Accusations that former President Bill Clinton’s efforts to catch and kill Osama Bin Laden were haphazard and that his administration’s neglect of al-Qaeda is primarily to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks is unfounded.
The accusations stem from an ABC “docudrama” that depicts scenes where members of the Clinton administration tell soldiers who were about to catch Bin Laden to stand down. The scenes were removed before airing because of Democratic pressure, but were nevertheless given much play by media outlets,
perpetuating the idea that Sept. 11 was
Clinton’s fault.
Whether the purpose of ABC’s made-for-television movie, “The Path to 9/11” was scripted to simply make a compelling drama or to skirt blame away from the current Bush administration for the attacks is irrelevant, but the ramifications of the network’s disrespect for the evidence have reverberated across the nation. Using Sept. 11 as fodder for
commercial gain is shameful of ABC. Facts surrounding such a pivotal and recent traumatic event should not be altered for the sake of entertainment, especially when
those changes blame someone who is not
necessarily responsible.
National media outlets such as ABC have a responsibility to tell the truth, especially on topics as serious as Sept. 11. Nine historians, including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz and Michael Kazin pressured ABC with this point before the airing of the docudrama in a letter they released saying that “A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it,” according to The
Washington Post.
The most recent example of the consequences rising from the accusations has shown up in broadcasts from Fox News, which attempts to put sole onus upon the Clinton administration for the Sept. 11 attacks. Although Clinton ordered strikes against terrorists in Afghanistan, Fox News is eager to blame him likely because of its consistent support of the Bush administration.
Chris Wallace interviewed Clinton on Fox News Sunday and told Clinton that he would ask questions about Clinton’s philanthropic campaign to prevent global warming and designate part of the interview to ask questions on other topics.
Upon Clinton’s arrival, however, after the philanthopy was barely mentioned, Wallace made an accusation that sparked heated debate: “Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaida out of business when you were president? … “Why didn’t you do more, connect the dots …”
The accusation visibly angered Clinton, who spent the rest of the 15-minute interview defending his administration’s efforts to track and kill Bin Laden.
Fox has since used the interview to further its false accusations. To continue its attack on Clinton’s defense of his anti-terrorism efforts, Fox titled the Web link to the interview on its Web site as “Clinton gets crazed” for the first few hours it had been posted.
In hindsight, no one did enough about Bin Laden, and more should have been done in both the Clinton and Bush administrations to stop him. Putting blame on one president, however, is unfair because any incentive to enact the administrative changes that the Bush administration says it needs to fight terrorism was absent before the Sept. 11 attacks. The passage of the Patriot Act and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, decisions that were met with widespread criticism when they happened, would have been unthinkable before the attacks. We urge all media outlets to be as responsible and
accurate as possible when portraying
situations that have the magnitude of the
Sept. 11 attacks.