First off, the point of this movie was that the federal government is unable, as such a huge bureaucracy, to get out of its own way in the war on terrorism. It didn’t portray either administration in a stellar light. In fact, Richard Clarke comes out looking like somewhat of a Paul Revere character, and he’s no friend to the Bush administration. But it was obvious that more could be done in both administrations.
Second, it illustrated that terrorism is nothing new to the United States, and it’s not going to go away. If we were to continue to turn the other cheek after every attack, as the Clinton administration did, they wouldn’t stop attacking us and our interests. In fact, the way we cut and ran in Somalia was one thing that emboldened them, and they’ve said so. Anyone who says that “George Bush is making new terrorists” is off their rocker.
Third, and perhaps most profound, is the reaction to the film before it had even aired. The same people which cry out for civil rights, terrorists’ rights, free speech rights, abortion rights… pretty much every type of rights except religious rights, were the ones threatening the broadcast licenses of the ABC stations for airing this! You want government censorship? Look at the behavior of the Democrats in Washington! Can you imagine if President Bush had asked Michael Moore to edit his piece of drivel, Fahrenheit 9/11? People would be screaming about the first amendment and calling Bush a fascist. Well, they call him that anyway, but they’re insane.
It was as interesting to watch the reaction to this movie as it was to watch the movie itself. It’s amazing how people circled the wagons around former President Clinton. You can write books and make movies about the assassination of George W. Bush, but you don’t dare point out the record of the Clinton administration. Isn’t that crazy?
The movie was entertaining. It was a good reminder of a lot of things. It also allowed a lot of people to show their true colors, before the film even aired. I hope people learn as big a lesson from that as they do from this or other 9/11 coverage.
I also think that, while we should not give the terrorists any credence in treating this as a day of mourning, we should never forget what happened that day. We need to see the planes hitting the towers. We need to see the people jumping out the windows to get out of the flames. We need to see the towers come down. There are so many people out there trying to pretend that it never happened that we need to emphasize that it did.
I had a friend who got off the Boston flight just before it boarded with new passengers and took off for the last time. A friend of mine with a White House job recalled seeing some of the hijackers in a restaurant a few days before they executed their plan. As Americans we all have a connection to the attacks, because they were meant to strike at our way of life. Most of the people that protest the war live lifestyles completely incompatible with the Sharia law that fundamentalist Muslims want to impose on the world. But they’ll never face that reality. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure we never forget.
