On the evening of September 10th 2006 — on the cusp of the fifth anniversary of the worst terror attack in American history — many Americans are going to be angry. But for very different reasons.
Americans who don't get it — liberal activists and unreconstructed Clintonistas — will be upset over the September 10th premiere of ABC's miniseries "The Path to 9/11." This six-hour docudrama based on the 9/11 Commission Report allegedly suggests that the guy who'd been president for the eight years leading up to September 11th might be slightly more culpable for the massive intelligence failure than the guy who'd been in office a mere eight months.
No wonder Democrats are outraged.
The film points out that President Clinton refused to give the order to kill Osama when we had him in our sights in 1998. It shows the impact of Gorelick's Gulch — the disastrous and legally unnecessary "wall" between the FBI and CIA dreamed up by Jamie Gorelick that allowed the 9/11 hijackers to slip into the US unmolested.
Because the American Left is so heavily vested in blaming the Al Qaeda attacks on George W. Bush (at least, those members of the Left who don't think Bush blew up the World Trade Center himself) "The Path to 9/11" and ABC are under fire from Salon.com, Media Matters and the usual suspects of the leftwing blogosphere.
My suggestion? Don't bother. Everyone made mistakes before 9/11. Clinton, Bush, Sandy Berger, George Tenant — as a nation, we just didn't get the danger we faced from Islamist terror. Three thousand Americans died in a savage attack that should have been a teaching moment for all of us. Nobody need be angry or embarrassed because the Clintonistas had to learn that lesson like everyone else.
Don't get mad about people who didn't get it five years ago. Instead, get mad at the Americans among us who still don't get it today. You'll find them at Harvard University.
On the same evening ABC unveils its docudrama, the folks at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government usher in the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with a speech by an anti-Semitic, Islamist terror sponsor.
Harvard's September 10th special guest is none other than former president of Iran Mohammad Khatami. He's been invited to speak on the topic "Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence." It's an interesting choice for a man who was the president of Iran at a time when it was rounding up pro-democracy college students and throwing them in jail (I suppose that's the "tolerance" part) to be tortured and sometimes killed (that would be the "violence" portion of the program).
If Khatami were merely the head of another thuggish Middle Eastern regime, Harvard's invitation for him to speak on the eve of 9/11 would simply be bad taste. But when it comes to 9/11, Iran isn't just another regime. It's the real "ground zero" of Islamist terror.
Every year President Khatami served in office, Iran was listed by the US State Department, and acknowledged by the UN, as the world's leading terror sponsor. They remain so today.
Khatami's Iran poured money into Hezbollah — a group founded under Khatami's watchful eye in the 1980's while he served as minister of culture and Islamic propagation. Iran still supports Hezbollah.
President Khatami's Iran was secretly developing nuclear weapons and lying to the UN about it the entire time. Why is Iran so desperate for nuclear weapons? Perhaps it's because President Khatami called for the total destruction of the state of Israel — a position both he and the nation of Iran still hold today.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, who organized Khatami's trip, considers him a "moderate," reminding us yet again that, in CAIR's opinion, a "moderate" Muslim is one who only wants to kill the Jews.
Does Harvard share that opinion? Who knows? What we do know is that Harvard now has an official open-door policy to anti-Semites. If David Duke had the money, he'd have an endowed chair at the Kennedy School today.
This is, after all, the same Harvard that published the re-write of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" by professors Walt and Mearsheimer; and who took a $20 million donation from the same Sheik bin Talal who gave nearly $30 million to support Palestinian suicide bombers and their families. A Khatami-style 9/11 observance is par for this Ivy League course.
Can you imagine a family member of a 9/11 victim sitting in that audience listening to this terrorist talk about…well, anything? Can you imagine a family who lost an American soldier to a roadside bomb funded by the Iranians sitting through this Islamo-fascist's sermon on terror and tolerance?
The prospect is too terrible and intolerable to consider. So why is it happening? What isn't the Angry Left angry about this? About a real member of a real fascist regime that really does terrorize its neighbors and endanger the world?
Oh, that's right. They're too busy defending Bill Clinton from the insults of an "unfair ABC docudrama" to focus on a real terrorist.
It's like the 1990s all over again.
