ABC also added a label to its product, informing the consumer that the movie was, well, a movie -- a dramatization, where events and characters were condensed in the interest of storytelling. This might be an encouraging trend. Some of the more execrable television "news" programs, which are little more than sensationalist claims of doom and gloom, need to carry the same label.
So -- with these caveats -- I watched the ABC docudrama instead of the Sunday night football game.
As a thriller, the movie was mediocre. However, its re-enactment of the assassination of North Alliance leader and U.S. ally Ahmed Shah Masood on Sept. 9, 2001, was particularly compelling. Mahsood had done far more to defeat the USSR in Afghanistan than any of Osama bin Laden's "Arab Afghans." His murder -- a historical fact -- demonstrated that al-Qaida and the Taliban fear Muslims who don't buy their poisoned brand of Islam, and especially fear them when they are allies of the United States. The movie conveyed that.
The flick wasn't much of a political statement, either, unless the viewer happened to believe Islamo-fascists aren't at war with the civilized world. As for the folks who believe the West or George W. Bush created Islamo-fascist terrorism, then their own conspiracy theories are far more fictional than this movie.
The movie did dramatize several of al-Qaida's pre-9/11 terror attacks. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa and the bombing of the USS Cole aren't Hollywood fantasies, they are horrible facts.
It's also a fact the Clinton administration spent eight years and the Bush administration eight months playing cops and robbers, while al-Qaida was implementing unrestricted warfare. Both administrations treated Islamo-fascist terrorism as a law enforcement issue.
Perhaps Sen. Reid still believes in a cops and robbers strategy. If so, then he must also censor history.