Dueling fiction

No doubt by now you've heard of the ABC miniseries called The Path to 9/11, I was watching a football game last Saturday on ABC when I saw an ad for it. It claimed to be based on the 9/11 commission report. I thought that would be interesting viewing. But it turns out that it was written by right wingnut Cyrus Noratesh and based not on the commission report, which was compiled by folks honestly trying to get at the truth, but on right-wing fictions arguing that we are too free to be safe.

I was going to make a plea for sanity, as the post title suggests, and argue that we need to end the era of dueling fictions from the right and left that leaves us scratching our heads and trying to decide which is true. This nonsense does not serve us well. It is polarizing and dangerous, because it makes us suspicious of each other and immediately discount arguments that run counter to our inclinations. What we need is to focus on facts, things that really happened, and then have rational discussions from there. Dueling Joe Goebbels will not do.

I was gonna condemn slanted presentations and fabrications on either side, whether it be from Michael Moore or the yahoo who wrote this ABC nonsense. Actually, I hope I just did that. But as more and more facts come out about this miniseries, it becomes clear that this monstrosity needs to be vehemently condemned. And it is being condemned, roundly, by the folks that are being slandered like the Clinton administration, but also by the 9/11 commission members and counsels, and conservatives like Bill Bennett, not to mention regular people who've responded in huge numbers to protest.

Why? Allegedly, it contains a scene in which a CIA operative in Afghanistan has Bin Laden in his sights and is begging Sandy Berger, Clinton's NSA, for permission to take him out. Berger doesn't give it. Bin Laden lives and a few years later, almost 3000 die on 9/11. Bad Clinton administration, right?

Only that scene is just a right-wing fever dream. It never happened. We didn't have any CIA operatives anywhere near Bin Laden's camps. No one disputes that. Plus, former CIA officials say that Clinton approved every operational request they ever made concerning Bin Laden. Remember the missile attack on his camps following the embassy bombings in Africa? How does one square that attack with a reluctance to act on Clinton's part? If Bin Laden hadn't, on a whim, gone to Kabul that night instead of back to the camps, he'd likely be dead.

Further, and more perniciously, this show argues that Constitutional concerns made us too timid to act, implying that Bush's disregard for Constitutional safeguards is what's needed. We need to be less free to save freedom. Huh?

Interestingly, this "argument" is coming just as Bush is trying to scare the crap out of us again so that we won't kick his corrupt and radical allies out of the house and senate. He needs warrantless surveillance to keep us safe. Nonsense. No one has ever made a compelling argument that oversight of spying programs would compromise them. They say FISA court oversight is too slow and cumbersome even though it allows the spies to seek warrants 72 hours AFTER they spy, so they are not hampered in the heat of the moment. How is that burdensome?

No one says we shouldn't watch the bad guys, or act against them pre-emptively. All we ask is that there be oversight and that the President not claim dictatorial perrogatives to wage war. We can be safe and free. Paranoia is never an engine for sane and rational thought. We must never become a nation that thinks secret prisons, coerced confessions and secret evidence is okay. Those are precisely the things we rebelled against. Defeating the extremists that threaten us is not enough. We must do it the American way, always with respect to inalienable rights. The constitution says no "person" shall be denied due process, not no "citizen" or "American". If we forget that, we are not America anymore. What's right isn't always what's easy, but it is what separates us from other nations and makes us a good example of governance.

Anyway, back to the original theme. Can we please end this era of dueling propaganda and demonization and start acting like we're all in this together?