The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. In itself this goes a long way to explaining the things it does around the world. At present it’s conducting a War on Terror, or more accurately, a campaign against opposition to US domination. Others prefer to call it the beginnings of the Third World War. The United States has an insatiable appetite for conflict. Since going into Korea in the 1950s it’s been at war with someone or other in some corner of the globe non-stop right up to the present day. This drive is now led by the weapons manufacturers themselves. ibid.
Paul Wolfowitz began working on a plan that he eventually called The Project for the New American Century. A 21st century dominated by the United States. The US would use its unprecedented economic and military power to impose democratic values and protect American interests if necessary by pre-emptive force. The Fifth Estate: The Lies That Led to War, CBC 2007
In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting phase, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territories of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be ‘convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests’.
The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy. The New York Times article Patrick E Tyler 8th March 1992, ‘US Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop a One-Superpower World’
Our most fundamental goal is to deter or defeat attack from whatever source ... The second goal is to strengthen and extend the system of defense arrangements that binds democratic and like-minded nations together in common defense against aggression, build habits of cooperation, avoid the renationalization of security policies, and provide security at lower costs and with lower risks for all. Our preference for a collective response to preclude threats or, if necessary, to deal with them is a key feature of our regional defense strategy. The third goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the re-emergence of a global threat to the interests of the US and our allies. Paul Wolfowitz (co-author Scooter Libby), Defense Planning Guidance 1994-9, 16th April redraft
One of the primary tasks we face today in shaping the future is carrying long standing alliances into the new era, and turning old enmities into new cooperative relationships. If we and other leading democracies continue to build a democratic security community, a much safer world is likely to emerge. If we act separately, many other problems could result. ibid.
Certain situations like the crisis leading to the Gulf War are likely to engender ad hoc coalitions. We should plan to maximize the value of such coalitions. This may include specialized roles for our forces as well as developing cooperative practices with others. ibid.
While the United States cannot become the world’s policeman and assume responsibility for solving every international security problem, neither can we allow our critical interests to depend solely on international mechanisms that can be blocked by countries whose interests may be very different than our own. Where our allies’ interests are directly affected, we must expect them to take an appropriate share of the responsibility, and in some cases play the leading role; but we maintain the capabilities for addressing selectively those security problems that threaten our own interests. ibid.
Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad.
We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture and cinema to politics and the law.
Our enemies have hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep peace.
Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone.
They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters
This document asserts as the guiding policy of the United States the right to use military force against any country it believes to be, or believes at some point may become, a threat to American interests. No other country in modern history has asserted such a sweeping claim to world domination. David North, re National Security Strategy
The idea is to create a situation where the people are so frightened of the violence all around them that they will throw their hands up in the air and demand, Federal Government, do something! And the only choice open will be martial law. Jerry Kirk, former Black Panther & US Communist Party
In the past politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people had lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen increasingly as managers in public life … 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, a powerful and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world, a threat 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
Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. ibid.
What Qutb believed what he was seeing was a hidden and dangerous reality underneath the surface of ordinary American life … American society was not going forwards; it was taking people backwards; they were becoming isolated beings. ibid.
This group became known as the Neo-Conservatives. The Neo-Conservatives were idealists; their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration they believed personal freedoms had unleashed. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were going to have to defeat one of the most powerful men in the world: Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State under President Nixon and he didn’t believe in a world of good and evil. What drove Kissinger was a ruthless pragmatic vision of power in the world; with America’s growing political and social chaos, Kissinger wanted the country to give up its ideological battles; instead, it should come to terms with countries like the Soviet Union to create a new kind of global interdependence, a world in which America would be safe. ibid.
But a world without fear was not what the Neo-Conservatives wanted to pursue their purpose. And they now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. ibid.
They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerard Ford: one was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense, the other was Dick Cheney, the President’s Chief of Staff. ibid.
This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true but it was necessary. ibid.
In 1977 [Anwar] Sadat was flown to Jerusalem to start the peace process. To the West it was an heroic act but to the Islamists it was a complete betrayal. 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.
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.
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