The Power of Nightmares -- Part III

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES -- Part III

The Neo-Conservatives use the 9/11 attacks to launch the War on Terror. This final episode, "The Shadows in the Cave," addresses the actual rise of Al-Qaeda. The director, Adam Curtis, argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for Jihad. The film instead argues that in order to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, U.S. prosecutors had to prove he was the head of a criminal organisation responsible for the bombings. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called "Al-Qaeda." With the 9/11 attacks, Neo-Conservatives in Bush's new Republican government use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.

After the American invasion of Afghanistan fails to uproot the alleged terrorist network, the Neo-Conservatives focus inwards, searching unsuccessfully for terrorist sleeper cells in America. They then extend their war on "terror" to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the U.S. military, and other forms of "preemption" against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later become a threat. Adam Curtis also makes a specific attempt to allay fears of a dirty bomb attack, and reassurs viewers that politicians will eventually have to concede that some threats are exaggerated and others altogether devoid of reality.

Wheelchair accessible at 28th Street

Before and after the film everyone's invited to indulge in our Humanist Vegetarian Tea House

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