We want to change some deeply entrenched notions about the proper role of American power in the world. Richard Perle
Ever since the Cold War ended there were people who were fuming on the Right thinking this is the golden opportunity now that Russia’s out of the way for American to take over the world. We’re not doing anything about it. Those damned liberals, those soft-heads, are keeping us from doing what is our godly mission. Norman Mailer, author
I understand that they want the American public to believe that the invasion of Iraq was the response to September 11th. I think it is a lie. I believe that it is part of a Neo-Conservative agenda to assert that American hegemony is untouchable. And September 11th gave them the opportunity to put in play plans they had been considering since the first Bush administration. Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize winner 1997
What policies will make us more safe? So the fear is legitimate but is manipulated: and that is the core of the Bush policy. Professor Robert Jensen
We have been neo-conned into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried. Chas Freeman, former diplomat
The Neo-Conservatives set out reform America. And at the heart of their project was the political use of religion. Together with their long-term allies, the religious right, they began a campaign to bring moral and religious issues back into the centre of conservative politics. ibid.
They had forged an alliance with the religious wing of the [Republican] party. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives believed that they now had the chance to implement their vision of America’s revolutionary destiny: to use the country’s power aggressively as a force for good in the world. ibid.
Those dreams failed and today people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life … Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares … And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism … that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares I: Baby It’s Cold Outside, BBC 2004
The Neo-Conservatives were going to have to defeat one of the most powerful men in the world: Henry Kissinger … What drove Kissinger was a ruthless pragmatic vision of power in the world … Kissinger wanted the country to give up its ideological battles … ‘a truly global society’. ibid.
Those with the darkest nightmares became the most powerful. ibid.
Leo Strauss: What he taught them was that the prosperous liberal society they are living in contained the seeds of its own destruction. ibid.
Kissinger was a ruthless pragmatic vision of power in the world … Kissinger wanted the country to give up its ideological battles … ‘a truly global society’. ibid.
They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerard Ford: one was Donald Rumsfeld, the new secretary of defence, the other was Dick Cheney, the president’s chief of staff. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were successful in creating a A simplistic fiction: a vision of the Soviet Union as the centre of all evil in the world. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were idealists: their aim was to try to stop the social disintegration they believed liberal freedoms had unleashed. They wanted to find a way to unite the people by giving them a shared purpose, and one of their great influences in doing this would be the theories of Leo Strauss. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives believed that they now had the chance to implement their vision of America’s revolutionary destiny: to use the country’s power aggressively as a force for good in the world. ibid.
The American Neo-Conservatives and radical Islamism … the two groups come together to fight the Soviet Union In Afghanistan … Both failed in their revolutions. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares II: The Phantom Victory
The strange world of fantasy, deception, violence and fear in which we now live. ibid.
The Americans were setting out to defeat a mythological enemy. ibid.
For the Neo-Conservatives the collapse of the Soviet Union was a triumph. And out of that triumph was going to come a central myth that still inspires them today. That through the aggressive use of American power they could transform the world and spread democracy. But in reality their victory was an illusion. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives set out to reform America. And at the heart of their project was the political use of religion. Together with their long-term allies, the religious right, they began a campaign to bring moral and religious issues back into the centre of conservative politics. ibid.
Out of this [Neo-Conservative] campaign a new and powerful moral agenda began to take over the Republican Party. It reached a dramatic climax with the Republican Convention in 1992 when the religious right seized control of the Party’s policy making machinery. George Bush became committed to run for President with policies that would ban abortion, gay rights and multiculturalism. ibid.
By 1998 all their attempts to transform America by creating a moral revolution had failed. Faced with the indifference of the people, the Neo-Conservatives had become marginalized in both domestic and foreign policy. But with the attacks that were about to hit America the Neo-Conservatives would at last find the evil enemy they had been searching for ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in their reaction to the attacks the Neo-Conservatives would transform the failing Islamist movement into what would appear to be the grand revolutionist cause that Zawahiri had always dreamed of. But much of it would exist only in people’s imaginations. It would be the next phantom enemy. ibid.
Politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from terrible dangers we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism ... But much of this threat is a fantasy which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares III: The Shadows in the Cave
But then the Neo-Conservatives began to reconstruct the Islamists. They created a phantom enemy. And as this nightmare fantasy began to spread, politicians realised the new power it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age. ibid.
Bin Laden had no formal organisation until the Americans invented one for him. ibid.
Bin Laden had given this network a name: Al Qaeda … The focus of a loose association of dissident Muslim militants who were attracted by the new strategy. But there was no organisation … He was not their commander. ibid.
He realised this was the term the Americans gave him. ibid.
Now the Neo-Conservatives were all powerful … At its heart were Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, along with the vice-president Dick Cheney and Richard Perle was a senior adviser to the Pentagon. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives distorted and exaggerated the Soviet threat. They created the image of a hidden international web of evil run from Moscow that planned to dominate the world. When in reality the Soviet Union was on its last legs, collapsing from within. ibid.
A simplistic fantasy of an organised web of uniquely powerful terrorists that might strike anywhere at any moment. But no-one questioned this fantasy. ibid.
The threat of a dirty bomb is yet another illusion. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives: America had a special destiny to overcome evil in the world. ibid.
Such was the nature of that fantasy that it began to transform the very nature of politics. ibid.
Because in an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power. ibid.
But the fear will not last. And just as the dreams that politicians once promised turned out to be illusions, so too will the nightmares. ibid.
The other part of Project Democracy was to use military force in secret operations to overthrow foreign regimes that stood in the way of freedom. The main target was the government of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas were Marxist revolutionaries who had seized power in 1979; but since then they had held elections and had been democratically elected. The Reagan administration dismissed this though as a sham. And an operation was set up to enforce the right kind of democracy by overthrowing the Sandinistas if necessary. The man in charge was a leading neo-Conservative, Elliott Abrams. Adam Curtis, The Trap I: We Will Force You to be Free, BBC 2007
The Americans started funding and training a counter-revolutionary army called the Contras. But there was enormous political opposition in the United States. And to get round it the leaders of Project Democracy set out to frighten the American public. An agency called The Office of Public Diplomacy was set up that disseminated what was called White Propaganda. It produced dossiers and fed stories to journalists that proved that Soviet fighter planes had arrived in Nicaragua to attack America. Another story from ‘intelligence sources’ said that the Soviets had given stockpiles of chemical weapons to the Sandinistas. President Reagan appeared on television with maps to show how quickly such a chemical attack could be launched on America itself. It was only a matter of time. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were beginning to believe that their idea of freedom was an absolute. And that this then justified lying and exaggerating in order to enforce that vision. ibid.