how long was the path to 9/11?

The frenzy over the ABC TV movie extravaganza cannot possibly get hotter—with Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger now applying considerable pressure on Tom Kean by suggesting that his endorsement of the movie endangers the credibility of the sacred 9/11 Commission (of which he was a member).

The dramatic impact of a costly but carelessly produced film will invariably overwhelm the impression of any government document.

Earlier in the day, before Kean heard about this letter (in an incredible turn, he found out about it on CNN’s air tonight, while Wolf Blitzer was interviewing him on the Situation Room—which is to say that the press had a copy of the letter before Kean even knew it existed), Kean had this to say:

“The American government let us down,” Kean told Reuters. “Not only didn’t they stop the plot, they didn’t even slow it down.”

Kean said he saw the show as a way to raise awareness of the recommendations made by the 9/11 commission, which issued its report in 2004.

Kean said he expected criticism. “People in both parties didn’t particularly like the commission report, and I think people in both parties aren’t going to love this one.”

Kean makes the most important point: that regardless of how far back the path to 9/11 may go (as far as the early 1980s, or to 1979, or to 1947, or to the Ottoman empire, or to the 7th century—depending on your point of view), it was a failure of government. (Clinton’s bad luck is that he was president for 7 years during the immediate run-up to 9/11, whereas Bush was in office for only 8 months.)

More important, I believe: it was primarily a massive failure of imagination (and that failure of imagination lingers in some quarters: there is a great tendency, even among otherwise intelligent people, to believe that real-life villains are mustache-twirlers or that they wear black hats. The best example of this is the refusal on the left to take Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric seriously, because he smiles a lot and speaks in a soft tone of voice. It should go without saying that not every malignantly evil person screams like Hitler did. Nor should Richard Reid and Zacharia Moussaoui have been considered non-threatening just because they looked and/or acted, um, dazed and confused).

The story of how we as a country got to 9/11 is of interest—but it’s a story that is still being written (and there’s a lot of grist for the mill of speculation, which is precisely what makes it good material for a drama such as The Path to 9/11).

For most of us, what’s really important about the actual events of 9/11 is the lessons we draw from it and how we behave and think after 9/11: as a country and as individual Americans and as human beings. That is a nonpartisan challenge—indeed, it’s a suprapartisan challenge, and it affects all of us. Which is why it’s so gross for the Clinton crew to be screaming over their precious reputations. An unwelcome reminder of their m.o.: everything is always all about them.

Even if he started at an unconscionably low level—and there’s no question that he was completely ignorant of what was happening in the world outside America’s borders—at least Bush has grown on the job. There is no question about it. [links to come]. Whereas the Democrats have wandered in the darkness [links to come at a later date].

Worse, they have wasted six years, because they still have not come up with one coherent suggestion about how to confront the external challenges facing America. All of their brainpower is directed at arguing that Bush is wrong, that he is stupid and incompetent, that Rove is the puppetmaster that manipulates him, that Cheney is the power behind the throne, that Bush’s brain was hijacked by neocons, and that his administration is evil and incompetent. They can hardly wait to shred his ideas and his policies to pieces.

Time’s a-wasting, fellas. Some of us are desperate to hear your ideas about the right policies: coherent ideas only, please.