11/09: Unserious about the War Against Militant Islam
Category: American History and Politics
Posted by: an okie gardener
I watched the president's address this evening, and thought it was good. When the address came on I flipped over to C-SPAN (I was watching the ABC docudrama Path to 9/11), then flipped back to ABC after the address. I was just in time to see and hear George Stephanopoulis (does anyone but me ever have the urge to reach out and smack him up-side the head?) offer his analysis of the speech--all he could talk about was the speech in relation to the upcoming Congressional elections; in other words, he only discussed it as a political event, not as a wartime address in the context of the ongoing dangers. What an unserious response!
Ordinarily I avoid anything like a "docudrama", not wanting to clutter my mind with images and conversations that may not be historically accurate. I only decided to watch Path to 9/11 because of the attempts by the Clinton adminstration lawyers and others to block the release, or at least modify it. My personal reaction to the drama was that I thought it stuck pretty well to what we know (and who knows what we will never know thanks to folks like Sandy "Oops it's accidentally in my Pants" Berger). At the least, it was a good reminder that we are at war with religiously motivated folks who want to kill us in the name of their god. (Did you notice that the shooting targets in the Al Qaeda training camp had crosses painted on them?)
Ordinarily I avoid anything like a "docudrama", not wanting to clutter my mind with images and conversations that may not be historically accurate. I only decided to watch Path to 9/11 because of the attempts by the Clinton adminstration lawyers and others to block the release, or at least modify it. My personal reaction to the drama was that I thought it stuck pretty well to what we know (and who knows what we will never know thanks to folks like Sandy "Oops it's accidentally in my Pants" Berger). At the least, it was a good reminder that we are at war with religiously motivated folks who want to kill us in the name of their god. (Did you notice that the shooting targets in the Al Qaeda training camp had crosses painted on them?)
A Waco Farmer wrote:
1. Media coverage of policy-making and serious debate as politics, in itself, politicizes serious events and does a disservice to our national conversation. Not that there is not a place for the "inside baseball" political coverage, but when every story about policy becomes a story about politics, we completely give up the notion of principled statemanship. Are we ready to do that as a nation?
2. I too watched the docu-drama. I too thought it was pretty good. I was moved. And , chances are, I would never have even known it was on TV without the protests.