The Road to 9/11

First off, anyone who supported the CBS Reagan movie three years ago or Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 is disqualified from complaining about the Road to 9/11 on grounds of partisan hypocrisy.

[sound of crickets chirping]

My, it got quiet all of a sudden.

I have read reviews of this docu-drama from several people who have actually seen it. They say that it is quite balanced, showing both Clinton and Bush at fault. The thing is, Clinton was in office for years between the first and second World Trade Center attacks and Bush was only in office for eight and a half months. That means that Clinton had a lot of time for missed opportunities (and a lot more time to correct mistakes).

The producers say that they place blame for the attack on the terrorists but they show how the attack could have been stopped at several points. The left has taken this to mean that it is all Clinton's fault. MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olberman used this interpretation and named the ABC producers the "worst people in the world" for it.

The Clinton administration it being prickly about it. There was an aborted plan to kidnap bin Laden and at least two windows when he could have been killed with a missile strike. These were combined into a single plan that was aborted at the last minute. That's what docu-dramas do - they replace lengthy events with short, memorable ones.

There are probably two reasons that the Left is so upset about the movie. The first is that it upsets their world-view that things were fine under Clinton and everything is Bush's fault. This points out that the 9/11 attack was progressing along, missed by everyone like a malignant cancerous growth. It would have happened, even if Gore had won the election.

The Left's second problem is that is hurts their political chances. Howard Dean likes to point out that 9/11 happened under Bush's watch with the implication that we would be safer in his America. More specifically, it hurts the Democratic front-runner who is coincidentally named "Clinton".

It is becoming apparent that the actual importance of issues in the liberal blogosphere is inversely proportionate to its relation to real-life. Just look at the Leiberman/Lamont issue. They replaced a far-left pro-war liberal with a far-left anti-war liberal and called it a significant event.

In the meantime, after weathering an entire industry of anti-Bush media, a movie based on reality must seem like a cake-walk to the Republicans.