ABC's 'Path to 9/11'
by Govindini Murty
Link to Article
Meritory:This article was written about a mini-series opening on ABC that seems to exist for the sole purpose to bash the Clinton Administration for its actions that somehow sum to the 9/11 incident. Apparently, the show portrays events where military personel are about to kick some terrorist-ass, but they are suddenly unable to for the sake of Bill Clinton--the evil, liberal King--who does not want to lose his ass over a possible controvertial capture of Osama Bin Laden.
Ultimately, I have no knowledge beyond what the actual program is trying to predict, so I cannot completely ridicule them for their content. Although, I can argue with the author, Govindini Murty, and her point of view to depict my frustration with close-minded thinking.
If I am going to argue with someone's point of view and mode of expression, I like to know who they are and ideas that they reflect beforehand.
Govindini Murty is a adult, female, GOP member who has been known to be the founder of the Liberty Film Festeval, the so-called "first conservative film festeval." She has also recieved the award of GOP babe-of-the-week. She writes columns about political films often, so this sort of article I am about to critique is not anything out of the ordinary for her.
Here we go:
"This is the first Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden. "
Meritory:Sure! Hollywood is certainly difficult to beat when it comes to honest, considering that honesty has been one of their least concerns. The entertainment industry generally does not care about anything except entertainment, wherein honesty does not often take part. Although, I do see what she means. Since Hollywood is almost never honest with their depictions about anything, here is something that is honest: a conservatively biased mini-series that bashes liberals! How congruent!
"They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in essence tells the team in Afghanistan that if they want to capture Bin Laden, they'll have to go ahead and do it on their own without any official authorization. That way, their necks will be on the line - and not his. The astonished CIA agent on the ground in Afghanistan repeatedly asks Berger if this is really what the administration wants. Berger refuses to answer, and then finally just hangs up on the agent. The CIA team and the Northern Alliance, just a few feet from capturing Bin Laden, have to abandon the entire mission. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shortly thereafter bomb the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing over 225 men, women, and children, and wounding over 4000. The episode is a perfect example of Clinton-era irresponsibility and incompetence."
Meritory: The Clinton Administration clearly fumbled the ball, Govindini: you are correct! The President was too caught up his public image to notice that his CIA special operatives were about to open fire on the most wanted man to his administration!
What I see here in her description of the plot is a situation where the President is not willing to assume responsibility to kill Osama Bin Laden and perhaps he was considering circumstances that I am unaware of, due to the present information. But the CIA abandoned the mission, since they clearly did not want to have to deal with the pressure, either. Even the CIA must have agreed that in that situation the death of Osama Bin Laden would have been too much to handle, of course considering that their employer would not be backing them in their decision.
Not only that, but there is a clear misunderstanding on why this should be constituted as incompetence. I do not understand your reasoning. Because Clinton did not want to deal with the possibility that Osama's death would be his doing, for whatever reason it was, that does not make him responsible for the events that happened afterward. Of course, as many columnists and reports have noted, Al Qaeda never seems to have direct connection to their leaders and that people work in "cells" that get instructions indirectly and secretively from their leaders (Asian Times). That's also been said to be the reason why we haven't caught them yet; their system is vastly disconnected, and our only possible means of destroying them seems to be one by one.
Which also goes to show that even the Clinton Administration, who you seem to view as inferior, would have even less of a chance of stopping the attacks in Tanzania and Kenya, especially through destroying their leader.
"Ishtiak risks his life, and the life of his young wife and baby, to help the U.S. capture Ramzi Youssef and thwart his terrorist plans."
Meritory:I love the language in this sentence! It's fun to see how many ways we can make a real-life, serious dilemma in modern society seem like a generic hero vs. villian story.
"The Ishtiak sequence is one of the most moving segments of the miniseries. The producers told me that the actor playing Ishtiak is actually a doctor living in London, who does theater on the side."
Meritory:Good to know. I have a feeling that most of the people watching the film would probably mistake Ishtiak for a real Pakistani!
"The Path to 9/11" starts with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and covers the international terrorist conspiracy that unfolded over the next eight years and led to 9/11. The miniseries is shocking for taking a pro-American, anti-terrorist approach that is all too lacking in Hollywood's depictions of the War on Terror ("Syriana," "Fahrenheit 9/11," and "V for Vendetta" anyone?)."
Meritory: Syriana is a Hollywood film and so is V for Vendetta, but documentaries are usually not Hollywood associated, I would think. I also expect Murty to know this, seeing that she is part of the Hollywood 'scene'. Unless she considers every American movie that has ever existed to belong to Hollywood, I cannot stand by this assumption.
I'm certain Murty would also feel a lot better if everyone took example of this and began supporting the War on Terror, especially since we need more pro-American stuff in our films. Of course, saying the War on Terror is wrong cannot possibly be pro-American, since America is made up of its rulers and not its people; supporting our rulers is obviously being pro-America.
"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."
Meritory:Political correctness, oh my! We must fear incompetency through tolerant behavior!
I don't understand how something can be fair unless both sides are presented, Murty. Not only that, but it seems this miniseries is far from being a neutral assessment of the goals and achievements of the Clinton Administration since, as you describe it, everything Clinton did at that time was a complete failure. So obviously, this is what you would consider non-partisan. But you even earlier described this miniseries attempt as a pro-American, anti-Terrorist, which are two labels used by Conservatives to self-define themselves. I cannot see how these incoherent incentives of the writers could be non-partisan at all. I feel that it is completely partisan, and you're just trying to catch-all right at the end of the article to hopefully win back some of the moderate readers you might have incurred. Good luck.
"Overall, I thought "The Path to 9/11" was infinitely better than Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" (granted, Stone decided to tell a narrower story), and if this is properly marketed, ABC should have a huge hit on its hands."
Meritory:"And World Trade Center only sucked more cuz it had less about how much this was all Clinton's fault!"
Excuse me if I generalize, but does it seem that a huge agenda for conservative media seems to be making "huge hits?" Just like Fox News, a clearly conservative news channel, will report the most addictive stories, whether it be about someone dying terribly or some huge explosion that happened somewhere, this miniseries seems to be all about getting ABC ratings. At least, this is the conclusion of Murty's article.
Overall, my opinion of this article was that it held extremely biased opinions. It seems that Murty's entire support for the miniseries was based around the fact that it was bashing Clinton's administrative capabilities. If I were to take her word that this was unbiased, she should have written more about the miniseries as a work of filmatography (which she touch up on a bit) instead of focusing so heavily on the political connotations. While I have no idea how decent the miniseries actually is in its portrayal of the incidents following the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, I do know that Murty cannot write worth shit.
posted by Meritory @ 12:16 PM
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