I watched all three episodes and whilst I thought the first episode was the most interesting with the middle episode being drivel and the final episode hugely cirumstantial it was all in al worth watching.
The first episode was interesting in that the programme's loathing of the Neo-Cons meant that they had to heap praise on Nixon, Kissinger and Reagan! I can't remember I saw the last time anybody on BBC 2 was keen on Henry Kissinger. It seemed as though the Power of Nightmares had to be built up by the BBC towards the Neo-Cons as well.
The second episode was rubbish, trying to pretend that the Soviet Union was never a threat to the West or Western Democracy or indeed anywhere else (Hungary 1956 anybody? Czechoslovakia 1968? Afghanistan 1979?) and that the Neo-Con worries were deliberately made up and false just in order to keep power and attempt to impose a value sytem on the USA. Frankly that's a load of nonsense and the BBC trying to blame the collapse of Communism solely on Soviet internal inertia and decay is silly.
The third episode wasmuch more thought-provoking in trying to disprove the existence of A-Q. No doubt A-Q has been hyped up but what was never disputed is the Islamist ideas behind it. A-Q may well be a very loose organisation, essentially just a money gathering op from Bin Laden. But that doesn't deny the fact that those who now shelter under its name still try to bomb and poison and kill with the West now as their main targets.
Whilst it was a compelling series, there were a couple of major flaws:
1. The programme did not adequately engage with how the Madrid bombings fit into this.
2. More importantly, if the thesis is that you ideas are powerful, the programme has missed a trick - the fact that no network exists is irrelevant. It is the very ideas that are important. If the idea that violence against America or Britain is legitimate and achievable encourages only 19 people to do something, they can still cause a lot of damage. That's the point - the neo-cons aren't a conserted cabal out to deny freedom (well, I don't think they are, anyway), but are melded together by very powerful ideas, ideas which they think are right. In the same way, a radical, violent Islamism doesn't actually need a co-ordinated network as such - what it needs is money, so if you know a guy who's part of a rich Saudi family who's sympathetic to your point of view..... A poor terrorist isn't that much of a threat.
The nightmare out there does, to a degree, exist and the Neo-Cons, whilst there is an agenda with them (name me one set of poltical thinkers who don't have an agenda) cannot be totally written off as bonkers. Yesterday's results, now widely seen as the backlash of the ever-derided 'silent majority' with their beliefs in Faith, Flag and Family, show that they have a lot of support.
The more worrying part for me was the lack of reality-check on both sides - security heads in the US took seriously claims about Communist plans in the 80s, despite those claims partly being the result of CIA-organised counter-espionage rumour spreading and not being true, and the radical Islamists seem to have totally divorced themselves from any notion of the value of a human life - these are the scary things, that people can be possessed by such nonsense.
That said, I have to say, though, that one of the most jawdropping scenes for me was Rumsfeld giving almost word for word the same speech about the soviet threat in the 70's as he has been doing for WMD in Iraq.
Their view of the Russians seemed to be if the intelligence can't find any evidence (I think it was for some kind of submarine sonar) then the Russians must have something even more advanced and dangerous.
What I couldn't work out was whether the neo-cons actually believe this rubbish or, as it seemed from the programme, they needed to construct a myth for the american people to believe in.
Yours in Christ
Matt
is this prescription medication?