I’d only managed to tape the first couple of episodes of this extraordinary three parter – The Power of Nightmares – before watching them today while I was getting over the election. Then I watched the final part tonight, and how timely is its scheduling.
The first two episodes basically take us through the twin histories of Islamic terrorists and neoconservatives, until they met together in Afghanistan in the eighties. Then they diverge again, at the same time, helping one another.
And now they’re still mutually beneficial in a warped kind of way. While Paul Wolfowitz and his cronies are looking for a new enemy to keep the electorate effectively subjugated, Al Qaeda is being effectively formed as tall tales are told in a New York court room. Bin Laden becomes the bogeyman, and the fear of what could happen is grossly exaggerated.
This was an incredible piece of documentary making, with a fearless authorial view leading us through a history I frankly didn’t know enough about. Even the threat of “dirty bombs” was disabused, contradicting the BBC’s own drama of a month or so ago. It was put together with careful archive footage illustrating the voiced over point of view, as well as interviews, with subjects from both sides. So we did here from some of the neoconservatives – even those who lead groups like Team B – an group of people put together to specifically dispute what the CIA was telling the government at the time, summarised by the idea that just because you haven’t found any evidence for something, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. In fact that’s proof that it does!
The music also worked well, but the most powerful images were those from an anonymous hackneyed film version of Arabian Nights that really illustrated the one-dimensional viewpoints of both the Islamic terrorists and the right wingers.
Of course there are dangers, but then we’ve been living with those for years in the UK with terrorist organisations such as those found in Northern Ireland who are still the most likely terrorists we’re likely to run across.
This was intelligent film-making at its very best. What a shame that there’s not a book to accompany this series. The writer and director was Adam Curtis. There’s a piece from The Guardian about the series, here and all sorts of interesting links, including torrents, to be found here.
(Incidentally, I spell-checked this piece before posting and for Wolfowitz, the spell checker suggested “halfwit”. Maybe Microsoft’s not all bad after all).