THE PATH TO 9/11

After watching both segments of The Path to 9/11 (ABC), I’m left with mixed feelings. As a docudrama, it struck me as being neither good documentary nor good drama, yet it remained oddly compelling.

It was the “cowboy western” component that made it neither good documentary nor good drama: the main characters all wore either white hats (O’Neill, Massoud, Clark,the CIA agent, FBI agent Colleen Rowley) or black hats (Berger, Albright, the American Ambassador to Yemen, Rice) that destroyed the essential “grayness” of terrorism.

Two elements struck me as compelling. One was the linkage of all the terror acts that preceeded the 9/11 attacks; the other was the bureaucratic ineptness and sensitivity to “process.”

Oversensitivity to process is, to me, the key takeaway from The Path to 9/11. As someone who has worked in the defense industry for years, I’ve seen entirely too much “process” in lieu of progress. The bureaucratic need to not step on another’s turf, to check - and recheck - with everyone who might possibly have an interest, to never offend any agency’s sensibilities, and to cover one’s a--, uh six, at all times means that nothing ever gets done until it proves to be too late.

Best quotes -

Massoud: "Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?"

Clark: "War is about killing the enemy and destroying his property. It's not about sitting around in a conference room and covering your own asses."

With respect to any lasting political impact, I think I have to take my cue from Instapundit - the Democrats indulged “their instinct for the capillary” in protesting. For me, The Path to 9/11 is an indictment of both parties, and the Democrat protest serves only to remind the viewers of, for example, Sandy Berger’s theft and destruction of classified documents from the National Archives. Why they would want to remind viewers of the very events that tend to support the parts they are protesting is beyond me.

My view: if there is any lesson to be learned from The Path to 9/11, it can be found in this quotation from a Heinlein juvenile (Double Star) that I read 40-something years ago:

“Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong – but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong! Heaven save us from the poltroons who fear to make a choice. Let us stand up and be counted.”