Examining the world after 9/11

The new PBS documentary series “America at a Crossroads” arrives without the fanfare of “American Idol” or “The Sopranos.”

But the project, running from 9 to 11 p.m. tonight through Friday, reconfirms public television’s willingness to tackle big topics: in this case, the world since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

It doesn’t have the rigor or smoothness of a Ken Burns film. These documentaries come from different sources and are made in different styles.

They embrace the journalism of “Frontline,” represented by “Gangs of Iraq” on Tuesday.

Or they can turn personal. Soldiers tell their stories in Monday’s second film, “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.”

Or they mix the personal and political. Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defense, hears from mourning mothers in Tuesday’s “The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom.”

“I think it’s terribly important that these issues be discussed and, in particular, that they’re discussed with people who feel most passionately in opposition to the policies that we’re pursuing,” Perle says.

“One of the mothers who lost a son says to me, ‘Nobody cares.’ Well, it isn’t true. I care, and I think most people, in my experience in government, care a lot about the consequences and the decisions that they make.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting commissioned the series three years ago and spent $20 million on it. The corporation looked at more than 400 film proposals and selected some 20 for full funding.

In addition to the 11 airing this week, PBS will present three other films later, and still others could be broadcast.

Robert MacNeil, former co-anchor of “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” serves as series host.

“I think it’s a very exciting project for public broadcasting,” MacNeil says.

“It’s difficult to bring in, like a bunch of adopted children, things that were conceived elsewhere and by different people, and then bring them into a kind of familial standard. But that’s what we are doing, and well, the proof will be in the pudding when it’s seen.”

The films already have generated arguments about balance and fairness, but the topics are being put out there. That’s a crucial point for Irshad Manji, the focus of Thursday’s “Faith Without Fear.”

The provocative Manji is Canadian, Muslim and author of “The Trouble With Islam Today.” The New York Times has called her “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.”

Manji, who says a more accurate title would be “the world at a crossroads,” has high hopes for the project.

“The fact that public broadcasting in this country has begun to ask the questions, the thorniest, most volatile, often most politically incorrect questions that people around the world are thinking – and only, from time to time articulating out loud – suggests to me that this is going to be, actually, a healing moment,” she says.

And even if the series isn’t a hit at first, she says, “In the Internet age, the trailers and the clips from them will travel far and wide.

“What the rest of the world sees in this series will reflect back on the courage, really, the guts and the diversity of perspective that ‘America at a Crossroads’ has managed to achieve.”