The Power of Nightmares
by Paul Miller
I'm usually fairly dismissive of 'serious' TV but every now and then something comes along which restores my faith. More often that not those things have been written and produced by Adam Curtis - things like The Mayfair Set or the superb Century of the Self. Anyway he has a new one at 9pm on BBC2 tonight called The Power of Nightmares which looks at the intellectual roots of both Al-Quaeda and The Neo-cons. It should be good. Read a Guardian article about it here.
Karen Karen
A few of the men mentioned in this documentary gathered in the Project for the New American Century, founded in 1997.
Have a look at their "statement of principles"
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
And: REBUILDING AMERICA?S DEFENSES
Strategy, Forces and Resources, made in 2000
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
It seems to be a perfect blueprint for America's current foreign policy.
Shaun Shaun
I watched it earlier - and along with the deeply harrowing "Sex Traffic" on C4, it has entirely restored my faith in what television is capable of. Congratulations to the BBC for airing such a thought-provoking programme - one which was especially good at showing how neo-conservativism and Islamicist fanaticism rose not just in diametric opposition, but almost in parallel with one another.
One possible conclusion (albeit an uncomfortable one for an unabashed liberal like myself) to draw is that neo-conservatives genuinely are the best qualified to handle the war on terror: they certainly saw the possible threat earlier than the rest of us. I also think the programme demonstrated, perhaps more effectively than any other analysis that I've seen, that neo-conservative foreign policy is genuinely idealistic in nature. Neo-cons really do believe in the benign power of democracy to isolate and defeat terrorism: they are not quasi-imperialists, as so many have suggested.
None of this is to suggest these policies are not fraught with risk: many would argue they have already proved counter-productive in Iraq, and could have a catastrophic effect if persevered with in future. And of course, it is hardly desirable to view the world through the kind of "Good v Evil" prism which seems to drive the current administration. But in any case, we're not talking about crazed ideologues here: the US has already demonstrated its propensity for pragmatism, both in terms of the profoundly different policies it has adopted towards North Korea, as well as the incorporation of states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia into the war against terrorism. Neither the virtual appeasement of the horrendous North Korean regime, nor the cultivation of alliances with states which have plainly supported al Qaeda and other Islamicist terrorists in the past, can be considered as ideal; but in both cases, such a strategy is necessary in order to preserve security in the wider world.
One last thought: has anyone else noticed how, on foreign policy, Bush is the idealist and Kerry the conservative? Kerry advocates a return to the multilateralist, UN-based settlement which was the basis for Western foreign policy for almost 60 years; Bush argues that the world changed after 9/11, and that a wholly new approach is needed to combat this new threat. Interesting times, indeed...I look forward to tuning in for the next instalment next week!