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Nov 20, 2008 2:49 PM CST |
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You will have to search the internet to find, download, and watch a low-resolution version or transcripts of the text of an amazing three-part documentary produced for the BBC. It’s called The Power of Nightmares. Otherwise you can’t see it. It is not available in the U.S. in any other way. No TV network will touch it. It is the very best of television journalism: engaging, shocking, provocative, mind-bending, infuriating, astonishing. The three-hour documentary was produced by a veteran British documentary producer, Adam Curtis. It caused a storm in Great Britain when it was broadcast last fall. For Curtis, the documentary started out as a project about the secretive American professor Leo Strauss, who became the guru of those who today dominate American foreign policy, the so-called “neocons.” The Strauss doctrine advocated the projection of a myth that America’s unique role was to battle the forces of evil in the world. But the documentary for Curtis turned into something much larger: an essay on political manipulation, the abuse of power, and the myth of the war on terror. The three programs are a chilling unmasking of the myths created to keep the population terrified of an invisible threat. At first, there was the shift from threat of the Soviet Union and the Cold War—a threat which we now know was overstated—to a much more terrifying threat. Now terrorists could be anywhere, even, like the Communists of the 1950s, among us. Fighting this threat, says Curtis, is a war without end, and one that can shift to anywhere. In fact, the Straussian philosophy and extremist Islam share some history and basic concepts. They both started in the fifties. Both believe that liberalism is the enemy. Both have proven adept at finding new enemies to keep them going. In The Power of Nightmares, Curtis gradually zeroes in on the terrorism threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Al Qaida, he says, is not an organized international network. It doesn’t have members, a leader, or sleeper cells. It doesn’t have a unified strategy. It barely exists at all. Curtis points out that al Qaida didn’t even have a name at all, until the American government had to come up with one. This was needed to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence under laws that were designed for prosecuting the Mafia. These laws require the existence of a named criminal organization. What does exist is a general idea to cleanse a corrupt world through the use of religious violence. To these groups, Osama bin Laden was someone who shared their hatreds. He didn’t really have much of an organization of his own, but he had money. Curtis says,“Almost no one questions this myth about al-Qaida because so many people have got an interest in keeping it alive. There is no fact-checking about al-Qaida.” To prove his points, Curtis assembled some remarkable footage. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld appears armed with elaborate charts showing in detail what American soldiers would encounter in Bin Laden’s cave hideout in the Bora Bora mountains of Afghanistan: power plants, satellite communication, tanks that could be driven inside the mountain. And there are, said Rumsfeld, not one, but many of these. In truth, when the caves were found they were just dirty caves with some old amunition. Curtis assembles a group of experts to debunk the “dirty bomb” scare. In fact, says Dr. Theodore Rockwell, an authority on radiation in the film, “I don’t think it would kill anybody. You’ll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise.” The American department of energy tested a simulated dirty bomb explosion and the worst exposure an individual would receive would be non-life threatening. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, The Power of Nightmares series argues “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.” Curtis goes one step further: “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.” In an interview, Curtis said that he is not trying to be controversial. His hope is that you can’t see his politics in his film. His intention is this: “If you go back into history and plod through it, the myth falls away. You see that these aren’t terrifying new monsters. It’s drawing the poison of fear.” This is Milos Stehlik for Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview. Worldview film contributor Milos Stehlik is the director of Facets Multimedia. |
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