The Neo-Conservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was … the majority of terrorisism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network coordinated by Moscow to take ever the world. ibid.
Reagan agreed to give the Neo-Conservatives what they wanted … The country would now fight covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world. ibid.
They began to believe their own fiction … who were going to use force to change the world. ibid.
At the heart of the story are groups: the American Neo-Conservatives and the radical Islamists. In this week’s episode the two groups come together to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; and both believed that they defeated the evil empire and so have the power to transform the world, But 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.
But the Americans were setting out to defeat a mythological enemy. ibid.
American money and weapons now began to pour across the Pakistan border into Afghanistan. CIA agents trained the Mijahideen in the techniques of assassination and terror including car-bombing. ibid.
Zawahiri and his small group settled in Peshawar … a military rejection of all American influence over the jihad, because America was the source of this corruption. ibid.
Then in 1987 the New Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev decided he was going to withdraw Russian troops from Afghanistan. Gorbachev was convinced that the whole Soviet system was facing collapse. He was determined to try and save it through political reform and this meant reversing the policies of his predecessors including the occupation of Afghanistan. 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. They had conquered a phantom enemy … It was a decrepit system decaying from within. 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 center of conservative politics. ibid.
For the Neo-Conservatives religion was a myth … Strauss had taught that these myths were necessary to give ordinary people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society. 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 the mid-’90s politics in Washington was dominated by one issue: the moral character of the President of the United States. Behind this were an extraordinary barrage of allegations against Clinton that were obsessing the media. These included stories of sexual harassment, stories that Clinton and his wife were involved in Whitewater, a corrupt property deal, stories they had murdered their close friend, Vince Foster, and stories that Clinton was involved in smuggling drugs from a small airstrip in Arkansas. ibid.
Finally, his [Starr’s] committee stumbled upon Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky which Clinton denied. ibid.
By 1997 Bin Laden & Zawahiri had returned to Afghanistan where they had first met ten years before … The new jihad would be against America itself. 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.
Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from terrible dangers that 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. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media. This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created and who it benefits. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares III: The Shadows in the Cave
The Islamists after their moment of triumph were virtually destroyed within months. While the Neo-Conservatives took power in Washington. But then the Neo-Conservatives begun 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 became all powerful … A small group began to shape America’s response to the attacks: 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. Last time these men had been in power before was twenty years before under President Reagan. 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.
All they [Northern Alliance] found were a few small caves which were either empty or had been used to store ammunition. There was no underground bunker system, no secret tunnels, the fortress didn’t exist. ibid.
Many of the arrests that were dramatically announced as being part of a hidden Al Qaeda network were in reality as absurd as the cases in America. ibid.
What the British and American governments had done was to disturb and exaggerate the real nature of the threat … The way the American and other governments have transformed this complex and disparate threat into a simplistic fantasy. 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.
Dirty Bomb: and the media took the bait. They portrayed the dirty bomb as an extraordinary weapon that could kill thousands of people. 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.
The Paradigm of Prevention: ‘You lock them up based on what you think or speculate they might do in the future.’ ibid.
Of the 664 people arrested under the Terrorism Act since September 11th none of them have been convicted of belonging to Al Qaeda. 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 ultimate political goal at the heart of our age is the idea of individual freedom. In Britain our government has set out to create a revolution that will free individuals from old elites and bureaucracies. A new world where we are free to choose our lives not be trapped by class or income into predestined roles … ‘To liberate Britain from all the old class divisions, old structures, old prejudices [Blair] …’ Adam Curtis, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom: Fuck You Buddy, BBC 2007
It is a very strange kind of freedom. The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy has led to the rise of a new and increasingly controlling system of management driven by targets and numbers. While governments committed to creating freedom of choice in all areas have actually presided over a rise in inequalities and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. The consequence has been a return of the power of class and privilege. And abroad the attempt to create democracy has led not just to bloody mayhem but a rejection of the American-led campaign to bring freedom. ibid.
[Friedrich] Von Hayek had fled the Nazis and now taught at the University of Chicago: Hayek was convinced that the use of politics to plan society was far more dangerous than any problems produced by companies. Because it inevitably led to tyranny and the end of freedom. ibid.
They [strategists] turned to a new idea called Game Theory. Game Theory had been developed as a way of mathematically analysing poker games. ibid.