It's a more substantial piece than her previous one, but, as Ron says, her agenda is pretty clear. She's also factually incorrect on a few points, having now watched all three episodes myself there are things about the programme that annoyed me, and some overstatements, but the basic case as I understood it is very different from Phillips' reading of it. A few examples:
Episode three told us there was no such thing as al Qaeda, merely an idea ââ'¬â€ no international conspiracy, no sleeper cells across the world
It did. And AFAICT most balanced and knowledgeable observers now believe this to be largely the case. One-nil to Curtis. Phillips feigning shock at the very suggestion doesn't answer the question.
We are told that the neo-cons dominate Washington. Wrong. They are a tiny group whose opinions came to dovetail after 9/11 with those of the old-style Republicans.
They are indeed a tiny group. But their politics unquestionably dominate US foreign policy, to the extent that the war in Iraq was planned and executed entirely against the urging of many of Bush's senior non-neocon advisers, who had made it clear to him there was no proven link whatsoever between Saddam and al Qaeda. It was the neocons who wanted war at all costs, and they got what they wanted because they have Bush's ear. I don't think this is really debateable.
Be that as it may, the fantasies Curtis accuses the neo-cons of inventing are indeed fantastic. He claims they wanted to create myths of good versus evil, in order to create an artificial threat so they could pose as defenders of the world. The first phantom threat they created was communism. Yup, you read it right. Communism, according to Curtis, was no big deal.
It wasn't a big deal in the way that Phillips wants it to be. Anybody who sees the cold war as anything
other than a myth of good versus evil (which side being good and which evil is largely dependent on your politics, obviously) is guilty of astonishing naivety. The Soviet Union was a deeply unpleasant entity, but so were many of the regimes cynically supported by the US. "Neither Washington nor Moscow" is the only rational response to the cold war. (A similar attitude to the objectives of US foreign policy with regard to both Israel and the Palestinians would seem to be in order too. Washington is hardly on the side of the angels, after all.)
the purpose of this risible twisting of history is to make the neo-cons seem worse than Clinton.
They
are worse than Clinton. I'm no fan of Clinton, but I don't think he would have invaded Iraq post 9/11.
As if all this isn't bad enough, Curtis draws explicit parallels between the neo-cons and the radical Islamists. He claims that their ideologies and political trajectories are so similar they are equal partners in the vast and mendacious conspiracy to terrify the world.
And I think he had a point.
-- Ian
