Perhaps the fact checker was off that day.

Surprisingly, the New York Times injects a little sanity into this debate about right wing connections to the film. This piece by Edward Wyatt, while rightly questioning some of the film’s accuracy, points out the silliness of this line of attack by the left:

The project would appear to have more benign roots however. Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment, and Quinn Taylor, the senior vice president for motion pictures for television and miniseries at ABC, first conceived the idea of a mini-series based on the independent Sept. 11 commission’s best-selling report in 2004. Mr. Taylor contacted Mr. Platt, who had a production deal with Touchstone, the Disney unit that produces series and movies for ABC and other networks. In addition to films like “Legally Blonde,” Mr. Platt, formerly chairman of Sony’s TriStar Pictures, had produced television projects, including a 2005 version of “Once Upon a Mattress,” starring Carol Burnett and Tracey Ullman, for ABC.

After several attempts to find a director, Mr. Taylor settled on Mr. Cunningham, who had directed “Little House on the Prairie” for ABC’s “Wonderful World of Disney.” And Mr. Platt and Mr. Taylor decided on Mr. Nowrasteh as the screenwriter after reading his script for “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” a 2001 television movie that was shown on the Showtime cable network.

“I thought that was an effective dramatization of an historic event,” Mr. Platt said, “and it seemed Cyrus had the ability to deal with lots of research and sources.”

Nowrasteh was skewered by conservatives for his portrayal of Reagan Administration figures in the The Day Reagan Was Shot. I guess he forgot for a while that he was supposed to be a right wing nut.

The screenwriter, an Iranian immigrant, has said on more than one occasion that he is more libertarian than conservative. Judging by his work on both the Reagan and 9/11 projects, one would have to conclude that it is probable Mr. Nowrasteh leaves his ideology at the door when writing and concentrates more on being “dramatic.”

And this brings us to the real villain in all of this; ABC and their over-hyping this project as more of a documentary than a drama. Some of this controversy could have been avoided if the network hadn’t left themselves wide open to criticism for inventing scenes out of whole cloth and putting words in people’s mouths they didn’t say. Their promotion of the film as “based on the 9/11 Commission Report” was also inaccurate. When I first saw the advertising for the program, I actually thought it would be a dramatization of what was in the Commission’s report. What it turned out to be was a mish mash of stuff pulled directly from the report (”Everything is blinking red!”), composite scenes that give the gist of what policy makers were thinking, and invented drama used to illustrate certain themes and to suggest how characters may have acted in real life.

This is hardly documentary film making. And ABC should have known better when promoting it.

That being said, the dishonesty and hysterical exaggeration about the inaccuracies in the film by the left only seemed to draw more attention to it. The film won the ratings race on Monday night (after finishing a distant second to football on Sunday evening). And as Tom Kean pointed out today in the New York Times, many times more people watched the film than ever read the Commission’s report.

The controversy over the film has been unnecessary, overblown, and, in the end, self-defeating for the left. It probably won’t change anyone’s mind about who was to blame for 9/11. History has made that judgment already. And it isn’t Bush, or Clinton, or any other American president but rather Osama Bin Laden and his ideology of death and terror.

I thought that the second part was much better than the first. The pace was much better - not as much extraneous information. And the last 20 minutes showing the attacks was absolutely riveting.

A few quibbles.

The order to shoot down the planes was never established conclusively as coming from the President. Incredibly, Air Force I was having problems communicating with the Sit Room. Cheney swears that Bush told him but the Commission can’t confirm it.

Overall, I think that they portrayed the Bush Administration as more concerned about terrorism than they actually were. At least that’s the impression I got. That said, I was happy to see the decisive meeting of September 4 in the movie. It was at this meeting that I think the Administration decided to take on al Qaeda and the Taliban. The latter is very important for obvious reasons. Whether the Administration would have followed through with anything is a matter of conjecture but I think both the August 6 PDB and the heightened alerts from around the world probably convinced Bush’s people that they had to deal with the threat.

Too little too late? Considering they were in office only 8 months is a mitigating factor but there should be no excuse for the delay. Protecting the country is not something that that you should “grow into.” That job should be up to snuff from day one.

“The wall” was portrayed accurately. I just wish they would have highlighted who it was that made it even stronger.

I thought despite what some on the left were saying, the arguments made by the Clinton people about why they couldn’t go after al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Bin Laden came across as sound (from their point of view). Certainly Albright had a point when in the movie she talked about any action taken against al Qaeda affecting the Arab-Israeli peace process. And she was right when she said that the peace negotiations were more important than going after “people in caves.” Please remember that precious few people in government thought al Qaeda capable of much more than truck bombs and suicide missions against small targets.

This, of course, was the failure of imagination that the 9/11 Commission talked about. And I find it curious that the hysterical critics of this film were opposed to showing even things that the Clinton people admitted to.

As for the attacks, they were staged well. But if you want to see a much better representation of what the FAA and the military were doing while the attacks were under way, your best bet would be to see United 93. It’s an eye opener.

In my view, Tenet got something of a pass in the film. There is little doubt that he is one of the most spectacularly incompetent DCI’s we’ve ever had with the possible exception of Stansfield Turner who served under Carter and was almost universally hated by agency analysts and operatives. Tenet may have been a good bureaucratic operator but in our hour of need he failed the United States twice - on 9/11 and Iraq WMD’s.

Condi Rice also was treated better than she deserved. Her “re-organization” of the NSC was, as the 9/11 Commission showed, an unnecessary exercise and served only to marginalize a few Clinton holdovers like Clark.

Clark himself comes off the hero which I’m sure pleases him to no end. But he was one of the only Executive Branch employees who realized what al Qaeda was and what we were up against.

I would give this film 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. Less for accuracy. More for the production values. It was entertaining and not preachy while hitting the nail on the head more than once. Universally good acting, good directing, less than stellar writing, but the editing, music, and FX were all first class.

This film is good enough to buy for your DVD library and I plan on doing so.

Part one was outstanding. A little too much exposition at times. But that could be some late editing due to what they took out as a result of the pressure from the left.

In fact, there were some sequences that it was pretty obvious they tacked on a few extra seconds here and there. But the story moved fairly well anyway, much better than we were led to believe by some critics.

Now for the controversy. I thought the entire sequence surrounding Osama’s “hideout” was a travesty. I see the screenwriter’s device - it was done to give all the arguments why they never gave the order to capture or kill Osama. I realize that the screenwriter tried to present a composite scene that examined the issues facing the government because there were, by last count, 8-10 chances that we had to get Bin Laden (or to be fair, attack a location we thought he was hiding at). There was simply no way to dramatize that many scenes and give the arguments for why we never pulled the trigger for each of them. Those arguments look pretty lame in hindsight. But the policymakers were not operating with the benefit of glasses that could see into the future. Their inaction was justifiable looking at it through their worldview.

And it was way over the top in blaming the policymakers for their failings. Some of the jibes about “courage” were insulting. Wahlberg’s character was so far out of his paygrade in criticizing his boss or the White House it’s unbelievable. And some of the criticism from other characters was gratuitous. The entire sequence could have been deep sixed and the film would not have suffered a bit.

As could the scene with Patricia Heaton busting in on Tenet’s meeting and weeping about how it was their fault the embassies blew up. Stupid and unnecessary.

But I fail to see why such a big stink was made about the Albright scene. She actually came off completely rational and made a strong case for why Pakistan had to be notified.

The film is not nearly as hard on Clinton as its going to be on Bush. That said, I thought that the Clinton government looked pretty competent in getting Yousef and the terrorist in Africa. And it’s obvious that Clark (the self serving bastard) had the right idea about Osama and what we were up against.

All in all, while not bending over backwards to deify the Clinton Presidency (probably why the left is so incensed), I thought that it was a fairly balanced portrayal of that crew’s efforts against terrorism - except where I note otherwise above.

The left certainly can’t complain when O’Neil spat out his dig at the Administration for treating the problem of terrorism as a law enforcement matter. They supported that approach then and they support it now - even though it makes their man look like a fool in retrospect.

I thought the acting was good, the writing not so much, but good direction kept the story moving nicely. I can’t wait to see how it played on lefty websites. Should be good for a laugh or two.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Tomorrow while much of the country pauses to remember the victims of 9/11 on the five year anniversary of that horrible day, it will occur to many of us what those attacks signified; the day that the United States awoke from its decades-long slumber and finally faced up to the fact that we were at war with a grimly determined, fanatical enemy hell bent on destroying us.

For others, especially for those on the left, 9/11 will be remembered as a tragedy, a day when our “chickens came home to roost” and nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens paid the price for our folly. In this historical construct, rather than remembering 9/11 as a wake up call, the left sees the anniversary as a day of atonement, a day to make amends for our past sins.

Michelle Malkin has an interesting piece about one aspect of this phenomena and its weird manifestation in Washington state:

Moonbat America is beyond parody. Yesterday, I told you about Bremerton, Washington’s 9/11 commemoration–commemorating “diversity” and immigration and anything except the actual events, heroes, victims, and villains of 9/11.

Well, here’s more inanity from the Pacific Northwest.

First, take a look at a few of the King County (WA) library system’s Sept. 11 programs (hat tip: reader J.S.):

Yes to the World: Songs of Peace, Unity and Healing for the Whole Family
Presented by Lorraine Bayes and Dennis Westphall. The founding directors of Tickle Tune Typhoon sing songs to celebrate the beauty of life. Come sing and dance at a family concert that supports friendship, peace, cooperation and caring for all living things.

This has become known as “9/11 Denial” where the full implication of the attacks are simply put out of mind and the comfortable bromides and somnolent fantasies about the brotherhood of man and world peace are eagerly substituted. Harsh realities that require one to look into the abyss and accept the fact that evil men wish to do us enormous harm are carefully placed in a box and hidden away lest the children (and those with child like minds) be exposed to the discomfort of a smashed worldview, battered and broken by the exigencies of history and the materiality of events.

This is only part of the equation, of course. Living in a world where quite literally there never was a 9/11 appeals to only a certain segment of the left - aging hippies and the radical sophists who have abandoned reality and created their own personal gulags of politically correct ideas and actions. For them, 9/11 is one more opportunity to demonstrate what they believe is their moral superiority over the rest of us.

But for the majority of the left, it is the yearning for a return to a 9/10 fantasy world that occupies their thoughts this weekend. These thoughts include a determined effort to carefully construct a historical narrative that proves that 9/11 was a gigantic mistake and that rather than moving on to face the assault on the west by radical Islamists, it would be better if we learned from our errors and repaired to the safety and security we believed were ours on 9/10.

There is obvious comfort in this historical fallacy. And there is political gain as well. For this reason, the left has built a storyline about 9/11 that takes the form of both a Chaucer-like cautionary tale and Hollywood conspiracy fable, all the better to appeal to the confusion many Americans are feeling about the aftermath of 9/11 and our response to terrorism in general.

That response - the invasion and overthrow of two regimes in the Middle East that supported terrorism - seems to many on the left to supply verification for Ward Churchill’s thesis that 9/11 was the result of America’s bullying and our insatiable desire to dominate. To the mountebanks who have spent the last 5 years spinning conspiracy theories about Haliburton and secret neocon cabals, the challenge became one of trying to translate their distrust of American power and loathing of American purpose into a palatable mix for the masses to latch on to and embrace.

While not completely swallowing the Ward Churchill view that 9/11 happened because we were hated throughout the world for policies promulgated before the attacks, the left has taken the bare bones of Churchill’s critique and pasted it on to the aftermath of 9/11 to posit the notion that in the months following that awful day, “the world was with us” and it was only because of the policies put in place since the attacks that the nations now despise us. This has the virtue of cleansing the historical record of any mistakes made by Bush’s predecessor while blaming the President for the virulent strain of anti-Americanism that has infected the planet from Europe to the Middle East and beyond.

This myth of worldwide solidarity with America following 9/11 has been successfully advanced thanks to a stubborn refusal by most of us to look carefully beyond the outpouring of genuine feeling for the plight of New Yorkers and the American people as a result of the catastrophe and examine the long held anti-American feelings of most of the rest of the world who saw the attacks as both a punishment for our transgressions as well as an occasion for joy that the mighty USA had been brought down a peg or two in the scheme of things.

One need only look to our closest ally Great Britain for proof that the solidarity myth is a crock. Less than 48 hours after the attacks, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James Philip Lader appeared on the BBC program Question Time where he was roundly booed and “slow handclapped” after his defense of American policy, reducing that worthy almost to tears. And despite the fact that the BBC apologized, William Shawcross, who was in Europe at the time of the attacks wrote on September 17, 2001:

But the response of some of the Question Time audience reveals a darker side and shows the awful truth that these days there is just one racism that is tolerated - anti-Americanism. Not just tolerated, but often applauded. Like any other nation, the US makes mistakes at home and abroad. (I wrote about some of those in Indochina.)

But the disdain with which its failures and its efforts are greeted by some in Britain and elsewhere in Europe is shocking. Anti-Americanism often goes much further than criticism of Washington. Too often the misfortunes of America are met with glee, a schadenfreude that is quite horrifying.

Even the proof most often cited by “The World Was With Us” crowd - a front page editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde entitled “We are All Americans” - is, after close examination, nothing more than a rehash of American sins and an expression of the widespread view held by both elites and commoners that we got what we deserved.

John Rosenthal writing in The Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2004 on “The Myth of ‘Squandered Sympathy:’

Thus are legends born. For the solidarity ostentatiously displayed in the title of Mr. Colombani’s editorial is in fact massively belied by the details of the text itself.

By the fifth paragraph, Mr. Colombani is offering his general reflections on the geo-political conditions he supposes provoked the attacks:

“The reality is surely that of a world without a counterbalance, physically destabilized and thus dangerous in the absence of a multipolar equilibrium. And America, in the solitude of its power, of its hyperpower, . . . has ceased to draw the peoples of the globe to it; or, more exactly, in certain parts of the globe, it seems no longer to attract anything but hatred. . . . And perhaps even we ourselves in Europe, from the Gulf War to the use of F16s against Palestinians by the Israeli Army, have underestimated the hatred which, from the outskirts of Jakarta to those of Durban, by way of the rejoicing crowds of Nablus and of Cairo, is focused on the United States.”

The editorial that headlined the idea that “We are all Americans” then degenerated into conspiracy mongering:

In the following paragraph, Mr. Colombani went on to add that perhaps too “the reality” was that America had been “trapped by its own cynicism,” noting that Osama bin Laden himself had, after all, been “trained by the CIA”–a never substantiated charge that has, of course, in the meanwhile become chapter and verse for the blame-America-firsters. “Couldn’t it be, then,” Mr. Colombani concluded, “that America gave birth to this devil?”

Almost from the start of the War on Terror, the left’s critique of the President has utilized this myth to both rail against Administration actions and point to a time when our policies fostered good will around the world and a morality of purpose here at home. That time turns out to be 9/10 and the golden age that preceded it or, more specifically, anything that happened in America before January 20, 2001.

This is why Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the showing of ABC’s The Path to 9/11. Any countervailing narrative that shows President Clinton in anything less than a flattering light, especially as it relates to his Administration’s response to terrorism, must be suppressed. The shocking response by Democratic legislators in threatening The Disney Company, parent of ABC, with nothing less than yanking it’s license to broadcast has at bottom, a fervent desire to prevent any information that might show the truth of how the United States spent the 1990’s sleepwalking through history.

And the outpouring of invective directed against the program has another cause as well; the belief that the Clinton-Albright policy of treating terrorism largely as a law enforcement problem would be revealed as the monumental failure it turned out to be. Viewing the terrorist problem as a “nuisance” as John Kerry famously averred (as if bloodthirsty jihadists were nothing more than “muggers”) may be comforting to those who believe that our problems are a result of not stopping the world from spinning on 9/10. And the attraction of this narrative in a political sense may be that it resonates with voters who have become weary of the conflict and wish to elect those who would play along with the fantasy that 9/11 was a fluke and that we can all return to a time when we didn’t have to think about annihilation and Armageddon.

In short, the left is opposing the showing of this film because 1) Clinton actions are criticized and 2) Bush’s actions aren’t criticized enough. The latter being the main point of anger for liberals in that it goes against everything they have tried to obfuscate for the past 5 years. They want the enduring image of 9/11 to be George Bush sitting in a classroom reading a children’s book not the towers collapsing or people jumping out of buildings. Anything that goes against The Narrative is a threat to expose the entire tissue of lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations, conspiracy fantasies, and deliberate falsehoods perpetrated over the last 5 years with the help of an all too willing media and a vast network of former government officials always willing to shift blame for their own inadequacies in the face of Islamic terrorism.

The great divide in American politics between 9/10 liberals and 9/12 conservatives may prove to be our undoing in the War on Terror unless some kind of consensus can be reached that bridges the chasm between those days. Whether that can be accomplished at this point is extremely doubtful. It may take another wake up call to bring about the kind of unity that is so sorely lacking thanks to the polarization of our politics and the outright denial of so many of the simple, incontrovertible fact that we are at war and the conflict began what seems so long ago on a stunningly beautiful September morning.

What are the left’s talking points for today on The Path to 9/11?

In the rarefied atmosphere of “respectable” (we have to call them something) lefty blogs, the drumbeat today will be over a post by Max Blumenthal at HuffPo that reveals the shocking truth about the “fakeumentary” and it’s connections to (wait for it)…A VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY!

In fact, “The Path to 9/11″ is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11’s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to “transform Hollywood” in line with its messianic vision.

This is a bald faced lie. There is no “well honed propaganda operation” of right wingers except in the fantastical imagination and paranoid mind of Max Blumenthal. And only liberals would have the naivete to swallow such a gross twisting of the facts that Blumenthal does throughout this incredibly shallow and extraordinarily thin conspiracy theory about the making of The Path to 9/11.

In his laughable scare piece about the reach and extent of conservative influence in Hollywood, Blumenthal makes an ass of himself by highlighting the most tenuous of connections between people and organizations and passing them off as proof of conspiracy while sprinkling his “indictment” with words and phrases so overly dramatic and uproariously conspiratorial in tone that one would think the piece was penned by a 12 year old little girl breathlessly revealing secrets to her friends at a slumber party:

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film’s director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father’s group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is “dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.” As part of TFI’s long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission’s in film industry jobs “so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,” according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham’s TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled “Untitled History Project.” “TFI’s first project is a doozy,” a newsletter to YWAM members read. “Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!” (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted yesterday but has been cached on Google at the link above).

That “mysterious” title has been used dozens of times by dozens of studios to describe a work on the boards. The only thing mysterious about it is Blumenthal’s ignorant posturing that it somehow denotes something evil.

But it is in Blumenthal’s revealing notion of who and what YWAM is that we see not only a towering intellectual conceit about people of faith on the part of the left but also the reason Democrats will continue to lose national elections as long as they have such childish, shallow, and indeed despicably condescending views of people who believe in God.

In perusing the YWAM website, one finds that the group’s foundational mission is to spread the gospel. They are missionaries. World class missionaries I might add. There are left wing missionaries. There are right wing missionaries. There are non partisan missionaries. There are Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, and host of other protestant missionaries. There is nothing sinister or even extreme in this. In fact, having spent some time around Catholic missionaries in my youth, I know for a fact that these are some of the most down to earth and practical people on the planet. You don’t convert people by getting in their face and preaching. Not anymore. These days, missionaries are much more likely to win converts by pitching in and digging that new water well for the village or working with other groups to bring electricity to the area.

Of course, Blumenthal only brought up YWAM because the son of the founder of that group, David Cunningham, is the director of the project. Blumenthal is under the impression that by pointing out the father is a missionary, he is hoping to tar the younger man as some wild eyed evangelical nutcase. All Blumenthal does is embarrass himself. Not only is YWAM one of the most respected worldwide gospel outreach groups on the planet, it is funded largely by mainstream protestants and protestant organizations.

And this brings us to the left’s unbelievable stupidity when it comes to dealing with people of faith. They don’t have a clue. People who believe so strongly in something that can’t be touched, can’t be smelled or felt, are a total and complete mystery to our lefty friends. They have no personal experience with faith - faith in anything at all - so they tiptoe around those whose quiet and unassuming faith in something larger than themselves first frightens them and then makes them envious and resentful.

I am not talking about the small, vocal group of Christians whose politics and fundamentalist faith scares both liberals and many secular libertarian conservatives. People like Loren and David Cunningham are pretty ordinary in their beliefs. And to see Blumenthal quaking in his boots over the younger Cunningham’s group, The Film Institute, only shows how truly myopic one can be when preconceived notions meet up with reality.

That reality is that Blumenthal did not continue to quote from TFI’s mission statement. If he had, much of the scare effect he was trying to achieve would have been blunted:

Our next big project is to assist in the development of the new YWAM auxiliary - The Film Institute (TFI). The Film Institute is dedicated to a Godly transformation and
revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry;

TO it, by serving, living humbly with integrity in what is often a world driven by selfish ambition, power an money - transforming lives from within,

and THROUGH it, by creating relevant and evocative content which promotes Godly principles of Truth married with Love.

Gee. Batten down the hatches and lock up the wife and daughter. HERE COME THE CHRISTIANS! Imagine the gall of these people. Trying to change Hollywood from “a world driven by selfish ambition, power and money” (as fair a critique of Hollywood as you’ll find anywhere) to a place that creates “relevant and evocative content which promotes Godly principles of Truth married with Love.”

I don’t know about you but those people should be LOCKED UP! Truth in Hollywood? Married with Love? What can they be thinking?

Too radical. Much too radical.

As Blumenthal is unable to distinguish mainstream Christan thought from fringe skirting fundamentalists, he is also having definitional problems with figuring out exactly who and what a conservative is:

Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive “Untitled” film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham.

Nowrasteh’s conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004 to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too “politically incorrect” to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo — both friends of Nowrasteh — announced they were “partnering” with right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as “A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.”

Who is Cyrus Nowrasteh? Well, Cy wrote and directed The Day Reagan Was Shot who had another, more prominent member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy serving as Executive Producer on the project.

Oliver Stone.

Yes, that Oliver Stone. And one thing Max doesn’t mention is that right wing partisan hack Nowrasteh was skewered by conservatives across the country for his screenplay:

“But for Hollywood, admirable actions by people associated with the Reagan White House are not the stuff of drama. So Messrs. Stone and Nowrasteh depict certain cabinet members as uninformed weaklings and Mr. Haig as a brooding, swaggering, cursing, face-slapping coup-plotter. Other cabinet members and senior White House staffers are cowering wimps.”

(Former Reagan National Security Advisor James Allen)

Gee, Max. Looks like conservatives thought that Nowrasteh was a Hollywood liberal back in the day that he was, much to your satisfaction I’m sure, trashing the Reagan White House and Al Haig in particular. The fact that he is now “burrowing” into the film industry must raise the hackles of conservatives even more, eh?

No matter. Nowrasteh has identified himself time and again as a libertarian rather than a conservative. But don’t tell that to our Max. It will only confuse him further. And these “sectarian, political and religious agendas” are about as “ulterior” as the nose on Blumenthal’s face. The “agenda” - if there even is one - is out in the open for all to see. Who’d ever thought promoting values like honesty and integrity could get one in so much trouble?

The real nitty gritty of Blumenthal’s imaginary conspiracy is in the connection to David Horowitz whose David Horwitz Freedom Center (it is no longer the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) has become a liberal bete noir ever since the lefty apostate began to target liberal professors in an attempt to highlight the jaw dropping left wing bias in the academy.

Blumenthal mentions the wildly successful Liberty Film Festival and the fact that Horowitz has given the conservative event a huge boost by bringing it under the auspices of the DHFC. Why it makes one whit of difference that “while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo — both friends of Nowrasteh — announced they were “partnering” with right-wing activist David Horowitz” is a total mystery. Is Blumenthal seriously trying to connect the Liberty Film Festival to The Path to 9/11?

In Blumenthal’s conspiratorial world, Nowrasteh, who is a “friend” of the founders of the LFF, can now be made a key cog in plot to take over Hollywood because of this third person removed connection to Horowitz. It’s loony. And it doesn’t wash. Blumenthal’s feverish attempt to smear Nowrasteh continues with this unbelievable bit of dishonesty regarding an interview in Horwitz’s Frontpage Magazine:

With the LFF now under Horowitz’s control, his political machine began drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh’s “Untitled” project, which finally was revealed in late summer as “The Path to 9/11.” Horowitz’s PR blitz began with an August 16 interview with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag webzine. In the interview, Nowrasteh foreshadowed the film’s assault on Clinton’s record on fighting terror. “The 9/11 report details the Clinton’s administration’s response — or lack of response — to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests,” Nowrasteh told FrontPageMag’s Jamie Glazov. “There simply was no response. Nothing.”

There’s no other way to say it. The quote is a deliberate attempt to twist Nowrasteh’s words and what he was trying to say. Here’s the actual quote from the interview:

The 9/11 report details the Clinton’s administration’s response — or lack of response — to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests. The worst example is the response to the October, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. COLE in Yemen where 17 American sailors were killed. There simply was no response. Nothing.

Any objective observer would be forced to concede that the italicized portion that Blumenthal deliberately left out changes the meaning and intent of Nowrasteh’s critique of the Clinton response entirely. Blumenthal owes Horwitz and Nowrasteh an apology for his deliberate attempt to obfuscate what was said in the interview.

And by the way, the statement is true. Clinton did nothing in the aftermath of the attack on the Cole:

In early leaks from Losing bin Laden, Richard Miniter, an investigative journalist, claims Mr. Clinton allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to happen by squandering more than a dozen opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden. In two cases, the terrorist leader’s exact location was known, the book says.

Although Clinton supporters would doubtless reject the implication of responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, senior members of the Clinton White House did confirm, in interviews for the book, that they shied away from an attack immediately after the Cole bombing for reasons of diplomacy and military caution.

Blumenthal delivers more misrepresentative twaddle when he delves into the film’s promotion:

A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton administration officials and objective reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.) Murty returned with a glowing review for FrontPageMag that emphasized the film’s partisan nature. “‘The Path to 9/11′ is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I’ve ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible,” Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty’s article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those by the New York Times and LA Times by more than a week.

Murty followed her review with a blast email to conservative websites such as Liberty Post and Free Republic on September 1 urging their readers to throw their weight behind ABC’s mini-series. “Please do everything you can to spread the word about this excellent miniseries,” Murty wrote, “so that ‘The Path to 9/11′ gets the highest ratings possible when it airs on September 10 & 11! If this show gets huge ratings, then ABC will be more likely to produce pro-American movies and TV shows in the future!”

The “conservative operatives” (Gee…when is someone going to invite me to be a conservative operative?) who got a sneak peak of the film are a mystery. Is Blumenthal talking about the screening of Part I of the film at that hot bed of right wing conspiracies The National Press Club on August 23? This is almost exactly “a week later” than the FPM interview with Nowrasteh.

If he has another, more private event where the film was screened, perhaps he could enlighten us with some details. Considering the fact that the rest of his article is so full of gross misrepresentation and wild flights of fancy, he owes it to the reader to be a little more specific in his charges about a special screening for “conservative operatives.”

On this score - that “conservative operatives” screened the movie - I think it safe to conclude that Blumenthal is demonstrating that he either doesn’t know what kind of an organization The National Press Club is or that he is deliberately misrepresenting the kinds of people who were at the screening, including that well known right wing conspirator Richard Ben Veniste who first brought to light the inaccurate portrayal of the composite scene where Bin Laden was surrounded and not captured.

And what of Murty’s “glowing review” that emphasized the film’s “partisan nature?

Fortunately, Nowrasteh and the producers of this miniseries have gone out on a limb to honestly and fairly depict how Clinton-era inaction, political correctness, and bureaucratic inefficiency allowed the 9/11 conspiracy to metastasize. Let me say here though that “The Path to 9/11″ is not a partisan miniseries or a “conservative” miniseries. It simply presents the facts in an honest and straightforward manner (the producers have backed up every detail of the miniseries with copious amounts of research and documentation), and the facts are that for seven years, from 1993 to 2000, the Clinton administration bungled the handling of the world-wide terrorist threat. The miniseries is equally honest in depicting the Bush administration. It shows a few points where administration officials, following in the tradition of the Clinton years, do not follow certain clues about the terrorist plot as zealously as they should have. Nonetheless, “The Path to 9/11,” by honestly depicting the unfolding of events over eight years, makes it clear that most of the conspiracy leading up to 9/11 was hatched during the seven years of the Clinton administration, and that since Bush was in power for only eight months when 9/11 occurred, he can hardly be blamed for the entire disaster.

Only in the world inhabited by liberals like Blumenthal would a review that highlights the non partisan nature of the film be considered some kind of right wing imprimatur. What Blumenthal and the rest of the left are so excised about is that conservatives are excited that finally, after 5 long years, The Narrative the left has constructed about 9/11 is being challenged by the truth. They successfully whitewashed the public discussion following the release of the 9/11 Commission Report thanks to a massive amount of finger pointing at the very real and disgusting failures of the Bush Administration both before and on the day of the attacks. Lost in the shuffle were not only Clinton’s failures in killing Osama but also the entire law enforcement strategy used by the Clintonistas that was such an abject failure. That, and a curious blindness about the nature of al-Qaeda and the challenges posed by the terrorists from an ideological point of view.

This also is apparently brought out in the film which of course, affects our current politics. Hence the savage effort to deny the American people an opportunity to judge. Conservatives are not making a huge deal out of scenes that show Bush Administration officials sleepwalking toward disaster. We’ve pretty much accepted the failures and moved on. Democrats cannot accept the failures of the Clinton Administration because to do so gives the lie to their entire critique of the War on Terror and especially the War in Iraq. They appear to be stuck in a pre-9/11 world where the Clinton Administration emphasis on arresting Osama and al-Qaeda was the preferred method in dealing with the terrorists. Anything that exposes that fact must be destroyed.

Finally, Blumenthal believes that his “conspiracy” is nothing less than a bunch of “political terrorists:”

Now, as discussion grows over the false character of The Path to 9/11, the right-wing network that brought it to fruition is ratcheting up its PR efforts. Murty will appear tonight on CNN’s Glenn Beck show and The Situation Room, according to Libertas in order to respond to “the major disinformation campaign now being run by Democrats to block the truth about what actually happened during the Clinton years.”

While this network claims its success and postures as the true victims, the ABC network suffers a PR catastrophe. It’s almost as though it was complacent about an attack on its reputation by a band of political terrorists.

We should be used to this kind of scurrilous, calumnious, hysterical, over the top rhetoric from liberals by now. But somehow, it never gets old seeing liberals brand dissent from their worldview as “terrorism.” The truth about the Clinton years and their efforts against al-Qaeda is contained in the 9/11 Commission Report. It is there for anyone willing to look. No amount of name calling, conspiracy mongering, lies, distortions, misrepresentations, or even threats will change what has already been uncovered about those years of relative inaction and confused policy choices.

We slept. Osama plotted. And our government - both Clinton and Bush - failed miserably to protect us. If this is the only thing people come away with from watching The Path to 9/11 the overwhelming majority of conservatives will be happy.

It says something profound about the left that if in fact, this is what people think after watching the film, that they will be livid with anger - an anger born of frustration that their carefully constructed version of the “truth” has been revealed as the sham it has always been.

UPDATE

Let me make something perfectly clear - something I have said in other posts talking about the film but not touchd on here.

I abhor the inaccuracies in the film. I agree with one conservative who said that putting words in Albright’s mouth - especially since the film is supposedly depicting real life people - is close to libelous.

But the reaction by the left to this film has been so exaggerated, so over the top as to be beyond belief. The overwhelming number of people who reviewed this film have said that it does NOT blame Bill Clinton for 9/11. My point has always been that the left is opposing the showing of this film because 1) Clinton actions are criticized and 2) Bush’s actions aren’t criticized enough. The latter being the main point of anger for liberals in that it goes against everything they have tried to lie about for the past 5 years. They want the enduring image of 9/11 to be George Bush sitting in a classroom reading a children’s book not the towers collapsing or people jumping out of buildings. Anything that goes against The Narrative is a threat to expose the entire tissue of lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations, conspiracy fantasies, and deliberate falsehoods perpetrated over the last 5 years with the help of an all too willing media and a vast network of former government officials always willing to shift blame for their own inadequacies in the face of Islamic terrorism.

As Hugh Hewitt says today, this film needs to be seen even without any scenes showing anything the Clinton Administration did or didn’t do. It needs to be seen so that people understand the nature of the threat posed to our country. When so many see the War on Terror as nothing more than a political ploy being used by the Bush Administration to gin up fear in order to win elections, or more laughably, establish some kind of neo-conservative super-state, a movie like The Path to 9/11 is vitally necessary if only to disabuse those casually interested in politics of the left’s dangerous myopia.

In perusing the left blogosphere looking for reaction to the ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11 one would think that the project was chock full of lies, historical inaccuracies, and pro-Republican propaganda.

But look a little closer and you find that all liberal blogs highlight the same 3 scenes as proof of bias by Disney and the writers. That’s three scenes in a 5 hour movie. Is that reason enough to condemn the entire project with the most outrageously exaggerated, end of the world rhetoric imaginable? One would think that the film they are talking about was a Republican campaign commercial by the wild flights of hyperbole they’re throwing around.

The left’s condemnation of the few minutes of admittedly historically inaccurate scenes (that if ABC can’t cut or fix will probably doom the show entirely) represents only one half of the forces who are critiquing the film. The complaints about the portrayal of Clinton and his people failing to act are being made by the cadre of Clintonistas who see any revelations regarding this aspect of 9/11 as a direct threat to Hillary’s candidacy. Some of these same actors who are yelping the loudest have dreams of serving in the Clinton II presidency. And aside from the evident license that the screen writer took with the specific scenes under attack, there is a sense that Clinton and his people would rather the entire project disappear down the rabbit hole.

But there is a whole other side to the liberals efforts to tear this show apart. This is the faction that is screaming that the film doesn’t blame Bush enough for 9/11. How do they know if they haven’t seen it? The know because The Narrative that they have been using for 5 years to undermine his Presidency is a tissue of lies, half-truths, deliberate exaggerations of the facts, and hysterical intimations of evil. In short, the truth - even if it is revealed in a flawed docudrama - threatens the alternate reality they have created about 9/11.

Go to any 5 lefty websites and you will probably see the same picture on a couple of them. It’s a shot of Bush sitting in the classroom (now with a Mickey Mouse Club hat on his head) as the planes hit the towers. This is the image of 9/11 the left wants the American people to remember. Not the falling towers. Not people jumping to their deaths. They are using ridicule to belittle the President because they know that memories of 9/11 will revive feelings from that time that would be unhelpful to their efforts in November.

Bush himself is attempting to resurrect those feelings during this anniversary. His travels that day will take him from Washington, D.C., to New York, to Pennsylvania. And he is going to give a prime time speech that night.

This, the left can deal with. They can rightly point out that the President is playing politics with the anniversary. But the feelings of solidarity with the President that the American people demonstrated in the aftermath of the attacks scares the holy living beejeebees out of the left. And that’s why they are attacking this film with more energy and vigor than they have ever demonstrated attacking the enemies of the United States.

The film has the potential to undermine both the Clintonista’s whitewashing of history and the BDS-enraged bloggers who seek to save their threatened Narrative of events from being challenged by reality. And the pressure they are putting on ABC will more than likely succeed. Watch for ABC to announce the cancellation tomorrow morning and instead offer the film for release on DVD.

And then watch the heads roll at ABC over this $40 million boondoggle while the left goes back to denying the very essence of what 9/11 meant.

Those crickets you hear chirping is the sound of silence from every single broadcast TV network, newspaper, magazine, book publisher, E-Zine, blog, tip sheet, gossip rag, author, actor, actress, director, producer, janitor, and 12 year old drama queen who has warned us all over the past 6 years that the President of the United States is trying to stifle a free press and establish de facto censorship over the media.

When confronted with a real attempt by Democrats in the Senate to turn the United States into an authoritarian state by threatening to yank the broadcast license of ABC unless they make political changes to their mini-series The Path to 9/11, the above gaggle of weeping, whining chicken littles either nods their approval or are too intimidated themselves to make a stink.

Where are all the civil libertarians weeping over our lost freedoms because the FBI aimed a Geiger counter at someone’s house? Where are all those heroic fighters for democracy who complained about Republicans stifling free speech because they removed a half crazed woman from the Senate gallery for displaying a political message on a T-Shirt? Where are all the hand wringing, exaggerating, hyperventilating, bed wetting lefties who scream “dictator” every time Bush opens his mouth?

I’ll tell you where they are. They are on the sidelines cheering their heroic mini-Adolf’s in the Senate on as the Democrats issue the bluntest, the most vile, the most open call for political censorship in almost two hundred years:

Frankly, that ABC and Disney would consider airing a program that could be construed as right-wing political propaganda on such a grave and important event involving the security of our nation is a discredit both to the Disney brand and to the legacy of honesty built at ABC by honorable individuals from David Brinkley to Peter Jennings. Furthermore, that Disney would seek to use Scholastic to promote this misguided programming to American children as a substitute for factual information is a disgrace.

As 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick said, “It is critically important to the safety of our nation that our citizens, and particularly our school children, understand what actually happened and why – so that we can proceed from a common understanding of what went wrong and act with unity to make our country safer.”

Should Disney allow this programming to proceed as planned, the factual record, millions of viewers, countless schoolchildren, and the reputation of Disney as a corporation worthy of the trust of the American people and the United States Congress will be deeply damaged. We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program. We look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Lefty John Aravosis raises his arm in slavish salute and gleefully sums up what the Senate Democrats are attempting to do:

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.

This raises the stakes incredibly for Disney.

I can remember when any threat to yank the broadcast license of a major media outlet for any reason whatsoever would be met by a solid wall of liberal opposition and outrage. When it came out in the Nixon impeachment hearings that the White House had threatened CBS and the Washington Post over their coverage of Watergate, the condemnations from most of those same sources I listed at the beginning of this post was immediate and passionate.

My, my how times have changed, no?

Hugh Hewitt thinks that this will hurt the Democrats at the polls in November. I’d like to think so. I’d like to believe there is still a sizable segment of the populace so much in love with liberty that they will rise up and smite the Democrats at the polls for their thuggish threats.

I’m afraid Hugh and I are bound to be disappointed. As long as you don’t yank The Sopranos or 24 or American Idol, people will tolerate just about anything these days.

Allah rounds up reaction and adds laconically:

My only question is this: was that letter typed, or did they use letters cut out from magazines?

Fair enough. Everything is a precedent. There’s nothing anyone can do except remember and use it when Michael Moore’s new movie comes out and someone on the Republican side criticizes it as inaccurate and the droning about dissent-crushing begins. Here’s a post to help memorialize it for future reference. I hope others will do so too.

I fully expect over the next 48 hours the cancellation of The Path to 9/11. No network or media outlet can stand up to the unprecedented bullying of an ex-President and the unprecedented threats of a group of very influential politicians.

And so the netnuts will be able to celebrate their “victory.” Perhaps they should ask exactly what they “won.” Another whitewashing of history? A lovely little taste of what it’s like to be a dictator? Perhaps a fantasy interlude where they can dream of crushing their political enemies as easily as they have now intimidated and crushed ABC?

Welcome to the Brave New World…

It should not surprise us that once again Bill Clinton has disgraced the office he so callously and corruptly filled for 8 years. Nor should it surprise us that he would stoop to use his influence in order to attempt to alter a TV show that portrays him in anything less than the warm, soft light of angelic perfection. After all, anyone who could embarrass himself the way Clinton did has the evolved sensibilities of my pet cat Aramas. And at least Aramas has a slight idea of when to keep his wick dry and his pants zipped.

Clinton’s brazen and inappropriate interference in the debate over the showing of Path to 9/11 has no precedence of which I am aware. Presidents are supposed to be above this sort of thing. But apparently, Clinton has never met a challenge where the bar was placed too low for him to descend either morally or in the common decencies of public behavior and national tradition. Sanctity of the office meant nothing to him while he served. Why should we expect anything different now that he’s a private citizen?

One can understand Clinton’s trepidation at any rehash of the history of those times. With Hillary weighing a run for the White House, any rewrite of the carefully manufactured Narrative that Democrats have carefully, lovingly constructed block by lying block over these last 6 years that absolves Clinton of any responsibility for the fact that America was sleepwalking toward disaster during his entire term of office could hurt her chances for a return engagement at the Executive Mansion.

The bullying ex-President sent an angry letter to Disney chief Bob Iger demanding that he whitewash history by changing the show or pull the $40 million project completely:

A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series “The Path to 9/11″ grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden - and he is demanding the network “pull the drama” if changes aren’t made.

Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

The former president also disputed the portrayal of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as having tipped off Pakistani officials that a strike was coming, giving bin Laden a chance to flee.

“The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely,” the four-page letter said.

Howard Kurtz handles the debunking of Clintonian complaints. As for Albright’s contention that she personally did not warn the Pakistanis of the strike on Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan, she is factually correct. But that doesn’t change the fact that someone else did:

Albright said she never warned Pakistan. The Sept. 11 commission found that a senior U.S. military official warned Pakistan that missiles crossing its airspace would not be from its archenemy, India.

Giving such a warning was the responsible thing to do under the circumstances as anyone with half a brain knows. Pakistan is a nuclear power and would take a dim view of missiles of unknown origin flying over its territory. It is Tenet who comes off looking like a mindless drone in this scene if what Kurtz has is accurate.

As for Clinton’s claims that he was not distracted by the Lewinsky mess, the 9/11 Commission once again had a different take on the matter:

The Sept. 11 commission found no evidence that the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal played a role in the August 1998 missile strike, but added that the “intense partisanship of the period” was one factor that “likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against bin Laden.”

This is hair splitting of the worst sort. My understanding from reading this piece in E & P that gives a detailed synopsis of the film is that shots of Clinton talking about the Lewinsky scandal are coupled with comments from characters to the effect that Republicans believe Clinton is taking the military action in order to deflect attention from the Lewinsky imbroglio.

Duh. And the idea that Clinton would deny that this charge didn’t color his decision making is an out and out lie, something we know Clinton does very well and does so routinely.

The Clintonistas have a point about the historical inaccuracy of the scene that shows CIA/Norther Alliance forces outside a house where Bin Laden is hiding failing to get a go ahead from Sandy Berger. But as it has been pointed out by former 9/11 Commission co-Chair Thomas Kean, this scene is a composite of several incidents where we had intimations of Osama’s whereabouts but failed to follow up.

From my own perspective, I would like to see that scene deleted to be replaced by four new scenes showing in excruciatingly accurate detail the 4 missed opportunities we had to kill Bin Laden. I’m sure our friends on the left would want to see history portrayed accurately in this regard.

Buzz Patterson, conservative writer and talk show host, paints a scene in his book Dereliction of Duty from one of those missed opportunities. And our lefty friends will be happy to know that in the interest of historical accuracy, I will reproduce it below:

It was fall 1998 and the National Security Council (NSC) and the “intelligence community” were tracking the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the shadowy mastermind of terrorist attacks on American targets overseas. “They’ve successfully triangulated his location,” yelled a “Sit Room” watch stander. “We’ve got him.”

Beneath the West Wing of the White House, behind a vaulted steel door, the Sit Room staff sprang into action. The watch officer notified National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, “Sir, we’ve located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike.”

[snip]

Berger ambled down the stairwell and entered the Sit Room. He picked up the phone at one of the busy controller consoles and called the president. Amazingly, President Clinton was not available. Berger tried again and again. Bin Laden was within striking distance. The window of opportunity was closing fast. The plan of attack was set and the Tomahawk crews were ready. For about an hour Berger couldn’t get the commander in chief on the line. Though the president was always accompanied by military aides and the Secret Service, he was somehow unavailable.

Berger stalked the Sit Room, anxious and impatient. Finally, the president accepted Berger’s call. There was discussion, there were pauses—and no decision. The president wanted to talk with his secretaries of defense and state. He wanted to study the issue further. Berger was forced to wait. The clock was ticking. The president eventually called back. He was still indecisive. He wanted more discussion. Berger alternated between phone calls and watching the clock.

The NSC watch officer was convinced we had the right target. The intelligence sources were conclusive. The president, however, wanted a guaranteed hit or nothing at all. This time, it was nothing at all. We didn’t pull the trigger. We “studied” the issue until it was too late—the window of opportunity closed. Al-Qaeda’s spiritual and organizational leader slipped through the noose.

Since Buzz Patterson has more integrity in his little finger than all the moral midgets and lying weasels who worked in the Clinton White House put together, who you gonna believe? Sandy Berger, whose clumsy attempts to alter history by stealing documents from the National Archives landed him the docket or a decorated combat pilot who was so trusted by the United States that he was granted the honor of carrying the nuclear “football” - the satchel containing our nuclear launch procedures and codes.

(As an aside, read about the jaw dropping incident in Patterson’s book where Clinton actually loses his codebook containing the instructions for launching a nuclear strike. Our Brave Sir President however, had no trouble taking Osama and his threats seriously, right?)

But it is Clinton’s blatant use of his status as an ex chief executive for his own self aggrandizement that is so shockingly out of kilter. It is one thing to have his high level ex-officials lobby appropriately on his behalf. It is quite another to throw his own weight around personally in an effort to bully ABC into taking out portions of the film that he finds objectionable. The unspoken threat of retaliation given his wife’s status as both a Senator and probably Presidential candidate drips from every word in that 4 page letter he sent to Iger. And the Disney chief ignores such warnings at his and his network’s peril.

Apparently, Iger and ABC are walking a tightrope by agreeing to alter the most egregious historically inaccurate scene involving the Berger refusal to give the go ahead to CIA people on the ground in Afghanistan while trying to maintain the integrity of the story:

After much discussion, ABC executives and the producers toned down, but did not eliminate entirely, a scene that involved Clinton’s national security advisor, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, declining to give the order to kill Bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified because of the sensitivities involved.

“That sequence has been the focus of attention,” the source said, adding: “These are very slight alterations.”

In addition, the network decided that the credits would say the film is based “in part” on the 9/11 commission report, rather than simply “based on” the bestselling report, as the producers originally intended.

ABC, meanwhile, is tip-toeing away from the film’s version of events. In a statement, the network said the miniseries “is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.”

These disclaimers should have been placed in the credits from the beginning. There has never been a docudrama in the history of television that did not take liberties with history by telescoping events or creating composite characters and scenes. And while ABC wants to underscore the care they took in trying to represent events accurately, they should have realized any deviation from history would have placed them in hot water with either liberals or conservatives.

In the end, Clinton will probably not get his way. Nor will the wailing and gnashing of teeth by liberals about the cracks that will now appear in their carefully constructed Narrative that holds blameless their Saint Bill while making Bush and not Osama Bin Laden the villain of that tragic day matter much in the end. The start of Monday Night Football will guarantee a limited audience for the film, something that the netnuts will gloat about for days following the airing of The Path to 9/11. So after all the left’s bloviating and after Bill Clinton’s shocking interference, we will be back to the reality of what 9/11 meant.

As long as the left sees 9/11 in isolation and not as part of the larger threat we face, these same arguments will echo across time and space awaiting the day that liberals engage the enemy as the enemy engages us; hand to throat and to the death. Until that day, we will be a divided nation, a weak nation, ripe for defeat.

Could The Path to 9/11 have altered their view? Not as long as they see the current political battles as more important than future battles to be fought in the War on Terror. For that change to occur, they will probably need another wake up call to convince them there are some things beyond politics, beyond the grasping for power that matter.

Maybe by the 5th anniversary of that attack, they will finally and forever get it.

Desperate to see that the upcoming ABC mini-series Path to 9/11 places all the blame for 9/11 in the lap of President Bush and holds harmless the Clinton Administration for their massive failures in the 1990’s to kill Bin Laden, the left is in full meltdown over word that one of the incidents portrayed in the film takes some dramatic liberties with the 9/11 Commission report.

The incident, in which Osama was reportedly staying in a house in Kandahar, Afghanistan and was surrounded by Northern Alliance and CIA paramilitaries only to escape because the Clinton Administration never gave the order to attack has been criticized by none other than anti-terrorism guru, the self-important one, Richard Clark:

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

Not having seen the film (That’s okay: Neither has Think Progress), my guess would be that the filmakers decided to do what all docudramas do; combine several similar events into one dramatic take.

Are all three chances Clinton had to kill Bin Laden going to be shown?:

According to the staff report, intelligence indicating that bin Laden was open to attack resulted in military planning by the Clinton administration on three occasions.

In December 1998, bin Laden was reported to be staying at a location in Kandahar, Afghanistan; however, CIA Director George J. Tenet doubted the intelligence and a strike by cruise missiles or bombers was called off.

Then in February 1999, bin Laden was targeted in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, but the CIA was worried that a visiting official from the United Arab Emirates would be killed in an attack.

The CIA’s field officer was quoted in the report as saying the intelligence was “very reliable” that bin Laden was in the camp. “The field official believed that this was a lost opportunity to kill bin Laden,” the report said.

A third attempt to kill bin Laden, who had been seen in the same place for five nights, was missed in May 1999. However, U.S. military officials worried that an attack might kill innocent civilians.

Since I find it unlikely that the screenwriter (who, by the way is not an “extreme” conservative as Jennifer Nix blurts out breathlessly but rather a libertarian naturalized citizen from Iran. Then again, Nix and most lefties think that someone who gets a 95 rating from ADA - Leiberman - isn’t liberal enough) would include all three inexcusable lapses in judgment and courage by Clinton, it would seem that they combined the chances we had to get Bin Laden into one, dramatic scene.

Personally, I would prefer seeing all three failures of Clinton to kill Bin Laden highlighted prominently and accurately. One of the stated reasons they hesitated to capture Osama was their belief that they couldn’t convict him of anything in an American court of law. I would love to see that attitude play out in front of 50 million voters and show them the consequences of bringing the left to power this November.

And of course, there was the incident in February of 1999 - the one that Richard Clark seems to forget:

Intelligence reports foresee the presence of bin Laden at a desert hunting camp in Afghanistan for about a week. Information on his presence appears reliable, so preparations are made to target his location with cruise missiles. However, intelligence also puts an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and members of the royal family from that country in the same location…

Local informants confirm exactly where bin Laden will be in the camp on February 11, and a strike is prepared. But policy makers are concerned that a strike might kill a prince or other senior officials, so the strike is called off…

Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit at the time, will claim in 2004 that “the truth has not been fully told” about this incident. He will claim that the strike is cancelled because senior officials at the CIA, White House, and other agencies, decide to accept assurances from an unnamed Islamic country that it can acquire bin Laden from the Talibn. “US officials accepted these assurances despite the well-documented record of that country withholding help�indeed, it was a record of deceit and obstruction�regarding all issues pertaining to Bin Laden” in previous years. [Atlantic Monthly, 12/2004

We hardly need lectures from Richard Clark on anything relating to 9/11.

So the left has its collective pink panties in a twist because a standard dramatic device used in every mini-series since the genre was invented shows that Clinton hesitated to kill the number one enemy of the United States.

Instead of going ape over this scene, perhaps the left should be thanking the “extreme conservative” screenwriter for not going into detail about all three failures of will by the Clintonistas. Imagine the outcry then!

And lest anyone think that the left only wants to portray history accurately, we have this statement of principle from Christy Hardin Smith:

9/11 happened on George Bush’s watch — and no amount of pointing fingers elsewhere changes that fact. Period.

How true. But the ultimate question is would 9/11 even have happened if Clinton had been doing his job?

I have pointed out on numerous occasions that the “blame” for 9/11 is shared by Administrations going back to the Reagan years. And the real failures of the Bush Administration in getting on top of the terrorism issue as well as their failures in intelligence, in focus, and most especially their failure of imagination should be a large part of the mini series as it was in the movie United 93.

For the left to try and divorce the Clinton Administration from the failures of 9/11 is laughable - like little children trying to cover up the fact that they broke a piece of their mother’s favorite china. It is juvenile and destructive. And they must be stopped.

From those who have seen the movie, we are told that the Bush Administration does not escape their share of blame for 9/11, not by any means. This doesn’t interest the partisan left because what they are really after is a wiping of the historical record and a rewrite that leaves the Bush Administration totally responsible for what happened on that horrible day. Anything less and, as I stated yesterday, The Narrative is in danger of unraveling. That Narrative brooks no alteration lest the American people see it for what it is; a massive exaggeration and bending of history that seeks to undermine the President of the United States during a time of war.

In the final analysis, what the left fails to do most of all is place the actual blame for 9/11 where it really belongs; solely and exclusively on the shoulders of Osama Bin Laden and radical, fundamentalist Islamism. To do so would mean they would lose one of their most potent political clubs that they have beat the President over the head with for the last 5 years.

Osama, I’m sure, is grateful to them.

UPDATE

More conservative push back against the left’s attempt to alter history.

Mark Coffey shows why Richard Clarke may be a wee bit upset over the portrayal of Clinton anti-terrorism efforts.

And Confederate Yankee has a superb piece that shows Sandy Berger’s culpability in the Clinton Administration’s failure to get Bin Laden on 4 seperate occasions (not the three that I described above).

I wonder if in the interest of “historical accuracy” all the whining lefties who are throwing a tantrum over this TV show would be agreeable to showing ALL FOUR OPPORTUNITIES CLINTON HAD TO KILL BIN LADEN in a 6 hour mini-series rather than the one, condensed scene the screenwriter settled for.