A Tad Defensive

Over the years we've had the Reagan "biography," An Inconvenient Truth, The Day After Tomorrow, any Michael Moore Film you can think of, and The Day After, which all had certain--ah--problems with being truthful or accurate. Now we have The Path to 9/11.

The Left doesn't like the last one. Former administration officials didn't like it. I saw only part of the first day and it told me nothing I didn't know in the big picture. The Clinton administration did little to fight terrorism in any meaningful way. Who really wants to dispute that?

One can argue that had 9/11 not happened the current administration would have had the same record after eight years, I suppose; but you can't seriously argue in good faith that the Clinton administration was on the problem for eight years while the Bush administration dropped the ball in his first eight months.

Or you shouldn't make that argument if "incompetence" is your mantra about the current administration. Eight years of focused efforts and our successes in the war on terror included shredded tents, a few dead goats, a bombed-out aspirin factory, and--no, I guess there's no "and" there, that's it. Yep, that reeks of competence. That's why Sandy Berger stuffed secret documents concerning terrorism down his pants and then carelessly destroyed them.

I have nothing to add about the latest docudrama other than to note that at least it is called a docudrama while the others I cite are treated as factual. The latest release has more accuracy, I think.

But what else can I say? I put in my two cents about September 10th thinking here.

I just can't get too worked up over arguing what should and should not have been done in 1998 or 2000. I don't think Churchill himself could have roused us from the dot.com fever to connect dots and then go kill them. The key is what are we doing now and what will we do tomorrow, and next year, and the next decade? We really didn't start this war, but I want to win it nonetheless.

But I would be remiss if I did not at least mention and recommend these two posts by Austin Bay and VDH regarding the latest film under assault.