by David Greenberg

Historians, listen up: By now you've probably read about the upcoming ABC 9/11 docudrama that's alleged to distort history--with (it is said) a bias against the Clinton administration's counterterrorism policies. The gist of the complaint is that it invents and falsifies historical facts in order to make the Democrats look "soft on terrorism"--just as the fall campaign enters high gear. Now, my friend Rick Perlstein tells me, an all-star list of historians, led by Sean Wilentz and Arthur Schlesinger and including Open U's Michael Kazin and Ted Widmer, are writing a letter to ABC protesting the plans to air the historically inaccurate version. The websites on top of this issue are Open Letter to ABC and Think Progress. Check it out. For my part, I think it's an abuse of history to place much blame on either the Clinton or the Bush administration for "not doing more to prevent September 11" (as both teams are often alleged to have done, or not to have done). Anyone can second-guess others' actions with the benefit of hindsight. But historians are supposed to try get into the minds of the actors of a bygone era--and the time before September 11, 2001, does represent, in the matter of counterterrorism, a bygone era. Everybody thought about terrorism differently back then, and it's a historical fallacy to blame Sandy Berger or Condi Rice for not having a post-9/11 mindset. UPDATE: Update: Josh Marshall has his muckrakers on the case. His site notes:

The director of ABC's controversial "Path to 9/11" docudrama has ties to an evangelical Christian group whose goals include "transform[ing] Hollywood from the inside out," according to research by readers of prominent blogs.

More here.