Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Did You See This?

The last two nights I watched ABC's "Road To 9/11" miniseries. Overall, I enjoyed it and thought it interesting enough to watch it over the season premiere of "The Wire" (which I watched On Demand).

Aside from one scene where the actress playing Former Sec. of State Albright warns the Pakistanis of an impeding missile strike on Bin Laden, I didn't see much that should offend the Clinton Administration. The miniseries took as much time to point out the failures of the Bush Administration as well (Condi looking over a memo whose title reads, "Bin Laden Determine to Attack Within U.S., Richard Clarke's warnings falling on deaf ears, and the indecision that plagued the White House on 9/11). In reality, it is way too simple to pin all the blame on one Administration. In a lot of ways they're both to blame. A dozen different people at a dozen different times could have stopped the attacks, but they didn't. Bureaucracy and a general feeling of "I doubt Al Qaeda could really hit us hard" seem to be better explanations.

If the miniseries was political at all, it was when explaining how civil liberties protected suspected terrorists. Several characters commented on this, and this aspect didn't seem balanced to me.

Dan puts it better than I do.

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