The Neocons & The Power of Nightmares- Part I
Sat Jun 4, 2005 15:47
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The Neocons & The Power of Nightmares- Part I
6/2/2005 5:19:00 PM GMT
U.S. politicians created a phantom enemy called "terror threat"
SOURCE:
By: John Lynch
By far and away the best documentary on British terrestrial television about the so-called ''war on terror'' is Adam Curtis’ three part series ‘The Power of Nightmares’.
Curtis’s thesis is that the two groups responsible for the war on terror are mirror images of each other - the American neoconservatives and the "Muslims extremists".
Both were triggered by political theorists who, in the 1950s, disdained American liberal democracy. Since then both movements have been trying to increase their political power by conjuring up dire political nightmares to frighten people into supporting them.
This article does not present a critique of curtis’ work: suffice it to say that although Curtis is virtually the only documentary maker who talked about the American Neocons, his series is marred by two striking deficiencies: firstly, the failure to mention that lost of the American Neocons are Israelis and, secondly, his sidelining of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. He focuses almost solely on the Neocons’ domestic policies when it is precisely their foreign policies which distinguishes them from all other types of American conservatives.
The major achievement of Curtis’s work is his analysis of the emergence of the Neocons in the early 1970s. He reinterprets the past in a way that man compassionate people would find shocking. For those of a compassionate nature who lived through the Vietnam war and its aftermath, it is shocking to discover that the people we used to condemn turn out to be relatively benign in comparison to the evil spirits lurking in their shadows. How many of us used to condemn president Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the CIA as being forces of evil in the world? How many of us realized at the time that both Kissinger and the CIA were acting, at least as far as the Soviet Union was concerned, pragmatically and were willing to compromise in order to maintain a stable world order?
How many of us realized at the time that there were people who regarded both Kissinger and the CIA as being too soft on what they deemed to be the forces of evil in the world? How many of us realized that these people became powerful enough to eventually defeat both Kissinger and the CIA?
How many of us realized that these people were the Neocons – the same pro-Israel people who drove America into the invasion of Iraq and are currently driving the new Bush administration towards armageddon?
The great shock of Curtis's series is the discovery that the Neocons didn’t just appear out of nowhere during the Bush administration to push America into the needless invasion of Iraq. Most other commentators on the Neocons trace their roots back only to their 1996 Israeli foreign policy document for Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact they had been formulating reactionary American foreign policies since the mid 1970s.
What Curtis makes obvious, without actually stating the idea, is that Gerald Ford’s Neocon propaganda about the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s, and Ronald Reagan’s Neocon inspired attacks on Russia in the 1980s, were almost full dress rehearsals for Bush’s neocon inspired attacks on Saddam in the 2000s.
The machiavellian tactics the Neoconservatives’ used to force Reagan into attacking Russia were almost exactly the same tactics they used two decades later to push Bush into attacking Iraq.
The same lies; the same nightmarish fantasies, the same empty fears, the same political battles with the CIA. These revelations make Curtis’s work far more politically relevant than the political sideshow produced by Michael Moore.
If you know little about the Neocons’ history, the following transcript of the first episode of ‘The Power of Nightmares’ should prove a revelation.
"In the early seventies, Irving Kristol became the focus of a group of disaffected intellectuals in Washington. They were determined to understand why the optimistic liberal policies had failed. They found the answer in the theories of Leo Strauss. As the movement grew, many young students who had studied Strauss’s ideas came to Washington to join this group. This group became known as the Neo-conservatives."
(The group included Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol. Most members of this group were Israelis. Curtis focuses solely on their analysis of American society but it is utterly inconceivable that they perceived the foreign policies of Israle and then sought to use America to promote these policies – in other words, make America’s foreign policies compatible with those of Israel. This is crystal clear as regards Russia.
During the 1970s, Russia’s economy and military were in an advanced stage of decrepitude. As one commentator, Jonathon Steele described the Soviet Union, it was basically a third world country with superpower nuclear weapons.
However, at that time, Russia did not pose any military threat to the United States– except under those circumstances where it was prepared to accept its own total annihilation – and whatever the Russians were they weren’t genocidal. But, Russia did pose a terrible threat to Israel. Russia could obliterate Israel in a matter of minutes.
On the other hand, the Israeli Neocons knew too well that Israel would never be safe militarily until the Soviet Union and even Russia itself had been dismantled along with its nuclear threat.
The only way the Jewish Neocons could help protect Israel was by formulating American foreign policies to bring about the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
"The Neoconservatives were idealists. Their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration, they believed liberal freedoms had unleashed. They wanted to find a
way of uniting the people and giving them a shared purpose. One of their great influences in doing this would be the theories of Leo Strauss. They would set out to recreate the myth of America as a unique nation whose destiny was to battle against evil in the world.
In this the source of evil would be america’s cold war enemy, the Soviet Union. And by doing this they believed that they would not only give new meaning and purpose to people’s lives but they would spread the good of democracy around the world."
(Once again Curtis focuses on the Neocons domestic policies. In reality, the Neocons had to transform America’s foreign policies so that it would defend Israel by attacking its main enemies i.e. Russia and the Arab world. The concept of America’s unique destiny is simply an Israeli code for persuading Americans to lay down their lives, their resources, and their future, for the good of Israel).
(Once again, ignore Curtis’s bizarre preoccupation with the Neocons domestic policies. In june 1972 Richard Nixon, with the aid of Henry Kissinger, concluded a peace treaty with Russia over nuclear weapons that ushered in a period of détente between the two countries that should have brought about the end of the cold war. Nixon proclaimed he had helped to create a world with less fear). "But a world without fear was not what the Neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. What gave them their opportunity was the growing collapse of American political power both abroad and at home. The defeat in Vietnam and the resignation of Nixon over watergate led to a crisis of confidence in America’s political
class. The Neoconservatives seized their moment. They allied themselves with two right wingers in the administration of Gerald Ford. One was Donald Rumsfeld, the now Secretary of Defence. The other was Dick Cheney, the President’s chief of staff.
Rumsfeld began to make speeches alleging that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons with the intention of attacking America."
(Rumsfeld’s speeches consisted of a string of lies about Russia’s non-existent super weapons which is remarkably similar to his speeches nearly three decades later about Saddam’s non-existent super weapons.
In both cases Rumsfeld was lying through his socks. It is important to appreciate that Rumsfeld was either paranoid or working for the American military industrial complex whereas the Israeli Neocons nightmares were real in the sense that Russia was an annhilatory threat to Israel. Such allegations about Russia’s increasing military power were mere political fictions to Americans who didn’t care what happened to Israel. The only people for whom these nightmares were real were the Israelis who believed it was vital to protect Israel.
"The CIA and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union continuously for any sign of threat said that this was a complete fiction. There was no truth in Rumsfeld’s allegations."
(This was the CIA’s first battle with the pro-Israel Neocons over their fears for Israel. These battles were to persist for the next thirty years. It is no wonder that having decided, at the start of his second term of office, to pursue the Neocons foreign policies, it then became necessary to neuter the CIA by shifting many of its functions to the Pentagon which was dominated by Neocons).
"But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. He said it would prove that there was a hidden threat to America and the inquiry would be run by a group of Neoconservatives one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz.
The aim was to change the way that America saw the Soviet Union."
"The Neoconservatives chose as the inquiry chairman a well known critic and historian of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes. Pipes was convinced that whatever the Soviets said publicly, secretly they still intended to attack and conquer America. This was their hidden mindset. The inquiry was called Team B and the other leading member was Paul Wolfowitz."
(In other words, Rumsfeld persuaded Gerald Ford to set up an independent inquiry to look into the Soviet threat to America and then chose two pro-Israel figures, Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, suffering from political nightmares about Russia’s threat to the Israel, to examine the evidence!).
"Team B began examining all the CIA data on the Soviet Union, but however closely they looked, there was little evidence of the dangerous weapons or defence systems they claimed the Soviets were developing. Rather than accept that this meant that the systems did not exist. Team B made an assumption that the Soviets had developed systems that were so sophisticated they were undetectable. For example, they could find no evidence that the Soviet submarine fleet had an acoustic defence system. But what this meant, Team B said, was that the Soviets had actually invented a new non-acoustic system which was impossible to detect.
This meant that the whole of the American submarine fleet was at risk from an invisible threat that was there even though there was no evidence for it."
(These are, of course, exactly the same tactics that the Neocons would use nearly three decades later to fabricate the rationale for America to invade iraq. To an outsider, it might seem a little odd that Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz always suspected the existence of non-existent weapons but never seemed to notice the real Weapons of Mass Destruction owned by Israel. In reality, however, neither of these Israeli Neocons would have been able to motivate America to fight for Israel without such lies. The so-called noble lie that Leo Strauss promoted was not the platonic lie necessary to keep peace and stability within a particular society, but the motivation for one country to unknowingly sacrifice itself for the sake of another country).
"What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found but they were wrong about many of those they could observe such as the Soviet air defences.
The CIA was convinced that these were in a state of collapse reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B claimed that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet regime. They said that the air defence system worked perfectly but the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official soviet training manual which proudly asserted that their air defence system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world."
(The pro- Israel Neocons had no other option than churning out those lies if they wanted to curb Russia’s threat to Israel. This was the only way they could deceive the American President and the American people into taking action against the Russians).
"The Neoconservatives set up a lobby group to publicize the findings of Team B. It was called ‘the committee on the present danger’ and a growing number of politicians joined including a presidential hopeful called Ronald Reagan. Through films and television, the committee portrayed a world in which America was under threat from hidden forces that could strike at any time. Forces that America must conquer to survive."
(The Israeli Neocons then relied on Israeli financiers to fund these anti-American Israeli publicity stunts as they too realized this was their way of contributing to the long term survival of Israel.
"This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true but it was necessary to re-engage the public in a grand vision of America’s destiny that would give meaning and purpose to their lives.
The Neoconservatives were succeeding in creating a simplistic fiction. A vision of the
Soviet Union as the centre of all evil in the world and America as the only country that could rescue them. And this nightmarish vision was beginning to give the Neoconservatives great power and influence."
TO BE CONTINUED...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3951615.stm
THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
Shock invite for Nightmares director
Cannes to screen BBC's Nightmares
Part I: Baby It's Cold Outside
Part II: The Phantom Victory
Part III: The Shadows in the Cave
Producer Adam Curtis responds
Music from the series
Suggestions for further reading
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3951615.stm
