September 15, 2006

The Path to 9/11 (2)

Yes, I actually watched The Path to 9/11, except a chunk in the middle Sunday night. First up, the negatives. I did manage to catch two glaring errors: a couple of times they talked about scrambling F-16s and they showed the same clip of a F-14. I'm sure Lock-Mart would have been happy to provide a clip of a F-16 taking off. And then when they had the Tomahawk missile strike against Afganistan, they showed video of a Harpoon leaving a canister. I suppose the marketing for the land attack capability in the latest version of Harpoon went much better than I realized. Since I worked on Harpoon for a long while, I admit I enjoyed that goof.

Seriously, while I loved the no commercials, the shaky cam started to seriously annoy long before the end. My head isn't that unsteady, so it just comes across as fake. And I about laughed outloud towards the end when after the attacks Condoleeza Rice told Richarde Clarke, "Yes boss, we sure do need a strong white man to run things around here." (Or words to that effect.) Perhaps I'm wrong, but it strikes me that in a meeting with Rice and Cheney in it, Clarke is in fact chopped liver. I think Condi had far more to complain about than Maddy Albright, who came across as tougher than the rest of the Clinton cabinet combined and someone who should be negotiating on behalf of our country. Hell, as peaceful as I am I'd be ready to fix bayonet and charge uphill into machine gun fire if the character in the movie were leading the way.

Could they have found an older looking guy to play Cheney? He's not a bad looking 65 in real life, but in the movies they always have somebody playing him who looks like he hasn't smiled in 40 years and has one foot in the grave.

Here's the real problem with the movie, and any such look back - there are nothing but connected dots. The movie spans 8 years in 3 hours, and only included are the events that matter. So when watching the movie, of course its all so obvious. But in real life, there is all kinds of stuff going on, and separating signal from noise is very hard.

The fault for 9/11 lies squarely with al-Qaida, and neither the Clinton or Bush administrations. Yes, had some things been done differently, we might have been able to sniff out and stop the plot. So rather than looking back to point fingers, we should be looking back to figure out what are the things we can do better. And that just isn't happening.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at September 15, 2006 11:42 AM | Current Events
Comments
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I saw the movie (with the exception of one hour in the middle), and the one thing that struck me was how poorly executed the terrorist plans were.

When we look back at how the attack was planned, we see multiple instances where paying attention was all that was needed to stop instances of terrorism.

Granted, the shortened span of the movie contributes to that feeling, but from the flight schools to Atta screaming for a federal loan to fear of causing international waves, one thing remains clear.

The problem in stopping terrorism is not with our ability to find out what is going on. The problem is deciding what limits to set on ourselves. Where is the balance between what we're willing to do and what we need to do?

Posted by: Jim Durbin at September 21, 2006 8:04 AM

Where is the balance between what we're willing to do and what we need to do?

Excellent point, Jim.

The thing I worry is that too much restraint now leads to over kill later when the situation becomes dire and everybody supports stern action.

Posted by: Kevin Murphy at September 22, 2006 2:54 PM