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.
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.
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 ultimate political goal at the heart of our age is the idea of individual freedom … 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.
In November 1989 the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Cold War was finally over. A new era of freedom had begun. The shape that freedom was going to take would be defined by the victors – the West, and as this programme has shown, the idea of freedom that had now become dominant in the West was deeply rooted in the suspicion and paranoia of the Cold War. ibid.
Abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan Britain and America had set out to liberate individuals from tyranny. Adam Curtis, The Trap II: The Lonely Robot
A scientific model of ourselves as simplified robots, rational calculated beings whose behaviour and even feelings could be analysed and managed by numbers. But what resulted was the very opposite of freedom: the numbers took on a power of their own which began to create new forms of control, greater inequalities and a return to a rigid class structure based on the power of money. ibid.
The chaos caused by these revolutions also began to destabilise the balance of power in the world. And this would inexorably bring them face to face with America and its global battle against communism. But what this clash was going to lead to was the rise in America of a new militant idea of freedom, and the belief that it was the United States’ duty to spread this freedom around the world by force if necessary. Adam Curtis: The Trap III: We Will Force You to be Free
And then in 1979 the Iranian revolution showed dramatically America’s policy of backing dictators did not work. The Iranian people rose up and toppled the Shah of Iran. The Shah had one of the largest military forces in the world given to him by the Americans. But it proved helpless in the face of the new Islamist ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini. Many in the West saw Khomeini as the resurgence of a dark almost medieval force. But this was wrong. The Iranian revolution was yet again driven by Western ideas of political freedom. 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. ibid.
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 ideal of freedom was an absolute. And that this then justified lying and exaggerating in order to enforce that vision. The end justified the means. Although they portrayed the Contras as freedom fighters, it was well known that they used murder, assassination and torture. And also were allegedly using CIA-supplied planes to smuggle cocaine back into the United States. And to finance the Contras, the Neo-Conservatives were even prepared to deal with America’s enemy – the leaders of the Iranian revolution. In 1985 those running the Nicaragua operation held a series of secret meetings with Iranian leaders in Europe. They arranged to sell the Iranians American weapons; in return the Iranians would release American hostages held in Lebanon. Then the money from these sales would be used by those running Project Democracy to fund the Contras. The only problem was that this was completely illegal. And the President knew it. ibid.
What was beginning to emerge was the problem of spreading freedom around the world. To do it those leading Project Democracy had turned not just to manipulation and violence but were beginning to undermine the ideals of democracy in America. The very thing they were trying to create abroad. It was the corruption of freedom that Isaiah Berlin had warned of. ibid.
Overnight, the Americans destroyed the civil structure of Iraqi society. But instead of trying to create new institutions ... The country would then be thrown open to international corporations who in return for investing, would take 100% of their profits out of the country untaxed. Only one of Saddam Hussein’s laws remained: the one that restricted trade unions. Out of this was supposed to come spontaneous order. What resulted was chaos. ibid.
What also resulted was corruption on a huge scale: more than $350 billion has been sent to Iraq for reconstruction. ibid.
The Americans began to turn to violence and torture to enforce their kind of freedom. ibid.
Positive liberty is driven by a vision that freedom is for something. The freedom to do or become something new. Out of which a better world would come. Negative liberty has no such vision. It isn’t for anything. At its heart it has no purpose other than to keep us free from unnecessary constraint or harm. And in using force to create a world based on negative liberty, the democratic revolutionaries have actually led millions of people abroad into a world without purpose or meaning. This idea of freedom is still portrayed by many politicians and influential commentators as a universal absolute. They assume it is only a matter of time before it spreads throughout the world. But this may not be true. ibid.
The idea of freedom that we live with today is a narrow and limiting one; it was born out of a specific and dangerous time: the Cold War. It may have had meaning and purpose then as an alternative to communist tyranny but now has become a dangerous trap. Our government relies on a simplistic economic model of human beings that allows inequality to grow and offers nothing positive in the face of reactionary forces they have helped awake around the world. ibid.
Isaiah Berlin was wrong: not all attempts to change the world for the better lead to tyranny. ibid.
President Reagan withdrew all the American troops from the Lebanon. Secretary of State George Shultz explained: ‘We became paralysed by the complexity we faced.’ So the Americans turned and left. Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation, BBC 2016
Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon, President Reagan’s government was desperate to shore up the vision of a moral world where a good America struggled against evil. And to do this, they were going to create a simple villain, an imaginary villain … and the perfect candidate was waiting in the wings – Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya. The Americans were going to ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi to create a fake terrorist mastermind. And Gaddafi was going to happily play along because it would turn him into a famous global figure. ibid.
In December 1985 terrorists attacked Rome and Vienna airport simultaneously killing 19 people, including 5 Americans. There was growing pressure on President Reagan to retaliate. President Reagan immediately announced that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely behind the attacks. But the European Security Services who investigated the attacks were convinced that Libya was not involved at all. And that the mastermind behind the attacks was in fact Syria. ibid.
He [Gaddafi] promoted himself as an international revolutionary who would help liberate the repressed peoples around the world. Even the blacks in America. ibid.
The Americans and Gaddafi now became locked together in a cycle of mutual reinforcement … The Americans and Gaddafi were creating a fictional world. ibid.
Ever since the Second World War the American Government had been using the CIA to manipulate and overthrow the governments of many other countries … The dual state … had to be keep secret from the people … From the 1950s onwards the CIA rigged elections, destabilised governments through fake information, and organised violent coups in Italy, Greece, Syria, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Indonesia and Chile. In all, the United States ran covert operations to overthrow 66 foreign governments. In 26 cases they succeeded. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones ***** BBCiplayer 2021
In 1961 the CIA decided to overthrow a government in the heart of Africa: in the Congo. 200 years before, the Congo had been at the centre of the slave trade. Millions of Africans had been forcibly taken down the river and shipped to America where their forced labour fuelled America’s rise to economic power. Now, the country had been given independence by its old colonial rulers, the Belgiums. But it was completely unprepared and had collapsed into violence. The CIA were frightened that the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was about to turn for help to the Soviet Union … and they helped install a dictator in his place: he was called Colonel Mobutu whose brutal regime the Americans would support for the next 30 years. ibid.
By 2007 the war in Iraq had become a nightmare. The Americans were pouring nearly a billion dollars in every day to keep a conflict going that no-one knew how to win. ibid.
But what the Americans had found themselves doing was exactly the same as the British had done 80 years before: faced by a complex society they did not understand, they were turning to the tribes outside the cities and giving them power. They called the militias the Sons of Iraq and it seemed to work, but in reality it was going to lead to something even worse … They turned and allied instead with the very people they had been fighting. ibid.
Isis was far more than just another version of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Its public face were the jihadists, but it was organised and guided by men from the Sunni tribes, many of whom had been experienced soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s army. As a result, they swept through Iraq and on into Syria. ibid.
‘Into the hands of America God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind. God bless America.’ Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation 2016, Reagan