Disney's Dubious Path to 9/11

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

A quote from NY Times critic Alessandra Stanley:
"Dramatic license was certainly taken, but blame is spread pretty evenly across the board. It's not the inaccuracies of 'The Path to 9/11' that make ABC's miniseries so upsetting. It's the situation on the ground in Afghanistan now."

No... it's the lies.

I notice your Ms. Stanley has this to say about the lead up to 9/11...

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that the sex scandal distracted the Clinton administration from the terrorist threat.

Perhaps someone would be so kind as to direct me to the page number in the 9/11 commission report that makes this charge. We've all read the 9/11 commission report, haven't we?

We're watching myths being created before our eyes, folks. If the media and politicians and actors can change the truth of the 9/11 story in 5 years, imagine what's happened to the widely accepted "Word of God" in 2,000 years.

Tie THAT into your other thread.

But I am encouraged, especially by the letter from Senate Democratic leadership yesterday...

The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest.

<snip>

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.

Trustee of the public airwaves... trust of the American people and the United States Congress... I like! Threaten that broadcast license!!

M-I-C... See ya later, ABC!

Now, do I expect ABC to lose their license, even if they air this trash? No.

But, I hope they realize the error of their ways and pull this program before air date. If not, zapping all their channels on my Tivo won't be all that hard; certainly not as hard as cancelling my upcoming WDW trip.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Scrooge McSam

Perhaps someone would be so kind as to direct me to the page number in the 9/11 commission report that makes this charge. We've all read the 9/11 commission report, haven't we?

Page 135 of the PDF version of the report lists four factors that the report says likely had a cumulative downward pressure on the willingness to use violence against bin Laden. The four factors are:

1) The apparent failure of the missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan to accomplish anything of significance.
2) The "wag the dog" stories in the press and the Republicans. This is the idea that aggressive acts by Clinton were to distract the nation from his Lewinsky problems. The report does not say that they were intended to distract just that the idea that they were caused problems for the Clinton administration.
3) Intense partisanship (that is, any action, regardless of merit, resulted in bickering)
4) The apparent evidence that the strike in Sudan had been on a non-threatening site.

I don't know how exactly it is presented in the movie. The report also notes that Tenet and Berger testified that they didn't feel contrained by these things. But the report does explicitly contradict that claim.

It does not lay out any kind of relative importance of any of those factors, just says that they probably were factors.

To the extent that the pages following this lay "blame" with Clinton it seems to be for an environment of communication that created confusion between various agencies as to what actions were allowed in regard to bin Laden. The Clinton White House apparently felt that they had authorized pretty much carte blanche to kill bin Laden but the CIA felt they were only authorized to kill bin Laden under very limited circumstances and that Clinton and Berger used different and ambiguous language in issuing instructions to different people.

Again, I don't really blame anybody for 9/11. Hindsight will find many, many points where the future could have been changed by different action. That doesn't mean they were options that could reasonably have been taken at the time.

Without watching the ABC show myself I'm not ready to outright condemn it. But I'll probably never see it either (I'm not even home this weekend and it isn't going to find its way to my Netflix queue). In general, though, I am disapproving of the "docu-drama" genre because they all generally have significant historical flaws and usually are a case of trying to have your cake and eat it too. You can claim historical fidelity in spirit while saying any specific distortions were made for artistic, time compression, or various other factors allowed in fiction.

As for the idea that this is an effort by ABC to boost Bush or the Republicans for the upcoming elections, who are the people in on this? Pretty much the entire top leadership of The Walt Disney company and ABC are Democrats (at least to the degree that such things can be determined by campaign contributions). Iger, for example, so far this year has given $15,200 directly to Democrats and $2,500 to Republicans (and $5,200 to individual D candidates and none to individual R candidates).

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

... likely had a cumulative downward pressure on the willingness to use violence against bin Laden. The four factors are:

1) The apparent failure of the missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan to accomplish anything of significance.
2) The "wag the dog" stories in the press and the Republicans. This is the idea that aggressive acts by Clinton were to distract the nation from his Lewinsky problems. The report does not say that they were intended to distract just that the idea that they were caused problems for the Clinton administration.
3) Intense partisanship (that is, any action, regardless of merit, resulted in bickering)
4) The apparent evidence that the strike in Sudan had been on a non-threatening site.

I don't know how exactly it is presented in the movie. The report also notes that Tenet and Berger testified that they didn't feel contrained by these things. But the report does explicitly contradict that claim.

No sir... it does not.

In the paragraph directly above the one you cite...

Everyone involved in the decision had, of course, been aware of President Clinton's problems. He told them to ignore them. Berger recalled the President saying to him "that they are going to get crap either way, so they should do the right thing." All his aides testified to us that they based their advice solely on national security considerations. We have found no reason to question their statements.

The passage you cite specifically mentions "willingness to use violence".

[Alex]

And it says those thing affected their willingness to use violence.

Like I said, I don't know how the ABC show presents it so I don't know how at odds it is with what the report says:

The report says the Clinton people say they weren't constrained by Clinton but that a non-explicit cumulative effect likely was there.

The report says there is no reason to believe that they were ever explicitly constrained because of these things.

You can disagree with the conclusion but it is still there in the report. So, just to put it together:

Everyone involved in the decision had, of course, been aware of President Clinton's problems. He told them to ignore them. Berger recalled the President saying to him "that they are going to get crap either way, so they should do the right thing." All his aides testified to us that they based their advice solely on national security considerations. We have found no reason to question their statements.

The failure of the strikes, the "wag the dog" slur, the intense partisanship of the period, and the nature of the al Shifa evidence likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against Bin Laden. Berger told us that he did not feel any sense of constraint."

You asked for a page cite for the quote you offered. That is what I was giving. I do not think it supports what exactly is said in the quote but it does appear to be the source for that statement and does support the idea that the 9/11 commission believes the Lewinsky affair had some impact on how the Clinton administration was willing to act.

Again, I don't know how the show actually represents this.

Hell, it makes perfect sense to me. Clinton was in an environment where every form of aggressive policy action on his part was used as a bludgeon against him. It is only reasonable, especially for a poll-driven political organization like the Clinton White House that this would cause some trepidation but additional such actions.

Of course, if I were to blame someone as a result of this it wouldn't be to blame Clinton (asking a politician to not be political is stupid) but rather on the Republicans for being stupid and creating such a vitriolic atmosphere.

I personally believe that if Clinton had killed Bin Laden in 1997 it would today be used as an exmaple of misuse of American military power. Only in the hindsight of 9/11 are we willing to have endorsed any violent means necessary to have killed the man.

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

.

Hell, it makes perfect sense to me. Clinton was in an environment where every form of aggressive policy action on his part was used as a bludgeon against him. It is only reasonable, especially for a poll-driven political organization like the Clinton White House that this would cause some trepidation but additional such actions.

If only we had a President who just did his job and followed his beliefs no matter what the polls said....

[Alex]

I don't think ignoring polls is necessarily better (we tend to want politicians to be poll driven when we disagree with them and to be staunch supporters of their own opinion when we agree with them). Nor do I think that Bush is one who ignores the polls, there are just institutional factors that pretty much force the president to continue misdirected policies even once they become obvious failures.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

As for the idea that this is an effort by ABC to boost Bush or the Republicans for the upcoming elections, who are the people in on this? Pretty much the entire top leadership of The Walt Disney company and ABC are Democrats (at least to the degree that such things can be determined by campaign contributions). Iger, for example, so far this year has given $15,200 directly to Democrats and $2,500 to Republicans (and $5,200 to individual D candidates and none to individual R candidates).

The first answer that came to my mind was the writer and director. The writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, in an interview with FrontPage Magazine struts his stuff,

"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."

Her'es the actual passage from the 9/11 report,

After the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, evidence accumulated that it had been launched by al Qaeda operatives, but without confirmation that Bin Ladin had given the order. The Taliban had earlier been warned that it would be held responsible for another Bin Ladin attack on the United States. The CIA described its findings as a "preliminary judgment"; President Clinton and his chief advisers told us they were waiting for a conclusion before deciding whether to take military action. The military alternatives remained unappealing to them.

The transition to the new Bush administration in late 2000 and early 2001 took place with the Cole issue still pending. President George W. Bush and his chief advisers accepted that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, but did not like the options available for a response.

The director, David Cunningham, was gushingly profiled in Charisma Magazine,

This man knows what he wants. “My life's mission is to challenge and shape culture through film,” says Cunningham-son of Youth With a Mission founder Loren Cunningham. He grabbed Stephen Spielberg's attention after releasing To End All Wars, a $14 million War World II movie that got limited box office exposure but critical praise. The film was violent enough to earn an R rating, yet it was laced with a Christian message of forgiveness. Insiders expect Cunningham to eventually direct a film that will take evangelical faith into mainstream theaters. We are ready to buy some tickets.

The second answer occured to me in the form of a question. If Disney is populated by such staunch Democrats, then why would they hire these guys? I quote from Digby:

Disney/ABC cancelled the reality show featuring a gay couple, "Welcome To The Neighborhood," ten days before it was to air when James Dobson and the religious right threatened to withdraw their support for the conservative classic "Narnia."

Disney refused to allow its subsidiary Miramax, which specialized in controversial fare, to distribute "Fahrenheit 9/11" allegedly because they felt it was too political.

They made a deal with Mel Gibson, beloved on the religious right for his film "The Passion," to produce a film about the Holocaust even though they knew at the time he held extremely controversial views about the Holocaust and Judaism. They only cancelled the project when he was caught by the police drunkenly saying "all the wars in the world are caused by the Jews."

Now they have produced a blatantly rightwing work of fiction which they are saying is based on the official 9/11 Commission report and they are giving it away without any advertising. They sent out hundreds of screening copies but failed to send any to the Clinton administration officials who are trashed in the film or to liberal columnists and bloggers.

There's a pattern here folks and it isn't a pattern that shows ABC knuckling under to liberals. There is a huge amount of money at stake in all these decisions, but for some reason Disney seems to be more than willing to throw it away when it benefits the right wing: already produced films and TV shows are either cancelled or allowed to be distributed by others, while hugely expensive, controversial rightwing mini-series' are broadcast with no advertising and allowed to be downloaded for free by I-tunes.

Isn't that something that Disney shareholders should be just a little bit concerned about? If ABC is protecting its "Narnia" franchise, at some point you have to look at whether the price they are paying is too high. If they have thrown this kind of money away to appease the GOP for business reasons then their shareholders have just been taken to the cleaners.

So, Disney, that most Republican of companies, is actually run by Democrats who want to protect the bottom line, even if it means contradicting their own values. Politics, meet politics, you'll be sharing a bed.