"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."
Quite a long article but well worth reading. I don't suppose the US networks
will be showing the BBC series though...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html
The making of the terror myth
Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of
catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major
new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven
fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion. Andy Beckett reports
Friday October 15, 2004
The Guardian
Since the attacks on the United States in September 2001, there have been
more than a thousand references in British national newspapers, working out
at almost one every single day, to the phrase "dirty bomb". There have been
articles about how such a device can use ordinary explosives to spread
lethal radiation; about how London would be evacuated in the event of such a
detonation; about the Home Secretary David Blunkett's statement on terrorism
in November 2002 that specifically raised the possibility of a dirty bomb
being planted in Britain; and about the arrests of several groups of people,
the latest only last month, for allegedly plotting exactly that.
Starting next Wednesday, BBC2 is to broadcast a three-part documentary
series that will add further to what could be called the dirty bomb genre.
But, as its title suggests, The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the
Politics of Fear takes a different view of the weapon's potential.
"I don't think it would kill anybody," says Dr Theodore Rockwell, an
authority on radiation, in an interview for the series. "You'll have trouble
finding a serious report that would claim otherwise." The American
department of energy, Rockwell continues, has simulated a dirty bomb
explosion, "and they calculated that the most exposed individual would get a
fairly high dose [of radiation], not life-threatening." And even this minor
threat is open to question. The test assumed that no one fled the explosion
for one year.
During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged,
high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number
of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little
room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme
of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative.
Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the
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." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "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."
Adam Curtis, who wrote and produced the series, acknowledges the difficulty
of saying such things now. "If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that
everyone will say, 'You're completely wrong,' even if the incident doesn't
touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way
even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational."
So controversial is the tone of his series, that trailers for it were not
broadcast last weekend because of the killing of Kenneth Bigley. At the BBC,
Curtis freely admits, there are "anxieties". But there is also enthusiasm
for the programmes, in part thanks to his reputation. Over the past dozen
years, via similarly ambitious documentary series such as Pandora's Box, The
Mayfair Set and The Century of the Self, Curtis has established himself as
perhaps the most acclaimed maker of serious television programmes in
Britain. His trademarks are long research, the revelatory use of archive
footage, telling interviews, and smooth, insistent voiceovers concerned with
the unnoticed deeper currents of recent history, narrated by Curtis himself
in tones that combine traditional BBC authority with something more modern
and sceptical: "I want to try to make people look at things they think they
know about in a new way."
The Power of Nightmares seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed
about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an
organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It
does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In
fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt
world through religious violence.
Curtis' evidence for these assertions is not easily dismissed. He tells the
story of Islamism, or the desire to establish Islam as an unbreakable
political framework, as half a century of mostly failed, short-lived
revolutions and spectacular but politically ineffective terrorism. 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.
Curtis also cites the Home Office's own statistics for arrests and
convictions of suspected terrorists since September 11 2001. Of the 664
people detained up to the end of last month, only 17 have been found guilty.
Of these, the majority were Irish Republicans, Sikh militants or members of
other groups with no connection to Islamist terrorism. Nobody has been
convicted who is a proven member of al-Qaida.
In fact, Curtis is not alone in wondering about all this. Quietly but
increasingly, other observers of the war on terror have been having similar
doubts. "The grand concept of the war has not succeeded," says Jonathan
Eyal, director of the British military thinktank the Royal United Services
Institute. "In purely military terms, it has been an inconclusive war ... a
rather haphazard operation. Al-Qaida managed the most spectacular attack,
but clearly it is also being sustained by the way that we rather cavalierly
stick the name al-Qaida on Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines. There is a long
tradition that if you divert all your resources to a threat, then you
exaggerate it."
Bill Durodie, director of the international centre for security analysis at
King's College London, says: "The reality [of the al-Qaida threat to the
west] has been essentially a one-off. There has been one incident in the
developed world since 9/11 [the Madrid bombings]. There's no real evidence
that all these groups are connected." Crispin Black, a senior government
intelligence analyst until 2002, is more cautious but admits the terrorist
threat presented by politicians and the media is "out of date and too
one-dimensional. We think there is a bit of a gulf between the terrorists'
ambition and their ability to pull it off."
Terrorism, by definition, depends on an element of bluff. Yet ever since
terrorists in the modern sense of the term (the word terrorism was actually
coined to describe the strategy of a government, the authoritarian French
revolutionary regime of the 1790s) began to assassinate politicians and then
members of the public during the 19th century, states have habitually
overreacted. Adam Roberts, professor of international relations at Oxford,
says that governments often believe struggles with terrorists "to be of
absolute cosmic significance", and that therefore "anything goes" when it
comes to winning. The historian Linda Colley adds: "States and their rulers
expect to monopolise violence, and that is why they react so virulently to
terrorism."
Britain may also be particularly sensitive to foreign infiltrators, fifth
columnists and related menaces. In spite, or perhaps because of, the absence
of an actual invasion for many centuries, British history is marked by
frequent panics about the arrival of Spanish raiding parties, French
revolutionary agitators, anarchists, bolsheviks and Irish terrorists. "These
kind of panics rarely happen without some sort of cause," says Colley. "But
politicians make the most of them."
They are not the only ones who find opportunities. "Almost no one questions
this myth about al-Qaida because so many people have got an interest in
keeping it alive," says Curtis. He cites the suspiciously circular
relationship between the security services and much of the media since
September 2001: the way in which official briefings about terrorism, often
unverified or unverifiable by journalists, have become dramatic press
stories which - in a jittery media-driven democracy - have prompted further
briefings and further stories. Few of these ominous announcements are
retracted if they turn out to be baseless: "There is no fact-checking about
al-Qaida."
In one sense, of course, Curtis himself is part of the al-Qaida industry.
The Power of Nightmares began as an investigation of something else, the
rise of modern American conservatism. Curtis was interested in Leo Strauss,
a political philosopher at the university of Chicago in the 50s who rejected
the liberalism of postwar America as amoral and who thought that the country
could be rescued by a revived belief in America's unique role to battle evil
in the world. Strauss's certainty and his emphasis on the use of grand myths
as a higher form of political propaganda created a group of influential
disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz, now the US deputy defence secretary. They
came to prominence by talking up the Russian threat during the cold war and
have applied a similar strategy in the war on terror.
As Curtis traced the rise of the "Straussians", he came to a conclusion that
would form the basis for The Power of Nightmares. Straussian conservatism
had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in
the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual
period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during
the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at
finding new foes to keep them going). Although the Islamists and the
Straussians have fallen out since then, as the attacks on America in 2001
graphically demonstrated, they are in another way, Curtis concludes,
collaborating still: in sustaining the "fantasy" of the war on terror.
Some may find all this difficult to swallow. But Curtis insists,"There is no
way that I'm trying to be controversial just for the sake of it." Neither is
he trying to be an anti-conservative polemicist like Michael Moore:
"[Moore's] purpose is avowedly political. My hope is that you won't be able
to tell what my politics are." For all the dizzying ideas and visual jolts
and black jokes in his programmes, Curtis describes his intentions in sober,
civic-minded terms. "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 the fear."
But whatever the reception of the series, this fear could be around for a
while. It took the British government decades to dismantle the draconian
laws it passed against French revolutionary infiltrators; the cold war was
sustained for almost half a century without Russia invading the west, or
even conclusive evidence that it ever intended to. "The archives have been
opened," says the cold war historian David Caute, "but they don't bring
evidence to bear on this." And the danger from Islamist terrorists, whatever
its scale, is concrete. A sceptical observer of the war on terror in the
British security services says: "All they need is a big bomb every 18 months
to keep this going."
The war on terror already has a hold on western political culture. "After a
300-year debate between freedom of the individual and protection of society,
the protection of society seems to be the only priority," says Eyal. Black
agrees: "We are probably moving to a point in the UK where national security
becomes the electoral question."
Some critics of this situation see our striking susceptibility during the
90s to other anxieties - the millennium bug, MMR, genetically modified
food - as a sort of dress rehearsal for the war on terror. The press became
accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians
became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning
them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse
might be just around the corner. "Insecurity is the key driving concept of
our times," says Durodie. "Politicians have packaged themselves as risk
managers. There is also a demand from below for protection." The real reason
for this insecurity, he argues, is the decay of the 20th century's political
belief systems and social structures: people have been left "disconnected"
and "fearful".
Yet the notion that "security politics" is the perfect instrument for every
ambitious politician from Blunkett to Wolfowitz also has its weaknesses. The
fears of the public, in Britain at least, are actually quite erratic: when
the opinion pollsters Mori asked people what they felt was the most
important political issue, the figure for "defence and foreign affairs"
leapt from 2% to 60% after the attacks of September 2001, yet by January
2002 had fallen back almost to its earlier level. And then there are the
twin risks that the terrors politicians warn of will either not materialise
or will materialise all too brutally, and in both cases the politicians will
be blamed. "This is a very rickety platform from which to build up a
political career," says Eyal. He sees the war on terror as a hurried
improvisation rather than some grand Straussian strategy: "In democracies,
in order to galvanize the public for war, you have to make the enemy bigger,
uglier and more menacing."
Afterwards, I look at a website for a well-connected American foreign policy
lobbying group called the Committee on the Present Danger. The committee
features in The Power of Nightmares as a vehicle for alarmist Straussian
propaganda during the cold war. After the Soviet collapse, as the website
puts it, "The mission of the committee was considered complete." But then
the website goes on: "Today radical Islamists threaten the safety of the
American people. Like the cold war, securing our freedom is a long-term
struggle. The road to victory begins ... "
· The Power of Nightmares starts on BBC2 at 9pm on Wednesday October 20.
--
"Jean Guernon" <jguernon@globetrotter.net> wrote in message
news:qdnXc.152269$RY5.24085@news.easynews.com...
"On the other hand, I know I am
bunked and that you are debunked."
.
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| User: " John F Lemke" |
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| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
15 Oct 2004 09:23:21 PM |
|
|
"tw" <no@no.com> wrote in message
news:ckof25$br6$1@newstree.wise.edt.ericsson.se...
"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."
Quite a long article but well worth reading. I don't suppose the US
networks
will be showing the BBC series though...
Indeed.
We lost our great bogeyman when the Soviets collapsed. There's a lot to be
said for having a bogeyman.
If there is no attack in America before November 2, unlike with the Spanish
elections, then there's some credibility to give this for sure.
But then again.................. "All they need is a big bomb every 18
months to keep this going".
.
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| User: "Su Zanadu" |
|
| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
15 Oct 2004 10:28:37 PM |
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John wrote:
tw wrote:
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."
Quite a long article but well worth
reading. I don't suppose the US
networks will be showing the BBC
series though...
Not unless they show it at TINSELTOWN ....Or one of the Senior High
Schools. (inside joke!)
Indeed.
We lost our great bogeyman when the
Soviets collapsed. There's a lot to be
said for having a bogeyman.
If there is no attack in America before
November 2, unlike with the Spanish
elections, then there's some credibility
to give this for sure.
But then again................ "All they need
is a big bomb every 18
months to keep this going".
And an occasional Ffffnorrrrrrrd!
I've been going around saying that all day.... :)
SuZanne
.
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| User: " John F Lemke" |
|
| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
17 Oct 2004 08:10:33 AM |
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"Su Zanadu" <tugbertswife@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:9046-41709565-50@storefull-3215.bay.webtv.net...
John wrote:
But then again................ "All they need
is a big bomb every 18
months to keep this going".
And an occasional Ffffnorrrrrrrd!
There ya go!!!!!!! If anyone would get it, it would be you.
I've been going around saying that all day.... :)
Just remember, step on them firmly but selectively.
They'll be crawling up your windows, covering your patio, and overrunning
your yard. Slow and steady there.
.
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| User: "Anon Ymous" |
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| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
16 Oct 2004 02:42:56 PM |
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(Su Zanadu) wrote in message news:<9046-41709565-50@storefull-3215.bay.webtv.net>...
John wrote:
tw wrote:
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."
Quite a long article but well worth
reading. I don't suppose the US
networks will be showing the BBC
series though...
Not unless they show it at TINSELTOWN ....Or one of the Senior High
Schools. (inside joke!)
IndeedFNORD.
We lost our great bogeyFNORDman when the
Soviets collapsed. There's a lot to be
said for having aFNORD bogeyman.
If there is no attack in America before
November 2, FNORDunlike with the Spanish
elections, then there's some credibility
to give this for FNORDsure.
But then again................ "All they need
is a big FNORDbomb every 18
months FNORDto keep this going".
And an FNORDoccasional Ffffnorrrrrrrd!
I'veFNORD been goingFNORD around saying thatFNORD all day.... :)
YouFNORD have? Why wouldFNORD you go around FNORDsaying
such FNORDnonsense?
S~
.
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| User: "Su Zanadu" |
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| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
17 Oct 2004 12:59:05 AM |
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-snip-
Hey - It's Shasta!
Dee is back and now you *too*?
waZzup in the hizzie?
It's just like being "Home for the holidays!"
SuZanne :)
.
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| User: "Dani" |
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| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
17 Oct 2004 12:43:27 PM |
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On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 01:59:05 -0400, (Su Zanadu)
wrote:
Hey - It's Shasta!
Dee is back and now you *too*?
waZzup in the hizzie?
It's just like being "Home for the holidays!"
But where's Grantland!!?
Come out come out wherever you are .. wallette misses you! ;)
Dani
SuZanne :)
.
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| User: "Su Zanadu" |
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| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
17 Oct 2004 08:41:38 PM |
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See his final post.
Sounds like he is having some trouble.
Internet related? I really don't know anything. I'm just speculating
based on what was happening prior to his absence. May have nothing at
all to do with it....I don't know.
????
head
SuZanne
.
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| User: "Dani" |
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| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
17 Oct 2004 10:40:49 PM |
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On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:41:38 -0400, (Su Zanadu)
wrote:
See his final post.
Sounds like he is having some trouble.
Internet related? I really don't know anything. I'm just speculating
based on what was happening prior to his absence. May have nothing at
all to do with it....I don't know.
????
head
Would you mind pointing me to it? I haven't been around much until
recently, so I don't know which post you're referring to.
Thanks.
Dani
SuZanne
.
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| User: "Leigh_Bee" |
|
| Title: Re: The Making of the Terror Myth |
15 Oct 2004 05:28:05 PM |
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|
"tw" <no@no.com> wrote in message news:<ckof25$br6$1@newstree.wise.edt.ericsson.se>...
"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."
Quite a long article but well worth reading. I don't suppose the US networks
will be showing the BBC series though...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html
The making of the terror myth
Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of
catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major
new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven
fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion. Andy Beckett reports
Friday October 15, 2004
The Guardian
SNIP
"In democracies,
in order to galvanize the public for war, you have to make the enemy bigger,
uglier and more menacing."
Afterwards, I look at a website for a well-connected American foreign policy
lobbying group called the Committee on the Present Danger. The committee
features in The Power of Nightmares as a vehicle for alarmist Straussian
propaganda during the cold war. After the Soviet collapse, as the website
puts it, "The mission of the committee was considered complete." But then
the website goes on: "Today radical Islamists threaten the safety of the
American people. Like the cold war, securing our freedom is a long-term
struggle. The road to victory begins ... "
· The Power of Nightmares starts on BBC2 at 9pm on Wednesday October 20.
But in a changing world, take the people, and lead them into a
diminishing return/s scenario, promising the end justifies the means,
and all you need is their support, and a share in the spoils of
Victory.
Orwell wasn't it?
LB
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