thedrifter
05-08-06, 08:39 AM
United 93 – Not Soon Enough
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 8, 2006
You must see this film, if only to support such a brave Hollywood venture. The Tinseltown folks like to pat themselves on the back and speak of their “courage” when they make anti-Joe McCarthy films, or flicks that change Islamofascist terrorists into mythical neo-Nazi terrorists, but that’s not courage, that’s singing to the hard-left Hollywood choir. Courage exhibits itself when films are made that fly in the face of severe criticism and scorn, like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and Paul Greengrass’ United 93.
As one might expect, criticism has erupted for some of the silliest and most supercilious reasons. But the one reason that most liberals will hate this film is unstated: they are unwilling or unable to face the reality of the situation that America is under remorseless, unrelenting attack by a group of Islamist terrorists who are prepared to go to any and all lengths – including suicide/homicide attacks – to defeat us. This reality disturbs their long grounding of multiculturalism and moral equivalence that leads them to believe that no culture is superior to another and that any behavior – however egregious – performed under the rationalization of “cultural expression” is acceptable.
Such fuzzy thinking has led them to espouse an appeasement based foreign policy that blames America for “inciting” the enemies that would destroy us all. The ultimate irony, that their secular humanistic based ideology is at the top of the Islamofascist target list for destruction, somehow escapes them. Perhaps they naively absolve our enemies for simply expressing a “cultural imperative” and think that belief will keep them insulated from attack. Yet Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who died at the hands of Islamofascist with their condemnatory note pinned to his chest with the knife that stabbed him to death, was an atheist. As the film United 93 graphically portrays, when a terrorist slits your throat he’s more inclined to shout Allahu akbar! than “what’s your political affiliation?”
One of the more irritating critiques of the film was done by reviewer Davidson Goldin in the April 27 New York Sun. Goldin’s piece, snidely titled “Ziegfeld Follies,” takes director Greengrass to task for “unfortunately” using the 911 attacks “to justify making the film in the first place.” This odd requirement that film directors must somehow secure “permission” to make a film Hollywood leftists might not like is familiar. It surfaced repeatedly in Gibson’s Passion, but somehow is absent in pin-headed “documentaries” like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 and any of the series of historical mythologies Oliver Stone unloads.
Though Greengrass has pledged 10% of the opening weekend’s revenues to families of the flight’s victims, Goldin finds this offer wanting and cynically motivated. “Come on. Ten percent of a weekend’s take is just enough to sound generous but not really be truly generous at all.” It is on the other hand extremely generous of Goldin to give away Greengrass’ money. Further, Goldin finds that the “film isn’t as objectionable as the use of the victims’ families to make the film unobjectionable.” Yet other than a series of disconnected nits: Greengrass didn’t use all available information, he added scenes in the aircraft that we do not know actually happened, and he leaves out some of what the reviewer finds “dramatic moments,” Goldin really can’t say more about why the film is “objectionable” other than to note that “some people are concerned…that [it] is debuting too soon.”
What, one has to ask would be considered proper timing for making a 911 film. If 4 ˝ years is “too soon” does that make 6 years “too late”? Would 5 ˝ be “just right”? It sounds as if we’re discussing Goldilocks and the Three Bears rather than the most horrific attack ever to hit this country. In truth, their answer on the right time for the film is probably “never” because this is a film that makes the left uncomfortable. In chilling opening scenes we see the terrorist team praying, ritually shaving and cleansing their bodies. Throughout they speak in Arabic to each other and read from the Koran. Greengrass does not try to disguise the Islamic origin of the terrorists nor hide their motives.
Certainly the takeover scenes are based on reality as we know it not only from flight 93 but also from the others, American 11, United 135, and American 77 that were hijacked that day. Phone conversations from flight attendants and passengers graphically relayed the violence and cold-bloodedness with which the Islamic terrorists murdered and tortured passengers and crew in order to take the cockpits and turn the aircraft into missiles. If any criticism were to be leveled at the timing of this film it ought to be “what took you so long?”
Consider this: it is longer between September 11, 2001 and release of United 93 than it was between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Nor did Americans wait around during that period equivocating, manufacturing artificial guilt over whether we had provoked Hitler and Hirohito by our “imperialistic, arrogant” policies. Neither did Americans equivocate about identification of the enemy: they knew it was Nazism, fascism, and Japanese militarism. No one offered the exculpation that bushido was a “religion of peace” or Nazism a means of “cultural expression.”
In those days we had learned painfully to listen to our enemies. When Hitler said that he was going to establish a thousand year Reich, exterminate Jews and other üntermench, and conquer the world, we came to believe him, albeit belatedly. When the Japanese outlined the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and began their own aggressive wars of conquest we ultimately realized that we had known what Hirohito intended long before bombs fell at Pearl.
Now we willfully ignore our enemies aggressive statements or try to explain them away. A film like United 93 brings back the authenticity of our enemies’ words translated into terrorist actions. Bin Laden declared war. Then he carried out attacks. Many have already forgotten or willfully suppressed memories so United 93 is a necessary dose of reality in a self-delusionary world. It is a testament to the strength, courage, and self-sacrifice Americans are willing to do when threatened by a greater evil. And it is a timely reminder of what happened and why. Too soon United 93? Not at all – perhaps just in time.
Ellie
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 8, 2006
You must see this film, if only to support such a brave Hollywood venture. The Tinseltown folks like to pat themselves on the back and speak of their “courage” when they make anti-Joe McCarthy films, or flicks that change Islamofascist terrorists into mythical neo-Nazi terrorists, but that’s not courage, that’s singing to the hard-left Hollywood choir. Courage exhibits itself when films are made that fly in the face of severe criticism and scorn, like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and Paul Greengrass’ United 93.
As one might expect, criticism has erupted for some of the silliest and most supercilious reasons. But the one reason that most liberals will hate this film is unstated: they are unwilling or unable to face the reality of the situation that America is under remorseless, unrelenting attack by a group of Islamist terrorists who are prepared to go to any and all lengths – including suicide/homicide attacks – to defeat us. This reality disturbs their long grounding of multiculturalism and moral equivalence that leads them to believe that no culture is superior to another and that any behavior – however egregious – performed under the rationalization of “cultural expression” is acceptable.
Such fuzzy thinking has led them to espouse an appeasement based foreign policy that blames America for “inciting” the enemies that would destroy us all. The ultimate irony, that their secular humanistic based ideology is at the top of the Islamofascist target list for destruction, somehow escapes them. Perhaps they naively absolve our enemies for simply expressing a “cultural imperative” and think that belief will keep them insulated from attack. Yet Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who died at the hands of Islamofascist with their condemnatory note pinned to his chest with the knife that stabbed him to death, was an atheist. As the film United 93 graphically portrays, when a terrorist slits your throat he’s more inclined to shout Allahu akbar! than “what’s your political affiliation?”
One of the more irritating critiques of the film was done by reviewer Davidson Goldin in the April 27 New York Sun. Goldin’s piece, snidely titled “Ziegfeld Follies,” takes director Greengrass to task for “unfortunately” using the 911 attacks “to justify making the film in the first place.” This odd requirement that film directors must somehow secure “permission” to make a film Hollywood leftists might not like is familiar. It surfaced repeatedly in Gibson’s Passion, but somehow is absent in pin-headed “documentaries” like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 and any of the series of historical mythologies Oliver Stone unloads.
Though Greengrass has pledged 10% of the opening weekend’s revenues to families of the flight’s victims, Goldin finds this offer wanting and cynically motivated. “Come on. Ten percent of a weekend’s take is just enough to sound generous but not really be truly generous at all.” It is on the other hand extremely generous of Goldin to give away Greengrass’ money. Further, Goldin finds that the “film isn’t as objectionable as the use of the victims’ families to make the film unobjectionable.” Yet other than a series of disconnected nits: Greengrass didn’t use all available information, he added scenes in the aircraft that we do not know actually happened, and he leaves out some of what the reviewer finds “dramatic moments,” Goldin really can’t say more about why the film is “objectionable” other than to note that “some people are concerned…that [it] is debuting too soon.”
What, one has to ask would be considered proper timing for making a 911 film. If 4 ˝ years is “too soon” does that make 6 years “too late”? Would 5 ˝ be “just right”? It sounds as if we’re discussing Goldilocks and the Three Bears rather than the most horrific attack ever to hit this country. In truth, their answer on the right time for the film is probably “never” because this is a film that makes the left uncomfortable. In chilling opening scenes we see the terrorist team praying, ritually shaving and cleansing their bodies. Throughout they speak in Arabic to each other and read from the Koran. Greengrass does not try to disguise the Islamic origin of the terrorists nor hide their motives.
Certainly the takeover scenes are based on reality as we know it not only from flight 93 but also from the others, American 11, United 135, and American 77 that were hijacked that day. Phone conversations from flight attendants and passengers graphically relayed the violence and cold-bloodedness with which the Islamic terrorists murdered and tortured passengers and crew in order to take the cockpits and turn the aircraft into missiles. If any criticism were to be leveled at the timing of this film it ought to be “what took you so long?”
Consider this: it is longer between September 11, 2001 and release of United 93 than it was between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Nor did Americans wait around during that period equivocating, manufacturing artificial guilt over whether we had provoked Hitler and Hirohito by our “imperialistic, arrogant” policies. Neither did Americans equivocate about identification of the enemy: they knew it was Nazism, fascism, and Japanese militarism. No one offered the exculpation that bushido was a “religion of peace” or Nazism a means of “cultural expression.”
In those days we had learned painfully to listen to our enemies. When Hitler said that he was going to establish a thousand year Reich, exterminate Jews and other üntermench, and conquer the world, we came to believe him, albeit belatedly. When the Japanese outlined the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and began their own aggressive wars of conquest we ultimately realized that we had known what Hirohito intended long before bombs fell at Pearl.
Now we willfully ignore our enemies aggressive statements or try to explain them away. A film like United 93 brings back the authenticity of our enemies’ words translated into terrorist actions. Bin Laden declared war. Then he carried out attacks. Many have already forgotten or willfully suppressed memories so United 93 is a necessary dose of reality in a self-delusionary world. It is a testament to the strength, courage, and self-sacrifice Americans are willing to do when threatened by a greater evil. And it is a timely reminder of what happened and why. Too soon United 93? Not at all – perhaps just in time.
Ellie