Fear and Nightmares re-awakened

The anti-war movement and the Left is just as capable as other politicians of playing the politics of fear. There is very little hard evidence of foreign fighters in Iraq, the majority of the insurgents are Iraqis and despite claims in Washington, the Commander in Chief in Iraq, General Casey, recently said that as far as he could discover foreigners were playing a minimal role in the insurgency. "It starts with conclusions and makes up the evidence to support it. The neo-Conservatives didn't come to power in the US as a result of 9/11. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were already in the Defence Department before 9/1."The neo-Conservatives were part of the administration but if you talk to the neo-Cons, which I did, they will tell you candidly that they had very little influence during the early part of the Bush administration, particularly in foreign affairs. It was the events of 11 September that showed the president, they say, that what they had been warning of since the early 1990s was correct - that America faced dangerous threats in a new unipolar world, and the need for America to fight pre-emptive wars. This, as the programme said, brought them back to power in America. They would agree with this. "Are you saying it's a conspiracy?" No. The use of fear in contemporary politics is not the result of a conspiracy, the politicians have stumbled on it. In a populist, consumerist age where they found their authority and legitimacy declining dramatically they have simply discovered in the "war on terror" a way of restoring their authority by promising to protect us from something that only they can see. I don't think it will last. Already senior parts of the Establishment are beginning to question the very basis of the politicians' argument - that "al-Qaeda" is a threat like no other which "threatens the life of the nation". In the recent House of Lords ruling which said that the indefinite detention of foreign nationals without trial was illegal, one of the Law Lords - Lord Hoffman - publicly challenged the government's justification. He said: "This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. "

I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. "Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive al-Qaeda. "The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. "Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community." " Was the programme trying to change anything?" Yes. "Can the programme be compared to the red pill offered by Morpheus in The Matrix?" Thank you very much. But remember always to read the label before taking the medication. The Power of Nightmares will be broadcast over three nights from 18 to 20 January at 2320GMT on BBC Two. The final part has been updated in the wake of the Law Lords ruling in December that detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial was illegal.-A. Curtiss.