The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows in the Cave

This final episode addresses the actual rise of al-Qaeda, in particular by examining the United States’ role in its creation: After the 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. In order to prosecute bin Laden for the 1998 US embassy bombings, US 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 September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use the created concept of al-Qaeda as an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the “War on Terrorism.” But 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 the War on Terror to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ideas and tactics also spread to the United Kingdom where Tony Blair uses the threat of terrorism to give him a new moral authority. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are also explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantánamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the United States military, and other forms of pre-emption against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later potentially become a threat.