The Power of Nightmares

by Chris Bertram on October 21, 2004

I watched the first part of Adam Curtis’s new documentary, “The Power of Nightmares”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings/programme.shtml?day=wednesday&service_id=41532&filename=20041020/20041020_2100_41532_40078_60 , last night. The hype around the series has been that it claims that Al Qaida is a myth. Anyway, I thought it might be useful to use “David Aaronovitch’s reaction”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1330499,00.html as a template for my own. Here’s Aaronovitch:

bq. I admire Curtis greatly, but this time his argument is as subtle as a house-brick. It is, essentially, that everything in American politics in the past 25 years from Reaganism, through Christian fundamentalism and anti-Clintonism, to the war on terror, has been got up by Dick Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and others that the programme identifies as conspiring neocons. They have created a “dark illusion” about Islamist terrorism, just as they earlier created one about that tin-pot, ramshackle, essentially harmless old flea-bitten bear, the Soviet Union. Curtis’s is a one-stop conspiracy theory to stand alongside those fingering the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group and (vide the Da Vinci Code) Opus Dei.

To which my reaction is: not really. I did find the organising trope of the first episode somewhat irritating: a supposed parallelism between Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss. But there was a good deal of highly suggestive and illuminating material amid the polemic. The efforts by “Team B”, for example, systematically to exagerrate both the offensive capability and the aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. These included the assertion, based _on no evidence whatsoever_ that the Soviets had developed a non-acoustic submarine detection system, the reasoning being that since they didn’t have a working acoustic version they must have had a secret ultra-modern technology that the US didn’t know about! And then there was the bizarre demand that the CIA provide the evidence to back up a claim that the Soviets were behind a single, interlinked global terror network (IRA + Baader Meinhof + etc). This fell down because the CIA operatives knew that what was being cited as “evidence” was, in fact, black propaganda that they themselves had concocted and planted in European newspapers! (Today, of course, such “evidence” would be endlessly recycled around the blogosphere by credulous dupes.) Does Curtis exaggerate the influence of the neocons? Almost certainly.

For example, next week’s episode is supposed to be about the neocons and the Islamic fundamentalists joining forces to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, as if this was a project dreamed up in the neocons’ heads. But the idea of drawing them into a war in Afghanistan was conceived not by the neocons but by Zbigniew Brzezinski under the Carter administration. In the latest LRB, “Chalmers Johnson”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n20/john04_.html has Brzezinki saying:

bq. “CIA aid to the mujahidin began during 1980, that’s to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention.”

bq. Asked whether he in any way regretted these actions, Brzezinski replied: ‘Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”‘

It is hard to know exactly where Curtis will go next, but I expect him to argue that whilst Islamic terrorist groups certainly exist (who could deny that!) they don’t constitute a co-ordinated international network (AQ+ Hamas + Hezbollah, etc etc) of the kind that is often suggested. He’ll probably suggest that such “links” as are claimed are largely an artefact of similar propaganda to that behind the last “international terror network”. Anyone who has followed the pathetic attempts by figures like the Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin to demonstrate a Saddam-AQ link will probably suspect he has a point.

[One further thought, on Brzezinski’s lack of regret. On a view of moral responsibility that one frequently finds deployed in parts of the blogosphere, Brzezinski and other proponents of the Afghan “trap” bear no responsibility for the millions of dead in Afghanistan — and elsewhere — since. It isn’t a view I can share.]

{ 72 comments }

1

Cruella 10.21.04 at 10:33 am

I have discovered a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden! Thus permanently putting to rest all the silly speculation and posturing…

Both of them are friends with George Bush senior, who installed Saddam and sold him arms and educated Osama and gave him arms.

Must be difficult for Dubya trying to wage war on global terror when his own dad is a key component of the international network.

2

lth 10.21.04 at 11:26 am

One would have thought that that would make things substantially easier, not harder :P

3

abb1 10.21.04 at 11:58 am

What’s the primary force: Kennan-style realism or Podhoretz-style messianic idealism?

Lenin or Trotsky?

I say Lenin/Kennan is ‘da man’ and Trotsky/Podhoretz is only a useful idiot.

4

Chris Barrett 10.21.04 at 11:59 am

The documentary was incredibly interesting, even if to only remind us that everyone out there has their own agenda and use the media (maybe even this program itself) to help that agenda.

I found myself sympathising somewhat with the basic ideologies of Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss, their core belief being that the social fabric of capitalist nations (the US in particular) was being undermined by the worship of materialism and other superficial icons (whether the post-war liberals were to blame for this I really dont know. being ‘liberal’ myself I do believe that a system combining freedom and personal responsibility is the right one).

Something which made me suspect the film makers of hidden bias was the way in which they portrayed Kissinger as the honest, world-loving knight, when I’ve always thought of him as yet another New World Order/Illuminati champion.

Seeing Rumsfeld through the ages was certainly interesting. He and some of his colleagues really have been pulling the strings for some time now.

5

mona 10.21.04 at 12:00 pm

I too had read that kind of hype about it and was pleased the actual film wasn’t exactly as it had been described, well, the first episode at least. The interviews were interesting, and all those stories that I’ve never heard before, like that one on the submarine and Team B.

Plus, the sight and sound of the young Donald Rumsfeld, that was priceless. He was just the very same as today, speaking the same way, using the same rhetorics and cadence of speech, you can’t even imagine he ever did anything else even as a child.

There is an interesting review of the programme on the Guardian too.

I think the claim that Al Qaeda is not some single unified structure shouldn’t even be that controversial. I mean, even some of those who support the US strategy acknowledge that. It’s the implications of that acknowledgement that can be taboo.

I’m looking forward to the next instalment to see where it goes from there. But so far, I wouldn’t classify it as conspiracy theory. Definitely not of the Illuminati-lizard kind, it’s really ridiculously easy to dismiss it like that. It is a bit simplistic in drawing that parallel between neocons and Islamists, yes, but after all, many others have observed how extremist political Islam and the neoconservative / religious right ideology have similar similar attitudes towards modernity, secularism, etc., that tendency to define themselves and their respective ‘audiences’ (national or religious grouping) by defining enemies, to ascribe to themselves a mission with religious implications, etc. It’s interesting, though I think more from a psychological or sociological point of view than strictly political. (Then again, there’s not such a watertight divide between those categories.)

I definitely see how easy it is to cry outrage at such arguments, there is a provocative intent in the film, but I didn’t get the feeling of it being clearly identifiable in terms of political positions, so far, at least. I think it’s a good thing to get documentaries like these, if anything, whatever arguments they end up presenting, they contain a lot of great footage and interviews and bits and bobs from recent history. The scenes from that film on the torture camps in Egypt was impressive.

6

mona 10.21.04 at 12:08 pm

Chris Barrett: hmm, I don’t really think they portrayed Kissinger as “the honest, world-loving knight”. He featured only in the part about the strategies about the Soviets, in respect to his position which wasn’t the one taken by the Straussians like Rumsfeld & co, who wanted to hype up the Soviet threat. I don’t think the implication was that Kissinger was the pacifist honest guy, come on. Everybody knows about Kissinger and what he supported. But in that context of the ideas of the “team B” folks, it was interesting to see the juxtaposition and power struggles also with the CIA etc. I think that was the intent.

It was also enlightening to see Michael Ledeen featured, now we know why he hates the CIA so much.

7

mona 10.21.04 at 12:15 pm

Also I don’t think the intent was to show who were the “good” guys and who were the “bad” guys, I certainly didn’t get that feeling, otherwise, one could say even the way they talked of the CIA as debunking the Team B hype and lies would mean the CIA are seen as the guardians of truth and honesty, which I don’t think was the implication.

The most fascinating part was precisely about those struggles between different factions of a same goverment or group – that is in some ways mirrored also in relation to the Islamic extremists, you get one group that ascribes to themselves the right to speak for everybody else and show the one and only true path. When in reality it’s just different political factions competing for power. The bit about the origins of the politicisation of the Christian fundamentalists in the US was very enlightening in this respect.

8

Chris Barrett 10.21.04 at 12:37 pm

Yes, especially how they emerged as a potent political force virtually overnight, becoming actively motivated and vote-enabled extremely quickly and thus acting as the ideal springboard for Rumsfeld and the like.

The parallels between the neo-cons and the Islamic fundamentalists (and their sub-factions) are interesting and food for thought. I could well believe the neo-cons telling themselves that (like the Islamic fundamentals) everyone outside of their immediate group is a legitimate target, whether for criticism, removal of power or assasination. Anything goes when you’re god is on your side!

9

jet 10.21.04 at 1:14 pm

Do you think that late at night Rumsfeld looks over his list of political opponents, provided by the CIA, softly laughs to himself and says “suckas”?

60 million murdered in the Ukraine (20 from outright murder, 40 more from state planned famines). One side of this debate, at the time, was busy denying or lying about their deaths. Another side of the debate was having those deaths “seared into their brains”. You think this debate is over? Google up the Ukraine famine and see if some crazzy-assed conspiracy theory site doesn’t come up first. This debate isn’t over by a long shot.

And you wonder why it is so hard to find common ground.

10

abb1 10.21.04 at 1:29 pm

I thought 7 million died in the Ukraine famine. Not that it matters, of course: 33 million more, 33 million less – who’s counting?

11

Doug Turnbull 10.21.04 at 1:33 pm

Slightly off the main topic, but I’ve always been a bit leery of that Brzezinki quote, since there’s such a strong element of self-interest and the smack of retrospective spin to it.

It also doesn’t seem to match up to the story told in the book Charlie Wilson’s War, which portrays most of the funding to the Afghans, and the motivation for it, coming from Congress, not the White House.

12

Chris Bertram 10.21.04 at 2:03 pm

Sometimes it is hard to decode comments here. A case in point is “jet”. I _think_ he’s trying to say that US foreign policy and covert action in the 1980s was justified because of what Stalin did in the 1930s.

13

John Kozak 10.21.04 at 2:09 pm

jet – the population of Ukraine (no “the”, thank you) is less than 60 million.

14

Doug 10.21.04 at 2:18 pm

One further thought, on Brzezinski’s lack of regret. …

Though presumably much more responsibility is borne by the people who actually did the killing?

15

jet 10.21.04 at 2:43 pm

Brilliant. It isn’t 30 minutes and Abb1 has alluded to Stalin’s “1 death a tragedy…” line and another made a knee jerk argument against my numbers.

Granted my numbers also include Russian deaths, but since a majority of them were in “the” Ukraine, you’ll forgive my minor glossing over of an irrelevant detail.

Since we’re counting from 1919 into the 40’s, the 60 million is probably low as there is no way to count the deaths from the forced labor shops that existed in every city and weren’t as bad as the gulags, but were close.

Why are there so many posts here sounding like KKK members saying not that many Jews were killed?

And maybe Chris Bertram needs to take a closer look at post war politics in Western Europe and how close Italy and several others came to joining the Iron Curtain and being satellite states. What was so different in 1980 than in 1950? Had the KGB stopped meddling in other countries, trying to influence them? Wasn’t it about this time that a proxy USSR army was marching in Africa partaking in the slaughter of thousands?

But in Chris’s world, even though the Afghanis obviously did not want the USSR involved or in control of their country, the US’s aid to Afghanistan was morally invalidated because, while helping Afghanistan, it also helped US interests. People die every day. We all die. But in Chris’s world, if someone dies for your cause, your cause loses all merit. As far as millions dieing in that war, it is more than ridiculous to think that in the absence of US aid, the Jihad against the USSR would have ended. Blaming the US for the war and for the deaths is similar to blaming the US for lend-lease act and all the German deaths it caused.

16

Mac Thomason 10.21.04 at 2:53 pm

Considering that the Afghan incursion was a large factor — perhaps the key factor — in the demise of the Soviet Union, I wouldn’t have any regrets in sponsoring that either. The people who should have regrets are those that allowed the country to sink into first chaos and then Taliban control after the Soviets pulled out.

17

jet 10.21.04 at 3:01 pm

Mac, I agree that a far larger effort should have been made (not that there was really any effort at all), but maybe the conclusion was more obvious then than it is now. That when the jihadi’s said they were allieing with one satan to remove another, what they realy meant was once Russia was gone, they wouldn’t hesitate to kick the US’s ass too.

A lot more effort could have been made, but what do you think the odds of success were? Don’t forget the alliance with Saudi greatly complicated matters. And don’t forget that in 1988 Russia was still upping military spending and there were much larger fish to fry.

But in hindsight, there was money to spare, and it should have been spent on making Afghanistan call the US their sugar-daddy.

18

abb1 10.21.04 at 3:05 pm

What was so different in 1980 than in 1950?

A lot, actually. 1961 XXII party congress, for example.

For that matter, what was so different in the US in 1983 than in 1783 when the US troops led by George Washington would skin the bodies of Iroquois “from the hips downward to make boot tops or leggings”?

19

jet 10.21.04 at 3:06 pm

I know most of you probably think I am way off topic, but how do you discuss the CIA and US foreign policy without starting at 1917? Every 10 years should the US just forget what happened before as irrelevent to current politics? Wasn’t there a major operation in the late 90’s where the US intervened in Europe because of occurances 50 years beforehand?

20

Chris Bertram 10.21.04 at 3:07 pm

But in Chris’s world….

You are quite correct to say that in my (post-war) world Italy “and several other” Western European states did not come anywhere close to “joining the Iron Curtain.”

I’m a proud member of the “reality-based community”.

21

Russkie 10.21.04 at 3:17 pm

It’s hilarious to read the claims made these days about Leo Strauss.

Adam Curtis or that commentor above have certainly never tried to read a book by Strauss. If they had, they would know that his very dense writings consist mostly of (controversial) readings of Plato, Xenophon, Aquinas and the like.

The lack of evangelizing about Western decadence, going to conquer other countries etc. would undoubtedly disappoint them.

22

Matt 10.21.04 at 3:17 pm

Jet,
I’ll not bother to address most of the many things I think you’re off about- it would take more time than I care to give now- but I will point out that it would be really odd to start discussing the CIA from 1917, since it wasn’t formed until the 50’s, and even its precurser, the OSS, was only formed in the 40’s. I assume you are refering to the Russian revolution in your reference to 1917, but then, at least in the early stages of it we should have supported it- the Czar was a brutal dictator who it was good to get rid of, regardless of the disaster that came after it. More nuance, please!

23

Giles 10.21.04 at 3:25 pm

“But there was a good deal of highly suggestive and illuminating material amid the polemic.”

and a good numer of highly suggestable and un illuminated individuals amid the audience it would see. there’s always an audience for the jewish conspiracyhey.

24

Chris Bertram 10.21.04 at 3:32 pm

Giles: you didn’t watch the documentary, indeed you couldn’t have as you are posting your comments from Minnesota! Kindly fuck off with your slurs or face immediate deletion in the future.

25

mona 10.21.04 at 3:37 pm

Jet, the subject of the film was not the breadth and width of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, or the numbers of victims in Ukraine. It also wasn’t about how the Cold war was wrong and the Soviet Union was great. I’m not sure what your point is, but if you had actually seen the documentary, maybe you’d have got the points being made there, to which your comments have no relevance.

Russkie: Did you watch the film, its actual contents?

26

Jake McGuire 10.21.04 at 3:52 pm

I’ll just point out that the Soviets did have a non-acoustic submarine detection system of sorts in the 80s – John Walker. So while there may have been no evidence at all that the Soviets had specifically developed a new technological system, it’s quite a stretch to say that there was no evidence that something funny was going on. If the movie didn’t even mention Walker, well, it’s easy to make suggestive and interesting statements if you leave out known contradictory evidence.

27

Scott Martens 10.21.04 at 3:53 pm

Crap – I would have like to have seen that. I was even at home.

As for the rest, not having seen it, I don’t know what the documentary claims. It is certainly true that terrorists ability to create fear far exceeds their ability to actually kill and damage directly. (Hence the name.) This does not make them insignificant, but it should give people pause when considering the drastic nature of many anti-terrorism measures.

And, while I can hardly claim to be an expert on Middle Eastern terrorist organisations, quite a few people claim that Al-Qaeda is more a brand name than an organisation, and such claims strike me as likely to be true. There is a line in the film Sneakers where one character discovers another is involved with organised crime, to which the second responds: “Don’t kid yourself. It’s not that organised.” Since Al-Qaeda was, as I understand it, structured in order to resist exactly the kinds of “kill the head” anti-terrorist tactics Israel uses, the idea that it is more a loose network of money-men and hiding places than a top-down structured organisation certainly seems plausible.

And that Qutb and Strauss weren’t all that far apart doesn’t seem far-fetched to me either. Both stood for “traditional” values, as they saw them, and viewed materialism and modernism as enemies with whom no compromise was really possible. Furthermore, both propose essentially to rehabilitate premodern philosophers and give their ideas new currency without updating them. The Muslim Brotherhood in its current incarnation doesn’t seem all that far from the American religious right – in some cases I would argue the Brotherhood is less conservative – and its more intellectual end bears a more than passing resemblance to American intellectuals who are both neocons and religious conservatives.

28

jet 10.21.04 at 3:54 pm

Chris, I’ll not fault you for taking a populist government stamped and approved view of late 40’s Europe, but you might take a closer look at what exactly went on in the day to day political life of post war Europe. The Communist party was, for a short time, the most popular party in Italy. Thank the US for unlimited campaign money to any Italian who even pretended to be pro-West and a viable candidate. The KGB just couldn’t keep up in campaign contributions.

Matt, you certainly constructed a pretty straw man or completely mis-understood me.

Many things about the 20’s and 30’s influenced the US in later years but one of the most influential legacies of the 20’s and 30’s was the cult of paranoia that developed from people who “knew the truth” about Communist brutality, but found mainstream America apposed to even entertaining the idea that Soviet Russia was something to be apposed. Does Nobel Prizes for ignoring Soviet famines ring a bell? How do you sell your socialistic friendly economic plan when millions are starving to death in the USSR? You just cover up the millions of starving.

You can peg the hysterical response to Soviet Russia directly to this ignoring of reality in the 20’s and 30’s.

29

Russkie 10.21.04 at 4:08 pm

Scott Martens:

And that Qutb and Strauss weren?t all that far apart doesn’t seem far-fetched to me either. Both stood for “traditional” values, as they saw them, and viewed materialism and modernism as enemies with whom no compromise was really possible.

Scott, where in Strauss’ writings does he say anything about “materialism” being an “enemy”? Strauss’ main issue with “modernism” was that it provided a model of rationality that he believed was inferior to the classical model.

Furthermore, both propose essentially to rehabilitate premodern philosophers and give their ideas new currency without updating them.

Haven’t read any Qutb, but my understanding from reading about him is that he is more like a Bible-thumping fundamentalist than someone who is trying to resurrect the thought of Alfarabi or Avicenna. Like a cross between Pat Robertson and Oswald Spengler.

Strauss didn’t “stand for traditional values”. On the contrary, it’s not incorrect to portray him as a kind of subversive. Please provide some indication about where your ideas about Strauss are coming from. Could it be Shania Drury perhaps?

30

Matt McGrattan 10.21.04 at 5:04 pm

Re: the nature of al-Qaeda:

I’ve heard the structure of al-Qaeda and the role of bin Laden beign described as much more in the vein of a terrorist “venture capitalist” than anything like the strongly heirarchical organistion or centralised terror groups of old.

31

rea 10.21.04 at 5:33 pm

Jet, is your position really that it was right for “Team B” to overestimate Soviet military and economic capacity in the 80’s, because the Soviet Union committed genocide in the 30’s?

If so, forgve me, but you’re not making a lick of sense.

32

mona 10.21.04 at 5:42 pm

Jet, I would strongly suggest that if you plan to take holidays in Italy, you do not bring up that sort of ‘argument’ about the US bribing their way into the country for the triumph of freedom. Just some friendly advice. Also, the Communist Party in Italy was a very different thing from the Communist Party in the USSR, though it did have obvious relations with it, of a financial nature, too (and I don’t think anyone kept track of which daddy was the most generous there, but you know, there were also *a few* people working and producing and using their own resources there, it’s not like everybody lived off paychecks generously provided by either the CIA or the KGB. Though it would have certainly been very nice). For one thing, Italy in the Cold War was a democracy, so that was a democratic party, too, like all the others. That’s a pretty big difference with the USSR, don’t you think? The Italian Communist Party also did very nicely by governing side by side (locally, and in parliament) with the Christian Democrats, with whom it had excellent relations, and is renowned for having achieved some of the most efficient (in a normal sense, not the stalinist one) forms of local government, which in a country plagued by corruption and mafia as well as the post-traumatic effects of a twenty year fascist regime, was no small feat. Even its fiercest opponents in Italy always acknowledged as much. So, I too would suggest you check your visions against reality.

End of digression, as far as I’m concerned. And again, this has nothing to do with the topic of the documentary.

33

dsquared 10.21.04 at 5:44 pm

While you’re answering Rea’s question, jet, could you confirm for me that you are still supporting the claim of 60 million deaths in the Ukrainian famine? Since this is about double the comtemporary population of Ukraine, you might want to check whether you have made a mistake somewhere. The Black Book of Communism gives a much lower figure.

[please consider the apologies made to all those gentle souls who frequent Crooked Timber and who believe that there is something monstrous about saying that six is not the same as sixty]

34

mona 10.21.04 at 5:50 pm

From the previously linked Guardian review:

“Curtis points out that al-Qaida did not even have a name until early 2001, when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a named criminal organisation.”

I suppose this will come up in the next episodes. I knew the name was a convention (as opposed to say the IRA identifying itself as IRA) but I’d never heard this particular story of the origins of the official “brand” name before.

35

KSpence 10.21.04 at 6:28 pm

That states and terrorism are co-dependent is far from a novel observation, and although there was a good deal of informative and strikingly presented material in the first of these three documentaries, the polemical slant prevented the key charge of ‘terror as illusion’ from sticking.
Curtis’s earlier ‘Century of the Self’ (an absolutely outstanding set of documentaries) constructed a narrative describing the manipulative production of the modern consumer, and the adoption and manupulation by the political process of that psychological model.
Perhaps Curtis took those lessons a little too deeply to heart in the editing room for this series, because the nuances and contradictions of recent history and politics were often sidelined here where bthey might have complicated the picture. The portrayal of Kissinger (as others above have noted) in particular set alarm bells ringing for me. Unquestionably fascinating and engaging viewing, but perhaps not entirely innocent of the charge of presenting its own (ig)noble lie.

36

Giles 10.21.04 at 6:37 pm

Chris – I think its safe to say that a fairly high proportion of people commenting here didn’t watch it. So I’m just commenting on your post – as is pretty clear from my comment.

You seem to be saying that the last 50 years of history has been a conspiracy; I hardly think its a slur to raise ones eyebrows at that and ask when have we heard that before?

[1. No reasonable person could take me to be saying that the last 50 years have been a conspiracy.

2. You suggested — on no evidence whatsoever — that my post was motivated by anti-semitism.

Sorry – I’m not having that – all and any comments from you, on any post of mine will be deleted without notice. CB]

37

abb1 10.21.04 at 6:59 pm

The Italian Communist Party also did very nicely by governing side by side (locally, and in parliament) with the Christian Democrats

Wasn’t the communist party in Italy banned from participating in the elections until about end of 1970s or something like that? That’s my impression, not sure how I got it.

38

Josh 10.21.04 at 6:59 pm

Further response, I fear, to Scott Martens on Qutb and Strauss (by the way, russkie, it’s Shadia Drury, not Shania). It’s bad enough to equate Strauss with the neo-cons; but to connect him to the Religious Right is to take imprecision to a new level. Strauss certainly seems to have counseled respect for the claims of religion; but he also viewed those claims as fundamentally in conflict with the claims of reason or philosophy, and chose, however equivocally, philosophy over religion (one of Strauss’s closest collaborators, and his literary executor, Joseph Cropsey, is an outspoken atheist, by the way).
The biggest problem with the Strauss/Qutb analogy, though, is that the two were, so far as I can tell, fundamentally different sorts of thinkers. Qutb was a leading intellectual light of a religiously fundamentalist, revivalist movement; Strauss was a scholar of the history of philosophy (albeit a very strange one). Both did share the view that the modern West had gone badly wrong somewhere. But while Qutb advocated an Islamic crusade to impose a new religious orthodoxy, Strauss advocated a return to a model of philosophy that, while prudent, was also subversive and sceptical (or, in Straussian lingo, ‘zetetic’). It’s a difference that makes a difference, even if some of Strauss’s own students didn’t get, or have perverted, the point. (There are a couple of really excellent articles by Mark Lilla in the last two issues of the NY Review of Books, which offer the best-informed, most sensible and accurate account of the relationshop between Strauss, the Straussians, and the neo-con movement I’ve seen).

39

Ginger Yellow 10.21.04 at 7:11 pm

“The efforts by “Team B”, for example, systematically to exagerrate both the offensive capability and the aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union in the 1980s”

Um, Team B produced its report in 1976. Which renders this – “the Soviets did have a non-acoustic submarine detection system of sorts in the 80s ” – somewhat irrelevant. Not to mention the fact that a spy isn’t quite what Team B had in mind, and I think they’d have found it hard to argue that the US had previously underestimated the threat from Soviet spies.

I’m finding it hard to understand what some of the documentary’s critics are saying here, apart from the allegation that it misrepresents Strauss’s positions and I’m not qualified to judge that. But I would say that the comments about Strauss were generally made or verified in interviews with Strauss’s students and adherents, so you can’t really blame Curtis too much. One of the most powerful things about the programme was how it let people like Ledeen and Pipes damn themselves with their own words.

40

jet 10.21.04 at 7:24 pm

Rhea,
“Jet, is your position really that it was right for “Team B” to overestimate Soviet military and economic capacity in the 80’s, because the Soviet Union committed genocide in the 30’s?” My point is that there is insubstantial evidence that “Team B” did overestimate the USSR’s military capacity. And that saying so is rehashing the 30’s debate on if there actually was a genocide. It wasn’t like the military projections magically changed in the 80’s and the Pentagon decided it actually could hold Europe for more than two weeks if the USSR invaded. And what about “John Walker”? I was trying to tie this documentary to the debate started 80 years ago so that it could be appreciated in full context.

Mona,
The period in Italian history I speak of is 45 post war to 46 or so. After that I’m sure the Italians did a grand job of governing themselves. But as for that period during the rebuilding, the only real political cash to be had was from cuddly uncle Joe Stalin and cuddly uncle GI. Joe. It is too bad that, according to you, the US’s bribery of Italy to forgoe USSR ties is to be condemmed because bribery is “baaaaad”. You are absolutely right, the US should have taken the high road and let the USSR buy Italy into their fold. I also appreciate your concern over my safety. And I too hope you live a long and happy life, may all your dreams come true, and your days be full of wonder and joy. That is our common goal, right? The best life possible for everyone?

dsquared,
I thought I had already mentioned that my 60 million did conflate Ukrainian and Russian deaths, 20 million by the gulag and 40 million from criminal missallocation of resources? I’ll say it a third time if it makes you happy :)

41

mona 10.21.04 at 7:29 pm

abb1: that’s funny, that you got that impression, but no, it was banned only under Mussolini. After liberation, it regularly participated in all elections. It was the second biggest party ever since, until it split and reformed in ’89. Locally, it governed entire chunks of Italy, mostly in the northern and northern-central regions.

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mona 10.21.04 at 7:36 pm

jet – It is too bad that, according to you, the US’s bribery of Italy to forgoe USSR ties is to be condemmed because bribery is “baaaaad”. You are absolutely right, the US should have taken the high road and let the USSR buy Italy into their fold.

Did I say any of that? Or did you just imagine me saying any of that? Or maybe 10 or 30 or 60 million of me saying that?

Cos I’m sure I did not.

I am also sure I did not make any comment in relation to your safety. If you’re referring to the “advice” on what not to say to Italians, I think you missed the point, as well as the irony.

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mona 10.21.04 at 7:42 pm

Ginger yellow – that’s exactly what I was thinking after reading objections about misinterpretations of Strauss, I think the programme did a rather good job of letting people speak for themselves, without drawing too many conclusions of its own.

Was Pipes in it? I must have missed that bit. What did he say?

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jet 10.21.04 at 8:07 pm

mona,
“I would strongly suggest that if you plan to take holidays in Italy, you do not bring up that sort of ‘argument’ about the US bribing their way into the country for the triumph of freedom.”

Your obvious intent was that to bring up the US’s bribery in Italian elections would not only be frowned upon by an Italian audience, but that it was somehow hypocritical given the US’s intentions of spreading freedom.

How’s that? Is that what you meant? Because if that is what you meant, I think my response was apropos (except for the regretted snarky comment about my safety).

But your point about hypocracy is highly questionable. But I will concede it would have been hypocritical *if* there would have been another valid solution. And maybe their was another solution. I’m all ears.

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rea 10.21.04 at 9:07 pm

“My point is that there is insubstantial evidence that “Team B” did overestimate the USSR’s military capacity. And that saying so is rehashing the 30’s debate on if there actually was a genocide.”

Oh, hell–I started and deleted more than one response to this, but it’s hard to debate somebody who has abandoned coherent thought.

We know Team B was wrong, because after the fall of the Soviet Union, we got to look at their records. And there is, of course, no connection whatever between 1930’s genocide in the Ukraine, and estimating Soviet military strenght in the 70’s and 80’s. That the Soviets were bad was no reason to misrepresent the size of their military.

(And yes, ginger, it’s probably technically inaccurate to use “Team B” to refer to these guys in the 80’s–although they were pretty much the same people doing the same things.)

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abb1 10.21.04 at 9:10 pm

Mona,
maybe I was thinking about the Brigate Rosse. But wasn’t there some kind of tension, some kind of fascist resurgence in the 70s? I’ll check it out tomorrow.

Thanks.

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Josh 10.21.04 at 9:43 pm

Re Ginger Yellow’s post: what students/adherents of Strauss were interviewed for this documentary? I don’t know, since I’ve only read summaries of the documentary, which may well be exaggerating or misrepresenting it — though, from what I’ve seen in the online summary, it does seem to be making a Qutb/Strauss analogy, which as I said doesn’t quite hold. (Also, as Mark Lilla points out in the second of his two articles for the NY Review, not all of Strauss’s American students can be taken as accurately representing Strauss’s views; nor do they all agree among themselves. And neither Ledeen nor Pipes studied with Strauss, or, so far as I know, any of his students.)

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mona 10.21.04 at 9:44 pm

“Your obvious intent was…”

Jet, if you want, you can even post my comments for me, what do you think?

But ok, let’s spell it out: I was responding to your “Thank the US for unlimited campaign money to any Italian who even pretended to be pro-West and a viable candidate.

My intent was to point out (as I did above) that the Italian Communist Party was never a threat to Italy (or much less the US!), ie. there was never a danger of Italy coming close to “joining the Iron Curtain and being satellite states”, as you put it. Especially after the 60’s, that was pure paranoia-fuelling propaganda, for political and electoral purposes. (That’s the sense in which the point the film is making is relevant to Italian politics and Italy-US relations at the time. Unsuprisingly, Michael Ledeen practiced a lot of his, um, skills in Rome.)

What I didn’t point out explicitely, and assumed you’d get in the form of irony, sarcasm, whatever, was: there was definitely no money for “*any* Italian who *pretended* to be *pro-West*”. If you don’t understand why that phrasing you used wouldn’t go down very well with an Italian (and that was said jokingly anyway, no implications your safety would be under threat), apart from its “style”, let’s explain even further. The US didn’t pour tanks of dollars out of the sky on anyone who claimed to love them forever and ever. There was a plan and money for reconstruction after the war. The Christian Democrats may have gotten extra direct funds more or less covertly from the US, like the Communist Party got more or less covertly from the USSR, but both parties also had massive state funding, through little things called “taxes”, and the Christian Democrats also got more direct and indirect aid from the Vatican than the US, what with them being a Vatican-affiliated party. Oh, and did I mention the mafia? how could I forget. They have a way of finding money and channelling it to the people they support, and they weren’t certainly supporting the commies.

I was not implying that you’d get any of the specific reactions you imagined from Italians. There was no implication of the US doing a bad thing or being hypocrites or whatever you dreamt up I’d said. I wasn’t passing any judgement at all, actually. It’s useless to express judgements, because it’s so obvious. Only the neonazis think the US – _and Britain_ – did a wrong thing by fighting the nazis and fascists in Italy (and France and Germany etc.). Even the communists weren’t certainly objecting to that, even if it took bombing campaigns. Everybody knows that liberation effort also involved using mafia contacts for the landing in Sicily, lesser evil, bigger evil, all that crap, we live in a real world, not an ideal one, sometimes bad means are used to good ends, sometimes even unquestionably good goals end up creating paradoxical side effects (the mafia had lost a lot of its influence under Mussolini, that was probably the only good thing he did – and then after the regime fell, they regained all the power they’d lost – but all in all, if forced to choose, I think most will agree the mafia’s still preferable not only to Mussolini but also to Saddam, the Islamic Jihad, and Allawi put together – which makes me feel very sorry for Iraqis, they didn’t exactly get a lot of options, but nevermind that tangent). Everybody knows the relation with the US that _later_ developed came attached with a lot of strings and a lot of meddling, some were more ok with that, some were less ok with that. So, reactions would depend on who you’re talking to, and what specifically you’re talking about. Different people, different views. One can still be critical of how some aspects of a policy were or are handled, without necessarily wanting some old dictator back – otherwise, there’s no point in democracy. A truth many people, including the current US President, seem to have forgotten, but no less a truth. What I was *definitely* implying is that your reference to historical events and situations sounds, how can I put it, very simplistic and reductive, and that’s what wouldn’t go down very well with people who have family who lived those events and situations directly. That’s all. End of detailed explanation of actual implications of previous, shorter, post.

I thought it was all very simple and obvious already, but perhaps I was overestimating the extent to which obvious things can remain so even when crashed under some ideological hammer.

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mona 10.21.04 at 9:54 pm

Yes, abb1, you’re right there was tension in the 70’s, armed fight, terrorism, political assassinations, etc. – neo-fascists groups on the one hand, far-left groups on the other. Secret services in between… No party was banned in parliament, though. Well, actually, there was a ban, a law designed to prevent any reformation of an overtly nazi-facist party, and that is actually still in place today. Like in Germany, basically.

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Scott Martens 10.21.04 at 10:56 pm

Oh please. Spare me the defense of Strauss. He had his points, but he was also a man who said that religion was the glue that held society together, and who believed it was a complete fraud and yet absolutely essential to the moral underpinnings of society. The man never for a second hesitated to condemn any sort of liberal democracy as too weak to live. Whether or not he belongs on the religious right for his own beliefs about religion is entirely separate from the justifications he offers for exactly the core beliefs of the religious right: public obedience and deference to strong, arbitrary and unexplained moral codes is essential to society.

Both Strauss and Qutb stood for the same things: the rehabilitation of ancient philosophies and philosophers without regard to their compatibility with modern beliefs or social structures in conjunction with a contempt for liberal society and a belief that within those premodern works one can decypher a universal moral code that has been lost or hidden. Strauss may prefer classical and Renaissance philosophers while Qutb was into early Islam, but in the end it is the same rejection of the modern and liberal, and a belief in the universality the structured moral systems they encapsulate.

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russkie 10.21.04 at 11:20 pm

from what I’ve seen in the online summary, it does seem to be making a Qutb/Strauss analogy, which as I said doesn’t quite hold.(Also, as Mark Lilla points out in the second of his two articles for the NY Review, not all of Strauss’s American students can be taken as accurately representing Strauss’s views; nor do they all agree among themselves. And neither Ledeen nor Pipes studied with Strauss, or, so far as I know, any of his students.)

What puzzles me is why Curtis, William Pfaff, Tim Allen etc. have felt the need to seize upon an esoteric academic and turn him into the root of all evil…

Google doesn’t seem to show these neocons talking about Strauss all that much, which is pretty sensible since none of Strauss’ published writings in English contain much of an even vaguely practical political program.

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russkie 10.21.04 at 11:44 pm

Scott Martens wrote:

Oh please. Spare me the defense of Strauss.

Not a defense so much as outrage at the kind of philistinism that’s being directed at him.

He had his points, but he was also a man who said that religion was the glue that held society together,

I don’t know what text you have in mind, but I think you’ve got it way wrong.

and who believed it was a complete fraud and yet absolutely essential to the moral underpinnings of society.

The biggest problem that many people have in reading Strauss is that he believes in “understanding authors as they understood themselves”. So if S. is writing about Plato’s “noble lie”, or the medieval philosopher’s belief in keeping philosophical truths outside of politics, he will take the doctrines seriously in a way that’s shocking to people who think that John Rawls or Counterpunch represent the pinnacle of human achievement.

Even where he indicates belief in the superiority of premodern rationalism, you won’t find Strauss suggesting that these kind of things could or should be implemented. Like Nietzsche and Heidegger – to whom he was in a sense responding – S. believed that modernity had accomplished a sort of irreversible sea change in intellectual history.

The man never for a second hesitated to condemn any sort of liberal democracy as too weak to live…..

What nonsense…

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jet 10.22.04 at 3:28 am

Mona, I apologize for my mistake. I should have asked for clarification on what you meant.

But what was supposed to be a small building point has turned into a whole new thread. When I brought up Italy, I certainly wasn’t talking about anything that happened in the 60’s or later. And I think it would be a poor case to try to link the Italian Communist party to the candidates being fronted by the KGB in the reconstruction. And all I am going on is a US intelligence memoir about an officer’s time in Italy directly after the war. But like “Team B” maybe he is guilty of exaggerating the threat.

But I feel I’m making negative progress in my attempt to link the “calculus” used by “Team B” to events decades before. I think I had a better case before I started talking :)

Sorry for the diversion.

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q 10.22.04 at 3:54 am

_SCOTT MARTINS: “Strauss may prefer classical and Renaissance philosophers while Qutb was into early Islam, but in the end it is the same rejection of the modern and liberal, and a belief in the universality the structured moral systems they encapsulate.”_

Indeed. So what is the problem here?

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rd 10.22.04 at 3:55 am

“On a view of moral responsibility that one frequently finds deployed in parts of the blogosphere, Brzezinski and other proponents of the Afghan “trap” bear no responsibility for the millions of dead in Afghanistan — and elsewhere — since. It isn’t a view I can share.”

What is the lesson here? That its illegitimate to aid a genuinely popular rebellion against a foreign invasion intended to prop up a local tyranny? In discussions of Afghanistan, people sometimes talk as if the Afghanis were happily marching towards Sovietization before the nefarious CIA began stirring up trouble. That’s crazy. Foreign invasion and forced secularization had already sparked revolt, and the fighting had already led to a massive refugee exodus. The CIA just provided weapons and some training so those already fighting wouldn’t get massacred quite so efficiently.

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Sandriana 10.22.04 at 11:08 am

I watched the documentary too, as I did his previous documentary series, and I will certainly be watching the remaining two episodes of this one. The first programme was done in broad brush strokes and laid out the basic historical underpinnings of the current situation viz the US administration and OBL. it was necessarily lacking in detail.

I am sure that the remaining programmmes will fill in the fine structure of his argument. Then I’ll decide whether I agree. To make a final judgement on the series, based only on one episode, is theorising ahead of the data.

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Tom Doyle 10.22.04 at 12:53 pm

The following appears to be a longer excerpt from the Brzezinski interview referred to above. It appears on the Centre for Research on Globalisation website. According to the citation, it was originally published in Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998.

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Translated from the French by Bill Blum

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html

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hi-fi 10.22.04 at 6:20 pm

Torrent link, please?

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Tom Doyle 10.22.04 at 7:37 pm

“Torrent link, please?”

Does that mean this?

Brzezinski Interview

OK? Sorry (:-(

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Tom Doyle 10.22.04 at 7:46 pm

I’m sorry, again. The link above is wrong. This is the correct link:

Brzezinski Interview

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Omada 10.22.04 at 8:32 pm

Someone wanted a torrent link?

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Josh 10.22.04 at 8:40 pm

I have just a couple of issues with Scott Martens’s learned onslaught on Strauss, aside from what russkie says (by the way, was it really necessary to marr a perfectly reasonable defense of Strauss by associating John Rawls, even indirectly, with Counterpunch?) The main problem is that Scott attributes views to Strauss without citing where Strauss supposedly expressed these views. To do so would of course be difficult, since Strauss did not, in fact, express the views attributed to him (by some of his disciples, as well as detractors) regarding religion or liberal democracy.
As to Qutb and Strauss as anti-modern, it’s a fair point, though again, Strauss’s critique of modernity is rather different in tenor from Qutb’s. But might it not be worth asking what the differences of their proposed alternatives were? I mean, classical Platonic rationalism (as Strauss conceives it) and Islamic fundamentalism (as Qutb conceives it) are rather different outlooks. To overlook this fact in comparing them is sort of odd.
(By the way, neither this, nor my previous posts, are intended as ‘defenses’ of Strauss, if that be taken to mean defending him against criticism of his views or advocating his ideas. I merely think that depicting Strauss as analogous to Qutb is intellectually somewhat shoddy).

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mitch p. 10.23.04 at 1:46 am

And then there was the bizarre demand that the CIA provide the evidence to back up a claim that the Soviets were behind a single, interlinked global terror network (IRA + Baader Meinhof + etc). This fell down because the CIA operatives knew that what was being cited as “evidence” was, in fact, black propaganda that they themselves had concocted and planted in European newspapers!

So far as I know, the source for this claim is a brief comment in Bob Woodward’s Veil, made in response to Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network. Is there anything more authoritative?

In the last few years I’ve often wondered whether US intelligence has a long-standing policy of denying state-sponsored terrorism directed against the West, starting with the 1963 Kennedy assassination, continuing with Soviet sponsorship of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s, and now reaching some sort of apotheosis with Iraq and al Qaeda. The policy would be: deny the element of state sponsorship if the sponsor is untouchable on that score. Thus it was safe to blame Libya in 1986, because Libya was weak and isolated; but the USSR was untouchable right up until 1991, and it took 9/11 to make regime change in Iraq the number-one priority. (I’ll also hypothesize that there was a relationship between North Korea and Aum Shinrikyo which remains buried.)

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John Watson 10.24.04 at 4:00 pm

It looks like many commenters here have not even seen ”The Power of Nightmares”. Get it online if you want to actually discuss its content. Get it here.
The link above is a bittorrent file. If you dont have bittorrent, you need to download it from here.

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Ginger Yellow 10.25.04 at 1:48 pm

“So far as I know, the source for this claim is a brief comment in Bob Woodward’s Veil, made in response to Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network. Is there anything more authoritative?”

Curtis interviewed a former CIA official who said (I paraphrase): “We knew none of it was true because we made it up ourselves and planted it in the press.”

” what students/adherents of Strauss were interviewed for this documentary?”
I’m not sure which were students and which adherents, but the following all purported to be channelling Strauss on the programme, among others: Irving Kristol, Harvey Mansfield, Paul Weyrich.

Bear in mind that the twin-thrust of the Strauss thead was a) that he expounded the value of the noble lie in ancient philosphy, and that b) a lot of present day neoconservatives took that idea and applied it to US politics. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Curtis blames Strauss for this, per se. In trying to draw parallels between the neocons and radical Islamists, he finds it interesting that they both adopt the idea that it’s OK for an elite to do bad things (lie to the people, kill Muslims) to save the masses from their own selfish behaviour, and that on either side, a surprising number were influenced by a single individual. To be sure he glosses over a lot of what Strauss actually said, as opposed to how he was interpreted, but the focus is always on the interpreters and their actions. Qutb, by contrast, was very much the focus of the Islamist thread.

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Josh 10.26.04 at 3:04 am

Thanks for clarifying, Ginger Yellow. None of the people named were actually Strauss students, although Harvey Mansfield did meet Strauss, I believe, and is by anyone’s measure certainly a leading Straussian (and the sometime mentor of Bill Kristol). Irving Kristol professes to admire Strauss, but I’ve always found his statements about Strauss somewhat shallow. I’ve never heard of Weyrich being a Straussian; I rather doubt that he can be considered one, even if one uses the term very loosely.
I do tend to think that, while there are indeed plenty of Straussians who’ve become involved in conservative politics (as well as one or two, like Bill Galston, who’ve become involved in Democratic politics), a lot of those who are identified as, and even identify themselves as, ‘Straussians’ are just conservative would-be intellectuals looking for a weighty thinker onto which to hang their agenda; and Strauss, being obscure and sort of nebulously conservative, and having a number of devoted boosters, fits this role well. Qutb’s influence I take to have been more direct and profound; but this is perhaps just a reflection of my own ignorance.

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Robin Trueman 10.27.04 at 10:15 pm

Does anyone have a copy of the first episode of “Power of Nightmares”? I missed it and after watching the 2nd would dearly like to view the first. Please email me on robin.trueman@btinternet.com

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luinzi 10.27.04 at 10:49 pm

This series was hyped up as being a ‘conspiracy theorist’s wet dream’ but after watching the second episode I am appreciating it more. It is starting to draw some interesting arguments such as the American’s dilema, which do they choose …. the preservation of their moral society or the propergation of the individual’s rights and liberties. As the second episode covered events which have happened within my lifetime I can relate to them directly and how I felt at the time. All in all I think Curtis puts across a very poigniant fact that the neocons have created a situation where they have pounced on this evil spectre of Al Qaeida (which may be a slightly more capable terrorist organisation than the documentary makes out)and used it to syncronize the Nations political imperatives. Now the next US election hinges on one question “is the US safe from Terrorism?”

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ed-t 10.27.04 at 11:03 pm

I missed the first part too. Any idea if there’s a transcript out there – couldn’t get one on the BBC site. No joy with the torrent link.

From what I saw tonight, it was sexy TV, but raised more questions than it cared to answer, too busy in its to and fro globetrotting between Asia, N Africa and US. Some food for thought, perhaps, especially prior to Ledeen’s lecture here in Oxford tomorrow.
(The lecture’s in honour of Isaiah Berlin. Yes, that ignoble relativist, who always displayed the full range of symptoms of a diseased modernity: spinelessness, lack of moral clarity, womanish liberal compromise over ‘manly’ assertion of absolutes, blah blah .. add your favourite neocon adjectives here …)

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Harris 10.28.04 at 1:00 pm

The threat is grossly exaggerated especially in the USA. How many times have al-Qaeda attacked the US on their soil ?? Only once and Bush is a fear mongerer who wants to win the elections with the terrorism card.
Chris Bertram, what do you mean by “reality-based community” ???
where is it ??

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Kerry 10.28.04 at 3:38 pm

Reading some of these comments I think that many people miss the point when it comes to broadcasting something like this. Of all the things we hear about Al-Quaida and the war on terror, I think it is important to understand that we also need something or someone to counteract what we are being told through the media on a daily basis. While some of Adam Curtis’s theories might seem a little far fetched to some of us, I think it demonstrates a real need for mainstream television to offer the public a different perspective on the war on terror. Thus, whether it is lies or not, someone out there is willing to offer the public some semblence of the truth. At the very least, it forces those who watched the programme to question what has become the popular way of thinking since September 11th.

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Mike 10.28.04 at 11:22 pm

Absolutely brilliant piece of TV I thought – really made me question a lot of what I “thought” I knew about recent history.

I have a question for anyone with a more detailed knowledge of recent US political history than I have:

In episode 2 it was made clear that Bush snr originally rejected the neocons, as proved by his exit from the 1st Gulf War without going on to Baghdad. But, by the time of the party congress (I forget which year) they seemed in full command again. Now I know the neocons made a play for the religious right wingers and they were very successful in this area it would appear, but that doesn’t really explain how they came to be back “in power”. Was Bush snr finally persuaded by their arguments? Did they become a force he could no longer ignore? Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

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