History’s greatest terrorist attack, sans terrorists

(More comments have been added to this entry.)

I had an opportunity to see a free screening of Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center today, but, based on things I’ve already heard about it, reinforced by Debbie Schlussel’s article today at FrontPage Magazine, I will skip it. Not only does the movie focus on the plight and rescue of two men (interspersed with lots of shots of their worried families) while downplaying the larger event, but, as Schlussel points out, the movie omits all references to the perpetrators.

Who caused the attacks of 9/11? Who hijacked planes? Who flew them into the Towers? In “World Trade Center,” it’s hard to tell. Nicholas Cage’s cop rescued from beneath the ruins speaks of “the evil”; a Wisconsin cop twice mentions the “bastards”; And a marine speaks about the need to “avenge this.” But what is the evil? Who are the bastards? What needs to be “avenged”? Stone deliberately whitewashes the clear-cut answer to these questions—extremist Islam’s attack on Americans.

Stone is getting kudos from conservatives and liberals alike for “sticking to the facts” and “playing it straight.” Did they see the same movie as I saw? He doesn’t do those things at all. In fact, “World Trade Center” is more notable for what it leaves than for its content.

There isn’t a single mention of Islam. Or Bin Laden. Or Mohammed Atta. Were there really 19 hijackers on the planes? No mention of them in this movie. Score yet another for extremist Islam in Hollywood. It’s totally whitewashed from “World Trade Center.”

Ironically, in his movie about the assassination of President Kennedy, Stone created fictitious culprits in the U.S. government and blamed the murder on them. In his movie about jihadist Islam’s attack on America, he erases the actual culprits. What a perfect expression of the leftist world view. And what a confession of the naivité of the conservatives, such as Cal Thomas, who are failing to see through it.

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Spencer Warren writes:

JFK is a completely dishonest movie, filled with distortions and fabrications that would make Goebbels proud. It did more to promote the myth of a conspiracy and undermine faith in the US than any other treatment of the assassination. Stone’s entire career, starting with Platoon and his El Salvador “documentary,” has been a radical left attack on the US and our civilization. His Georges Sorel-like paean to transcending reactionary society through violence, Natural Born Killers, inspired several copy murders.

This is the monster praised by Thomas and Blankley.

Mr. Warren continues:

Schlussel writes:

“Back to the news clips. In a set of scenes NOT taken from actual newsclips, but made to look like them, Stone shows people upset from all over the world. Noticeable are many scenes of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere, all sullen and upset that America was attacked.

“Reality check: Did you see any scenes of Muslims upset that America was attacked on 9/11? No. Instead, we saw Muslims dancing in the streets all over the world, including in Palestinian-dominated Patterson, New Jersey. Even the normally sensitive MTV News got that story right. Why didn’t Oliver Stone?”

This dishonest technique is precisely what he did in JFK, fabricating scenes to look like newsreels to support his unfounded conspiracy viewpoint.

Reader N. writes:

In Debbie Schlussel’s notes on “WTC” that VFR quotes, I see that the perpetrators of the attack are referred to in ambiguous manner: “the evil,” “the bastards,” and so forth. It is natural for you and many others to assume that this refers to the 19 hijackers, those who sent them, those who aided them, etc. But to a leftist, steeped in the “Mossad/CIA/Zionists/PNAC deliberately set charges in the WTC and flew the aircraft via remote control” conspiracy theories, these terms will refer to someone very different…

I have to wonder if, given Stone’s known left-wing, anti-Western viewpoint, he did not use ambiguous language in a deliberate fashion to fool conservatives into thinking he’s made a non-ideological film, while reassuring the conspiracy theorists on the Left that he is still “one of them”?

Van Wijk writes:

Here is what Oliver Stone had to say about 9/11 immediately after it happened. Excuse the foul language.

“They (corporations) control culture, they control ideas. And I think the revolt of September 11th was about ‘F*ck you! F*ck your order.’”

Amazing. This would tend to back up N’s theory that when the characters in the movie speak of some unspecified “enemy,” they don’t mean Islamic terrorists, they mean the corporations, the people in the CIA who killed President Kennedy, etc.

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A VFR reader passed my comments on World Trade Center on to a well-known conservative who had praised the movie. He wrote back to her:

No, I don’t agree. And when you see the movie I suspect you won’t either. The movie focuses on the events of 9-11—and nothing more. No one that day was talking about bin Laden, etc. All that came later. This is a story about the rescue of two trapped policemen. Plenty of people have told me I’m insane for endorsing an Oliver Stone movie, to which I answer: Few have ever been as critical of this man as have I, so when I DO praise a movie of his, it’s gotta be good!

My reply is that Debbie Schlussel saw the movie and I was largely basing the blog entry on what she had said. It’s true that not much was said of a specific nature that day about the terrorists, but the fact that Muslim terrorists had attacked us was certainly front and center. The buildings didn’t just explode and then fall down on their own.

Now it’s looking as though I’ll have to see the darn movie. Not because I want to, but in order to be able to have my own opinion about the movie—and about other people’s opinions about it. (Which, by the way, was the same reason I went to see The Passion the day after it opened.)

Anthony D. writes:

Many people are falling for the view that the movie is non-political because of what it fails to mention, i.e., anything at all about the causes and reasons and agents of the destruction of the Twin Towers complex.

I say the movie is socially subversive for just that reason. It skillfully portrays the events of that day purposefully by design, from the vantage point of two survivors who at that moment in time—the period specifically targeted by the script—could not have known anything substantial about the event as it unfolded. What a great way out on a silver platter for a conspiracy driven Hollywood leftist, who made derogatory comments about America shortly after the “tragedy.”

Would Stone have been as enthusiastic to portray the actions and thoughts of John O’Neill, Head of Security at the World trade Center that fateful, awful day, had he survived? After all, O’Neill rushed back into the towers to try and rescue colleagues and was never seen again. It is no stretch of the imagination to suppose that he knew that an attack by the Islamic faithful was unfolding.

Couldn’t a movie have been made about O’Neill in the same way as this movie, World Trade Center, and be based on the extensive body of documented interviews and knowledge that currently exists about a man of his stature? A man who was way ahead of the curve in trying to get the powers that be to listen to what he knew about Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism worldwide? Or would that force a director like Stone to face some pretty uncomfortable truths about the totality of 9-11 and the eternal struggle with Islam?

In accepting Stone’s perspective, one must be comfortable with ignoring the cause and viewing only the effect from a purely individualistic point of view. This is indicative of the sickness of Western civilization which has reduced itself to the lowest common denominator, the individual and his pursuits. This, in my view, excises the Islamic killers and their enablers from the record, and eventually becomes part of the social consciousness, accepted by the lazy, media-driven public as fact. This serves Stone’s well-known world view in far more sinister ways than if he came right out and said, “We deserved it,” as he actually did days after the attack.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 09, 2006 09:26 AM | Send