Replies

CORRECTION, ADDITIONS TO MAIN ESSAY:

THE 'MUNICH' ALLUSION:
THE DANGER OF SPIELBERG AND THE AMERICAN LEFT

by Mia T, January 4, 2006

At the time, '96, [bin Laden] had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

bill clinton
Sunday, Aug. 11, 2002
Clinton Reveals on Secret Audio:
I Nixed Bin Laden Extradition Offer

[T]he legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. [T]hey... went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled.... America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers. America stopped calling itself world leader and master of the new world order, and its politicians realized that those titles were too big for them and that they were unworthy of them. I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered, so was every Muslim.... I say to [the American people] that they have put themselves at the mercy of a disloyal government, and this is most evident in Clinton's administration....

INTERVIEW Osama bin Laden
(may 1998)
In the first part of this interview which occurred in May 1998, a little over two months before the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Osama bin Laden answers questions posed to him by some of his followers at his mountaintop camp in southern Afghanistan. In the latter part of the interview, ABC reporter John Miller is asking the questions.
BIN LADEN FINGERS CLINTON FOR TERROR SUCCESS (SEE FOOTAGE)

Funny that the Movie is called "Munich" since, until about 20 years ago, the very word "Munich" was a synonym for appeasement of evil-doers and moral equivalency, the result of Chamberlain's famous "scrap of paper" in which Hitler promised, in Chamberlain's words, "Peace in our time." Is Speilberg aware of the background of "Munich?

cookcounty

unich,' Steven Spielberg's new movie, is less about Golda Meir avenging the 1972 Munich massacre than it is about George Bush waging the War on Terror, which makes it doubly hard to believe that the historical allusion wasn't part of the calculation that went into constructing the title.¹

What was Spielberg thinking? Was he thinking at all?

Had he not read bin Laden's comments about The War in general or about The War and clinton in particular? ²

Why doesn't he realize that the terrorist's impetus is precisely the "Munich" syndrome of appeasement, self-loathing and psychologizing that is practiced so fastidiously by the American Left today?

And why doesn't he see 'Israel' as simply the terrorist's metaphor for us all, for western civilization in its entirety?

If Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, were to hear bin Laden, were really to hear him, they would begin to understand that it is not Israel, not George Bush, but they, the American Left, who are bin Laden's comrades-in-arms. ³

"I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, 'My God, a second plane has hit the tower.' And I said, 'Bin Laden did this.' that's the first thing I said. He said, 'How can you be sure?' I said 'Because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up the network to do this and they [the Iranians] wouldn't do it because they have a country in targets. Bin Laden did it.'

I thought that my virtual obsession with him was well placed and I was full of regret that I didn't get him."

bill clinton
Sunday, Sept 3, 2002
Larry King Live

My New York Times Review of Munich
(please FReep)

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND

January 9, 2006

Reviewer: miat22 (Mia T)

... to borrow a phrase, perversely, from a Spielberg flick about benign intelligence.

Munich, with its false premises, phony pieties and outright lies -- Spielberg fantasy wrapped in sober documentary -- is a verisimilitudinous contrivance that is pernicious, especially now, especially here, especially if we understand Spielberg's real motivation.

Truth matters not at all to Spielberg, and courage matters even less. To advance his fallacious argument, he has Golda Meir speak words she never said, never would have said and, obviously, cannot now disavow. Posthumous misappropriation is a preferred tactic of the abject coward.

Munich is less about Meir avenging the Munich massacre than it is about Bush waging the War on Terror. The historical (Munich) allusion is key to understanding Spielberg.

The core of his anti-war argument: By fighting back, we become our enemy. Ironically, with Munich, the same can now be said of Spielberg.

Is Spielberg humanizing the terrorist really any different from Riefenstahl humanizing Hitler? If anything, Spielberg is more contemptible. Whereas Riefenstahl symbolizes the naïve actress and director who is induced to deal with devils, Spielberg is self-actuated and aware.

Hollywood IS DreamWorks, fantastical and unthinking and solipsistic by definition.
To mitigate its danger, people capable of critical thinking must take on Hollywood... and must do so in Hollywood venues.
The printed word, sad to say, no longer carries the day.

Was this review helpful to you?
VOTE HERE

also:

AFTERWORD
MUNICH: A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND
(please see post 38)

THE 'MUNICH' ALLUSION:
THE DANGER OF SPIELBERG AND THE AMERICAN LEFT
(Please see post 60)

WAR AND TREASON AND THE NEW YORK TIMES
(Please see post 65)