1 00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:08,600 In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. 2 00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:12,280 They had different ways of achieving this. 3 00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:15,800 But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions 4 00:00:15,880 --> 00:00:17,200 they offered to their people. 5 00:00:19,880 --> 00:00:21,000 Those dreams failed. 6 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:24,600 And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. 7 00:00:25,920 --> 00:00:29,800 Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. 8 00:00:31,200 --> 00:00:35,400 But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. 9 00:00:36,400 --> 00:00:40,600 Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us 10 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:42,200 from nightmares. 11 00:00:47,800 --> 00:00:50,760 They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers 12 00:00:50,800 --> 00:00:53,400 that we cannot see and do not understand. 13 00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:57,160 And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. 14 00:00:57,800 --> 00:00:59,400 A powerful and sinister network 15 00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:02,200 with sleeper cells in countries across the world. 16 00:01:03,400 --> 00:01:06,000 A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. 17 00:01:09,800 --> 00:01:11,800 But much of this threat is a fantasy 18 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,000 which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. 19 00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:17,400 It?¯ a dark illusion 20 00:01:17,600 --> 00:01:20,800 that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world 21 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:24,000 the security services, and the international media. 22 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:29,600 This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created 24 00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:2,000 and who it benefits. 23 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:37,000 At the heart of the story are two groups: 24 00:01:37,400 --> 00:01:40,760 the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. 25 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:45,600 In this week's episode, the two groups come together 26 00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:48,200 to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. 27 00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:53,600 And both believe that they defeat the Evil Empire 28 00:01:53,800 --> 00:01:56,200 and so had the power to transform the world. 29 00:01:57,840 --> 00:01:58,600 We will fight for an Islamic State, we will die for it! 30 00:01:58,600 --> 00:02:01,000 But both failed in their revolutions. We will fight for an Islamic State, we will die for it! 31 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:06,400 In response, the neoconservatives invent a new fantasy enemy 32 00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:09,800 Bill Clinton, to try and regain their power. 33 00:02:11,600 --> 00:02:16,400 While the Islamists descend into a desperate cycle of violence and terror 34 00:02:16,440 --> 00:02:19,400 to try and persuade the people to follow them. 35 00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:25,400 Out of all this come the seeds of the strange world of fantasy 36 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,600 deception, violence, and fear in which we now live. 37 00:02:31,320 --> 00:02:36,040 The Power of Nightmares 38 00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:39,920 The Rise of the Politics of Fear 39 00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:48,200 Part 2 The Phantom Victory 40 00:02:54,600 --> 00:02:58,800 In 1982, Ronald Reagan dedicated the Space Shuttle Columbia 41 00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:01,400 to the resistance fighters in Afghanistan. 42 00:03:02,400 --> 00:03:06,400 Just as the Columbia, we think, represents man's finest aspirations 43 00:03:06,440 --> 00:03:09,000 in the field of science and technology 44 00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:11,400 so too does the struggle of the Afghan people 45 00:03:11,440 --> 00:03:14,800 represent man's highest aspirations for freedom. 46 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:19,800 I am dedicating, on behalf of the American people 47 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:23,080 the March 22nd launch of the Columbia 48 00:03:23,120 --> 00:03:25,800 to the people of Afghanistan. 49 00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:30,600 Since 1979, the mujaheddin resistance had been fighting 50 00:03:30,640 --> 00:03:33,800 a vicious war in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. 51 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:37,600 But now, a small group in the Reagan White House 52 00:03:37,640 --> 00:03:40,200 saw in these fighters a way of achieving 53 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:42,200 their vision of transforming the world. 54 00:03:43,400 --> 00:03:45,800 To them, they were not just nationalists 55 00:03:46,200 --> 00:03:47,400 they were freedom fighters 56 00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:49,400 who could bring down the Soviet Union 57 00:03:49,600 --> 00:03:52,000 and help spread democracy around the world. 58 00:03:53,400 --> 00:03:55,280 It was called the Reagan Doctrine. 59 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:02,600 It was a small group of people and yes, we did have 60 00:04:02,640 --> 00:04:06,000 Everyone thinks, "Oh, the Reagan Doctrine, the Reagan Administration," 61 00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:12,000 like everybody was for. No. It was a small little cabal, within the Soviet 62 00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:18,800 within the Reagan White House, that really pulled this off. 63 00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:22,600 What united this small group of ours was the vision 64 00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:27,000 of bringing more freedom to the world, more security to the world 65 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:31,400 to actually get rid of the Soviet Union itself! 66 00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:34,400 As a result, supporting the freedom fighters 67 00:04:34,440 --> 00:04:39,800 became the premier cause for the entire conservative movement 68 00:04:39,840 --> 00:04:41,960 during the Reagan years. 69 00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:46,600 But the Americans were setting out to defeat a mythological enemy. 70 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:50,280 As last week's episode showed, the neoconservatives 71 00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:52,800 who were now in power in Reagan's White House 72 00:04:52,840 --> 00:04:55,800 had created an exaggerated and distorted vision 73 00:04:55,840 --> 00:04:59,800 of the Soviet Union as the source of all evil in the world. 74 00:05:01,200 --> 00:05:05,400 One of their main influences were the theories of the philosopher Leo Strauss. 75 00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:09,480 He believed that liberal societies needed simple 76 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:12,800 powerful myths to inspire and unite the people. 77 00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:17,800 And in the 1970s, the neoconservatives had done just this. 78 00:05:18,600 --> 00:05:22,400 Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and other neoconservatives 79 00:05:22,440 --> 00:05:27,200 had set out to reassert the myth of America as a unique country 80 00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:30,600 whose destiny was to struggle against evil throughout the world. 81 00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:35,600 Now in power, they had come to believe this myth. 82 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:40,600 They saw themselves as revolutionaries who were going to transform the world 83 00:05:41,400 --> 00:05:44,600 starting with the defeat of the Evil Empire. 84 00:05:48,400 --> 00:05:51,520 We're closer to being revolutionaries than conservatives 85 00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:56,400 in the sense that we want to change some deeply entrenched notions 86 00:05:57,200 --> 00:06:01,000 about the proper role of American power in the world. 87 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:04,800 We want to see that power used constructively 88 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:12,400 and to enlarge the opportunity for decent governance around the world. 89 00:06:12,440 --> 00:06:17,600 We're not happy about the old, cozy relationships with dictators. 90 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:22,200 And the man who was going to help the neoconservatives do this 91 00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:25,400 was the new head of the CIA, William Casey. 92 00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:31,600 He was convinced that Afghanistan was one of the keys to this aggressive new policy. 93 00:06:32,600 --> 00:06:36,400 America was already sending limited amounts of aid to the mujaheddin. 94 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,400 But now, Casey ordered one of his agents 95 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:42,400 to go and form an alliance with the freedom fighters 96 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:45,080 and give them as much money as they wanted 97 00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:47,200 and the most sophisticated weapons 98 00:06:47,800 --> 00:06:50,400 to defeat the Soviet military forces. 99 00:06:53,600 --> 00:06:58,600 For Casey, Afghanistan seemed to be possibly one of the keys. 100 00:06:58,640 --> 00:07:01,000 So he tapped me one day to go. 101 00:07:01,040 --> 00:07:04,000 He says, "I want you to go out to Afghanistan, I want you to go next month 102 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:07,400 and I will give you whatever you need to win." Yeah. 103 00:07:07,440 --> 00:07:09,800 He said, "I want you go to there and win." 104 00:07:09,840 --> 00:07:14,800 As opposed to, "Le?5 go there and bleed these guys," make it be a Vietnam 105 00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:18,200 "I want you to go there and win. Whatever you need, you can have." 106 00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:21,200 He gave me the Stinger missiles and a billion dollars. 107 00:07:23,680 --> 00:07:25,040 God if Great! 108 00:07:50,200 --> 00:07:52,400 American money and weapons now began to pour 109 00:07:52,440 --> 00:07:55,200 across the Pakistan border into Afghanistan. 112 00:07:52,800 --> 00:0:56,200 CIA agents trained the mujaheddin in the techniques 110 00:07:59,640 --> 00:08:03,000 of assassination and terror, including car bombing. 111 00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:08,200 And they gave them satellite images of Russian troops to help in their attacks. 112 00:08:09,880 --> 00:08:13,880 Move your far arse and shoot the fucking rocket! 113 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:17,600 At the very same time, another group began to arrive in Afghanistan 114 00:08:17,640 --> 00:08:19,600 to fight alongside the mujaheddin. 115 00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:23,000 They were Arabs from across the Middle East 116 00:08:23,200 --> 00:08:25,400 who had been told by their religious leaders 117 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:30,200 that their duty was to go and free Muslim lands from the Soviet invader. 118 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:36,400 I saw the fatwa, the order saying that 119 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:42,600 every Muslim has a duty to help 120 00:08:42,640 --> 00:08:46,200 the Afghans to liberate their land. 121 00:08:47,200 --> 00:08:54,000 But I had no idea, where is this Afghanistan? How can I go there? 122 00:08:54,200 --> 00:09:01,000 I've never heard about Afghanistan, and I've never heard in the map. 123 00:09:02,200 --> 00:09:06,600 Which airline goes there? From where can I take the visa? 124 00:09:06,640 --> 00:09:12,600 It 100 questions! But I did meet Abdullah Azzam. 125 00:09:14,400 --> 00:09:17,080 Abdullah Azzam was a charismatic religious leader 126 00:09:17,120 --> 00:09:21,200 who had begun to organize the Arab volunteers in Afghanistan. 127 00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:24,400 He had set up what he called the Services Bureau 128 00:09:24,440 --> 00:09:26,600 in Peshawar on the Afghan border. 129 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:30,600 It became the headquarters of an international brigade of Arab fighters. 130 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:34,600 Azzam quickly became one of the most powerful figures 131 00:09:34,640 --> 00:09:36,400 in the battle against the Soviets. 132 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:40,000 He was allowed to visit America on many occasions 133 00:09:40,040 --> 00:09:43,920 both to raise funds and recruit volunteers for the jihad. 134 00:09:44,400 --> 00:09:47,600 When, Abdullah Azzam became so instrumental 135 00:09:47,640 --> 00:09:51,400 in marketing the Afghan cause among the Arabs 136 00:09:52,600 --> 00:09:54,400 he became very important. 137 00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:58,200 He became called "the emir of the Arab mujaheddin." 138 00:09:58,240 --> 00:10:00,600 The leader of the Arab mujaheddin. And he set up 139 00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:04,800 an office in Peshawar which provided services to 140 00:10:04,840 --> 00:10:09,000 Arabs who came and wanted to participate in the jihad. 141 00:10:09,400 --> 00:10:12,600 There were no doors closed, all doors were opened 142 00:10:12,640 --> 00:10:17,400 because the Americans, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and many other people 143 00:10:17,440 --> 00:10:22,600 wanted the Soviet Union to lose in Afghanistan, and to be humiliated. 144 00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:27,200 That brought about huge numbers of Arabs 145 00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:30,600 from different backgrounds in the jihad in Afghanistan. 146 00:10:30,640 --> 00:10:33,800 He went to America, he went to Saudi Arabia 147 00:10:33,840 --> 00:10:36,800 he traveled wherever he wanted, because the Afghan cause 148 00:10:36,840 --> 00:10:40,400 was a cause that everybody was happy supporting. 149 00:10:41,200 --> 00:10:43,000 But like the neoconservatives 150 00:10:43,040 --> 00:10:45,600 Azzam also saw the struggle against the Soviets 151 00:10:45,640 --> 00:10:49,200 as just the first step in a much wider revolution. 152 00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:52,800 He was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood 153 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:57,400 who wanted Islam to play a political role in governing Muslim societies. 154 00:10:57,800 --> 00:11:01,200 And Abdullah Azzam believed that the Arabs in Afghanistan 155 00:11:01,240 --> 00:11:04,200 could be the nucleus of a new political force. 156 00:11:05,200 --> 00:11:09,200 They would return to their own countries and persuade the people 157 00:11:09,240 --> 00:11:14,600 to reject the corrupt, autocratic regimes that dominated the Middle East. 158 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:26,400 But these regimes, Azzam insisted, must be overthrown by political means. 159 00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:31,120 He made every fighter pledge they would not use terrorism 160 00:11:31,160 --> 00:11:34,200 against civilians in the pursuit of their vision. 161 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:39,200 One of Azzam's closest aides was a Saudi, Osama Bin Laden. 162 00:11:40,600 --> 00:11:45,600 Osama came to participate in '85. 163 00:11:47,800 --> 00:11:50,600 When he was when he came 164 00:11:51,200 --> 00:11:56,600 as you know, he is He came from a rich family from Saudi 165 00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:01,000 and he had much, much money to spend. 166 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:08,600 Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was a scholar, he can organize the Afghans 167 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:11,800 but he is not a rich man. 168 00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:16,600 So when Osama came, he filled in this gap. 169 00:12:17,400 --> 00:12:23,000 So the main duty of Osama in that time was spending money. 170 00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:28,920 Beside his good personal qualities. 171 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:36,600 But then, in 1985, a new force began to arrive in Afghanistan 172 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:39,200 who were going to challenge Azzam's approach. 173 00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:43,000 They were the extreme radical Islamists 174 00:12:43,040 --> 00:12:46,400 who were being expelled from prisons across the Arab world. 175 00:12:48,400 --> 00:12:51,400 And then, very quietly, most of the 176 00:12:51,440 --> 00:12:54,200 governments in the Middle East, the Arab governments 177 00:12:54,240 --> 00:12:56,520 began to empty their prisons 178 00:12:56,560 --> 00:12:57,800 of their bad guys 179 00:12:58,200 --> 00:13:02,400 and send them off to the jihad with the very fondest hope that they 180 00:13:02,440 --> 00:13:04,200 would become martyred. 181 00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:08,200 Many of them were the people in Egypt 182 00:13:08,240 --> 00:13:12,400 that had not been executed after the murder of Sadat 183 00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:15,880 but were implicated in it and had been in prison. Off they go. 184 00:13:16,800 --> 00:13:20,400 One of the most powerful of these newcomers was Ayman Zawahiri. 185 00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:25,200 He was the leader of a radical faction from Egypt called Islamic Jihad. 186 00:13:25,800 --> 00:13:30,400 And he was convinced that they, not the moderates, were the true Islamists. 187 00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:39,200 We are here! We are here! The real Islamic front! We are here! 188 00:13:39,240 --> 00:13:44,600 The real Islamic front and the real Islamic opposition against Zionist. 189 00:13:44,640 --> 00:13:46,080 We are here! 190 00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:51,400 The real Islamic front against Zionism, Communism, and imperialism. 191 00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:57,000 Ayman Zawahiri was a follower of the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyed Qutb 192 00:13:57,040 --> 00:14:00,000 who had been executed in 1966. 193 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:03,000 As last week's program showed 194 00:14:03,040 --> 00:14:06,600 Qutb believed that the liberal ideas of Western societies 195 00:14:06,640 --> 00:14:08,800 corrupted the minds of Muslims 196 00:14:08,840 --> 00:14:12,800 because they unleashed the most selfish aspects of human nature. 197 00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:18,800 Zawahiri had interpreted Qutb's theories to mean that this corruption 198 00:14:18,840 --> 00:14:21,800 included the Western system of democracy. 199 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:26,800 Democracy, Zawahiri believed, encouraged politicians 200 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:30,400 to set themselves up as the source of all authority 201 00:14:30,440 --> 00:14:34,800 and by doing this, they were rejecting the higher authority of the Koran. 202 00:14:35,600 --> 00:14:39,400 This meant they were no longer true Muslims, and so they 203 00:14:39,440 --> 00:14:43,200 and those who supported them, could legitimately be killed. 204 00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:47,600 The terror this created, he said, would shock the masses 205 00:14:47,640 --> 00:14:52,200 into seeing the truth behind the corrupt facade of democracy. 206 00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:05,000 When the Egyptians, the jihadi group, came from Egypt 207 00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:10,200 with their own explanation, with their own ideas 208 00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:16,000 that anybody participating in any parliament, or any political party 209 00:15:16,040 --> 00:15:19,400 or going to elect, or call people for the election 210 00:15:19,440 --> 00:15:26,400 and sort of these activities, is totally rejecting the Koran. 211 00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:33,000 So when you say that, it means when a Muslim is rejecting the Koran 212 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:36,000 simply must be killed. 213 00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:40,000 And should be killed, must be killed! 214 00:15:40,400 --> 00:15:42,000 And tha?5 what happened. 215 00:15:43,600 --> 00:15:46,400 Zawahiri and his small group settled in Peshawar. 216 00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:51,200 They began to spread this new idea among the foreign fighters 217 00:15:51,400 --> 00:15:53,400 radicalizing the Islamist movement. 218 00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:58,800 It was not only a drect challenge to the moderate ideas of Abdullah Azzam 219 00:15:58,840 --> 00:16:04,800 but it also involved a militant rejection of all American influence over the jihad 220 00:16:05,400 --> 00:16:08,800 because America was the source of this corruption. 221 00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:13,200 The only times that I ever ran into any real trouble in Afghanistan 222 00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:15,400 was when I ran into these guys. 223 00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:18,600 You know, there'd be kind of a moment or two 224 00:16:18,640 --> 00:16:24,600 where it looked a little bit like the bar scene in Star Wars 225 00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:28,400 each group kind of jockeying around 226 00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:31,680 and finally somebody has to sort of defuse the situation. 227 00:16:40,280 --> 00:16:45,560 The indicator lights aren't on. Please adjust them. 228 00:16:50,520 --> 00:16:55,040 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has issued a decree. 229 00:16:56,000 --> 00:17:00,400 Then, in 1987, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev 230 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:04,000 decided he was going to withdraw Russian troops from Afghanistan. 231 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:09,200 Gorbachev was convinced that the whole Soviet system was facing collapse. 232 00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:13,200 He was determined to try and save it through political reform 233 00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:17,200 and this meant reversing the policies of his predecessors 234 00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:20,200 including the occupation of Afghanistan. 235 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:26,760 The state of the Soviet Union and its society 236 00:17:26,800 --> 00:17:29,120 could be described very simply with a phrase used 237 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:30,600 by people across the country: 238 00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:34,600 "We can't go on living like this any longer." 239 00:17:35,800 --> 00:17:39,000 And that applied to everything. The economy was stagnating. 240 00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:42,400 There were shortages. And the quality of goods was very poor. 241 00:17:45,400 --> 00:17:49,000 We had to finish this war, but in such a way that the Russian people 242 00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:51,600 would understand why tens of thousands had died. 243 00:17:52,320 --> 00:17:54,600 We couldn't just run away from there in shame, no. 244 00:17:55,400 --> 00:17:57,400 We needed to find a process. 245 00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:03,000 Gorbachev asked the Americans to help him negotiate a peace 246 00:18:03,040 --> 00:18:06,000 that would create a stable government in Afghanistan. 247 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:10,200 But the hard-liners in Washington refused point-blank. 248 00:18:10,600 --> 00:18:13,160 They would continue to help the mujaheddin 249 00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:17,000 until the last Russians left, without any negotiation. 250 00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:21,000 The future of Afghanistan would then be decided, they said 251 00:18:21,040 --> 00:18:22,400 by the freedom fighters. 252 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:27,200 I think that basically, we've asked the United States to help us get out 253 00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:29,000 if you're really interested in stopping the bloodshed. 254 00:18:29,200 --> 00:18:32,200 But can you get out and leave a government in Afghanistan 255 00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:34,600 that supports that is a friend of the Soviet Union? 256 00:18:34,720 --> 00:18:39,160 I believe that we can get out, provided that indeed no more aid is given to what 257 00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:42,800 people here call freedom fighters, and we call counterrevolutionaries. 258 00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:44,600 I believe tha?5 possible, provided that 259 00:18:44,640 --> 00:18:46,640 the United States is also interested in the same. 260 00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:48,200 Well, I?5 not very complicated. 264 261 00:18:53,240 --> 00:18:56,040 they could be home by Christmas Eve, if they decided to 262 00:18:56,080 --> 00:18:59,080 leave Afghanistan and let the Afghans decide their own future. 263 00:18:59,120 --> 00:19:03,800 If you leave, the problem of support to the mujaheddin solves itself. 264 00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:09,200 Gorbachev was shocked by the intransigence of the U.S. Administration. 265 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:14,000 He sent a private message through the KGB, warning the Americans 266 00:19:14,040 --> 00:19:17,800 that if they allowed the mujaheddin to take control in Afghanistan 267 00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:20,200 it would not produce democracy. 268 00:19:20,800 --> 00:19:24,800 Instead, he predicted, the most extreme forms of Islamism 269 00:19:24,840 --> 00:19:27,000 would rise up and triumph. 270 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:30,400 But Gorbachev's warning was ignored. 271 00:19:31,800 --> 00:19:36,400 As Soviet troops left Afghanistan, both the Americans and the Islamists 272 00:19:36,600 --> 00:19:40,000 came to believe that they had not only won the battle for Afghanistan 273 00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:44,800 they had also begun the downfall of the entire Evil Empire. 274 00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:49,800 I felt we won, because I was part of it. 275 00:19:49,840 --> 00:19:53,000 I'm sure that the Afghan Arabs thought "We won," 276 00:19:53,400 --> 00:19:58,800 and then all summer long, the East Germans begin to gather 277 00:19:58,840 --> 00:20:02,000 a hundred here, a thousand, tens of thousands 278 00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:05,400 until November 9th, when the wall was opened. And tha?5 it. 279 00:20:05,800 --> 00:20:08,320 Start the clock running on the Soviet Union. 280 00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:15,800 And it was over. The Soviet Union was all crapped up and broken. 281 00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:17,200 And that was done. 282 00:20:20,800 --> 00:20:25,200 For the neoconservatives, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a triumph. 283 00:20:25,800 --> 00:20:29,400 And out of that triumph was going to come the central myth 284 00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:31,400 that still inspires them today: 285 00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:35,400 that through the aggressive use of American power 286 00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:39,000 they could transform the world and spread democracy. 287 00:20:40,200 --> 00:20:45,800 But in reality, their victory was an illusion. They had conquered a phantom enemy 288 00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:51,000 an exaggerated and distorted fantasy they had created in their own minds. 289 00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:53,960 The real reason the Soviet Union collapsed 290 00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:57,600 was because it was a decrepit system, decaying from within. 291 00:20:57,800 --> 00:21:01,680 I think probably one of the greatest myths in American political discourse now 292 00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:04,200 right now, is that actions of the American government 293 00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:06,400 were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. 294 00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:09,360 The Soviet Union collapsed like a house of cards 295 00:21:09,400 --> 00:21:12,800 because it was a house of cards. It rotted away from within. 296 00:21:12,840 --> 00:21:17,000 The economy was rotten, the political process was rotten 297 00:21:17,040 --> 00:21:20,680 they had developed a central government that was no longer believed 298 00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:24,080 by people outside of Moscow, there was total cynicism 299 00:21:24,120 --> 00:21:29,400 throughout the Soviet system of governance, there was no real civil society. 300 00:21:29,440 --> 00:21:31,800 But the Reagan Administration and their 301 00:21:31,840 --> 00:21:33,600 the minions of the Reagan Administration 302 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:38,000 will tell you that Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself 303 00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:40,800 the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 304 00:21:40,840 --> 00:21:42,800 the collapse of the East European empire. 305 00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:46,600 We were saying that this was entirely fanciful. 306 00:21:46,800 --> 00:21:49,000 And the United States missed all of this 307 00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:52,600 because they believed their own myths and their own fanciful notions. 308 00:21:52,640 --> 00:21:55,640 They had become their own victims of their own lies. 309 00:21:57,400 --> 00:21:58,960 And for the Islamists too 310 00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:02,200 a great myth was born out of the struggle in Afghanistan 311 00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:05,400 that it was they who had conquered the Soviet Union. 312 00:22:05,680 --> 00:22:08,200 God is Great! 313 00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:09,360 Death to Gorbachev! Long live Afghanistan! 314 00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:12,480 The Islamists believed that this great victory would start 315 00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:17,080 a revolution that would sweep across the Arab world and topple the corrupt leaders. 316 00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:22,800 But as with the neoconservatives, this dream was built on an illusion. 317 00:22:23,600 --> 00:22:25,160 The Islamists were convinced 318 00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:30,400 that they were the key instrument in the demise of 319 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:32,400 the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. 320 00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:36,600 They just would not like to remember that without 321 00:22:36,640 --> 00:22:41,200 U.S. military help and training, they couldn't have done anything. 322 00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,800 And also the Afghans were the ones who ousted the Soviets 323 00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:47,400 not the Arab jihadis, who didn't really fight 324 00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:49,600 they were trained, but they were not the fighters. 325 00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:54,200 But the myth has it that they were the ones who won. 326 00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:57,600 I mean, this was a jihad that had triumphed. 327 00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:02,560 This was something very powerful 328 00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:06,800 that was a mobilizing force for Islamists worldwide. 329 00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:11,200 But there was a deep rift within the Islamist fighters based in Peshawar 330 00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:14,400 between the moderates, led by Abdullah Azzam 331 00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:17,600 who believed this revolution could be accomplished politically 332 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,600 and the extremists, like Ayman Zawahiri 333 00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:23,800 who saw violent revolution as the only way. 334 00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:29,000 And Zawahiri now set out to extend his influence over the movement 335 00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:31,600 and to undermine Abdullah Azzam. 336 00:23:33,400 --> 00:23:38,800 To do this, he seduced Osama Bin Laden, and his money, away from Azzam. 337 00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:42,600 He promised Bin Laden that he could become the emir 338 00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:47,000 the leader of Zawahiri's small extremist group, Islamic Jihad. 339 00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:50,400 Ayman Zawahiri and another group 340 00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:55,760 of Egyptians, they refused to 341 00:23:55,800 --> 00:24:01,000 pray behind Abdullah Azzam, in Peshawar. 342 00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:10,280 They used to create rumors in Peshawar 343 00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:13,000 against Abdullah Azzam. 344 00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:20,360 Tha?5 why we became angry about Osama, why he became 345 00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,000 he closed these people to him. 346 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:29,800 They accepted hm as an emir, and he accepted them as a group. 347 00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,600 Finally, I don't know who did use the other. 348 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:39,400 What do you think? I think the other used him. 349 00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,000 Because he had the money? Yes. 350 00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:46,000 Then, at the end of 1989 351 00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,800 Abdullah Azzam was assassinated by a huge car bomb in Peshawar. 352 00:24:50,840 --> 00:24:53,400 It is still unknown who carried out the assassination. 353 00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:56,400 But despite his death 354 00:24:56,440 --> 00:25:01,400 it seemed as if Azzam's vision of a political revolution might prevail. 355 00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,800 In the early '90s, in countries across the Arab world 356 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:07,800 Islamist parties began to gather mass support. 357 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:13,960 Islamic State! 358 00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:16,120 In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front 359 00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,360 won overwhelming victories in local elections 360 00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,600 and looked certain to win the coming general election. 361 00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:26,200 And at the same time in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood 362 00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:30,000 began to win mass support, and a growing number of seats in Parliament. 363 00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:35,200 Both parties were riding to power on an idealistic vision. 364 00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,200 They would use Islam in a political way 365 00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:43,000 to create a new type of model society through peaceful means. 366 00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,320 We can change people 367 00:25:48,360 --> 00:25:50,000 throught education 368 00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:52,320 and religional conviction. 369 00:25:52,360 --> 00:25:54,800 We want to build a popular base. 370 00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:58,200 This is the right way. 371 00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,960 We do not want a military coup. 372 00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:04,080 We do not want violence. 373 00:26:04,120 --> 00:26:07,040 We want our rights. 374 00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:09,760 If people believe in us 375 00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:12,280 the goverment must comply 376 00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:14,680 with the people's wishes. 377 00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:20,000 But the governments in both Egypt and Algeria faced a terrible dilemma. 378 00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:24,200 At the heart of the Islamist vision was the idea that the Koran 379 00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:27,800 should be used as the political framework for the society. 380 00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:32,400 An absolute set of laws, beyond debate, that all politicians had to follow. 381 00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:38,000 The implication of this was that political parties would be irrelevant 382 00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:39,800 because there could be no disagreement. 383 00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:42,600 The people were about to vote in 384 00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:46,640 parties that might use that power to end democracy. 385 00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:48,560 But what a dilemma! 386 00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,640 Do you find a way of stopping the electoral process 387 00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:54,600 and cancelling the second round? 388 00:26:54,960 --> 00:27:00,840 Or do you let power go to a party witch claims: 389 00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,920 One man, one vote, but only once! 390 00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,640 We won't have any elections after this 391 00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,480 because democracy is non-religious 392 00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:14,560 Once we're in power, we'll stay there forever 393 00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:18,120 because we alone are the keepers of religous truth 394 00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:19,960 and we alone shall apply the Koran. 395 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:25,400 Faced by this dilemma, in Algeria the army decided to step in 396 00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:29,400 and in June 1991 they staged a coup d'? at 397 00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:31,400 and immediately canceled the elections. 398 00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,400 Mass protests by the Islamists were repressed violently 399 00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:37,200 and their leaders arrested. 400 00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,600 At the same time, in Egypt, the government also clamped down. 401 00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,600 They arrested hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members 402 00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,400 and banned the organization from any political activity. 403 00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:50,600 What happened is a wave of 404 00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:56,200 arresting Muslim brothers, a wave of military courts for Muslim brothers 405 00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:00,600 going to kill some of Muslim brothers under torture. 410 406 00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:12,400 And this wave, in this manner, you open the doors of hell 407 00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:16,600 for the violent groups who were hidden underground 408 00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:20,000 and stopped the moderates, open the door for the violence. 409 00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:25,600 For Ayman Zawahiri, this was a dramatic confirmation of his belief 410 00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,800 that the Western system of democracy was a corrupt sham. 411 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:31,600 Groups of radical Islamists 412 00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,000 who had developed his theories into even more extreme forms 413 00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:39,600 now set out to create violent revolutions in Algeria and Egypt. 414 00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:41,800 It would be the start of a jihad 415 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,600 that would liberate the Muslim world from corruption. 416 00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:49,040 The only way to eradicate the humiliation and Kufr 417 00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:56,120 that has overcome the land of Islam is Jihad 418 00:28:56,160 --> 00:29:00,960 bullets, and martyrdom operations. 419 00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:02,400 Bin Laden and the others 420 00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:07,600 started, from now on, to wage their own jihad, I.e. 421 00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:13,200 not to compromise, not to try to compromise with more moderate groups 422 00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,600 but thinking that an armed vanguard 423 00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:20,800 would be able to implement the seizing of power. 424 00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:26,800 They were convinced that they could duplicate the Afghan "victory" 425 00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:31,800 that they could establish an Islamist state in Algeria, in Egypt, and the like. 426 00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:37,400 They thought that would capture the hearts and minds of of the Muslim masses 427 00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:44,720 that people would realize that the strength and victory were on the side of the jihadis. 428 00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:56,200 At this same time, in Washington 429 00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,600 the other group who believed that they had brought down the Soviet Union 430 00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:01,200 the neoconservatives 431 00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:05,000 were also determined to push on with their revolutionary agenda. 432 00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:08,920 They were convinced that the Soviet Union was just one of 433 00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:13,600 many evil regimes in the world led by tyrants that threatened America. 434 00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:19,400 Regimes they had to conquer to liberate the world and spread democracy. 435 00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:21,800 We want, you know, down with tyranny. 436 00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:24,600 We want free countries. 437 00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:27,600 We think that America is better off if we live in a world 438 00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,320 primarily populated with free countries, who make their own 439 00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:34,200 who have to appeal to their own people for the source of their power 440 00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:38,600 and to ratify their decisions. And we think that if 441 00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:42,600 if the whole world were like that, then we would be much more secure 442 00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,000 and that typically we were attacked by tyrants. 443 00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:47,800 I think I?5 America's destiny 444 00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:51,240 because I think that America's always going to come under attack from tyrants. 445 00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,280 So I think that our only choice is 446 00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:57,200 whether we're going to win or lose, and when we will fight.. 447 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,400 and under what circumstances, but that we're gonna have to fight. 448 00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:03,120 Tha?5 automatic, because they're gonna come after us. 449 00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:08,000 One of the most evil of these tyrants, the neoconservatives decided 450 00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:09,600 was Saddam Hussein. 451 00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:17,000 In the 1980s, Saddam had been America's close ally. But in 1990, he invaded Kuwait. 452 00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,560 The neoconservatives now saw him as a key 453 00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:25,000 to pursuing the next stage of their transformation of the world. 454 00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:30,200 An American-led coalition had been created by President Bush senior 455 00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:31,600 to liberate Kuwait. 456 00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:35,200 But the neoconservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz 457 00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:39,400 who was Undersecretary of Dfense, wanted to push on to Baghdad 458 00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:42,600 and bring about a transformation of the Middle East. 459 00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:48,200 It would fulfill America's unique role to defeat evil in the world. 460 00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,160 You see already in '91 461 00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:57,080 the hopes of Wolfowitz and others, that the battle 462 00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:01,600 against Saddam Hussein, or other petty tyrants 463 00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,400 could take the place of the battle against the Soviet Union 464 00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:10,400 and could bear this interpretation of a battle between good and evil. 465 00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:17,000 So, what you're seeing is the attempt to keep alive 466 00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:24,400 the idea that America is engaged in a battle of pure good against pure evil 467 00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:31,320 and to preserve that framework for a world after the end of the Soviet Union. 468 00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:34,400 But President Reagan was no longer in charge. 469 00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:38,400 The neoconservatives now had a leader who did not share their vision. 470 00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:40,200 Kuwait is liberated. 471 00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:42,400 Iraq's army is defeated. 472 00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:45,400 Our military objectives are met. 473 00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:50,800 And I am pleased to announce all United States and Coalition forces 474 00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:53,400 will suspend combat operations. 475 00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:57,000 Once Kuwait was freed, Bush ordered the fighting to stop. 476 00:32:57,800 --> 00:33:02,000 His view was that America's role was to create stability in the world 477 00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,000 not to try change it. 478 00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:06,000 Like Henry Kissinger 479 00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,600 who had been the enemy of the neoconservatives in the 1970s 480 00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:13,400 Bush saw questions of good and evil as irrelevant. 481 00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:19,120 The higher aim was to achieve a stable balance of power in the Middle East. 482 00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:22,760 Saddam Hussein is not a threat 483 00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:27,800 to his neighbors. He's a nuisance, he's an annoyance 484 00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:30,200 but he's not a threat. 485 00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,200 That we achieved. 486 00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:40,400 It was never our objective to get Saddam Hussein. 487 00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:43,800 Indeed, had we tried, we still might be occupying Baghdad. 488 00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:51,800 That would have turned a great success into a very messy probable defeat. 489 00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:56,600 In private, the neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz were furious. 490 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,200 Not just because Saddam Hussein had been left in power 491 00:34:00,600 --> 00:34:03,200 but because they saw this as a clear expression 492 00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,600 of the corrupt liberal values that dominated America 493 00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,000 a moral relativism that was prepared to compromise 494 00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,400 with the forces of evil in the world. 495 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:19,920 Wolfowitz' anger is fundamentally an anger against 496 00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:22,200 the weakness of American liberalism: 497 00:34:22,240 --> 00:34:26,200 the compromising nature of a man like George Bush senior. 498 00:34:26,240 --> 00:34:33,400 His willingness to make concessions, to negotiate, not to drive to the bitter end. 499 00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:37,600 And his anger is motivated, interestingly 500 00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:43,400 less by hatred of Saddam Hussein, than by hatred of American liberals 501 00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:48,680 who are a source of weakness, and a source of rot, and a source of relativism 502 00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,400 that had been corroding American society for decades. 503 00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:58,400 Faced by this defeat, the neoconservative movement now turned inwards 504 00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,800 to try and defeat the forces of liberalism that were holding it back. 505 00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:07,240 And to do this, they turned again to the theories of Leo Strauss. 506 00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:11,720 Strauss believed that good politicians should reassert 507 00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:15,400 the absolute moral values that would unite society 508 00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:20,200 and this would overcome the moral relativism that liberalism created. 509 00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:23,200 One of the most influential Straussians 510 00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:26,800 was the new assistant to the Vice-President, William Kristol. 511 00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,360 For Strauss, liberalism produced a decent way of life 512 00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:32,200 and one that he thought was worth defending 513 00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,400 but a dead end where nothing could be said to be true 514 00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:41,160 one had no guidance on how to live, everything was relative. 515 00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:45,800 Strauss suggests that maybe we didn't just have to sit there 516 00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:47,400 and accept that that was our fate. 517 00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,120 That politics could help shape the way people live 518 00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:54,920 teach them some good lessons about living decent and noble human lives. 519 00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:58,360 And can we think about what cultures, and what politics 520 00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:02,200 what social orders produce more admirable human beings? 521 00:36:02,240 --> 00:36:06,000 I mean, that whole question was put back on the table by Strauss, I think. 522 00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:11,600 The neoconservatives set out to reform America. 523 00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:15,800 And at the heart of their project was the political use of religion. 524 00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,000 Together with their long-term allies, the religious right 525 00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:23,400 they began a campaign to bring moral and religious issues 526 00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:26,200 back into the center of conservative politics. 527 00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:29,200 It became known as the "culture wars." 528 00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:35,400 Your tax dollars are being used to sponsor obscene and pornographic displays. 529 00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:39,600 I don't like Jesus Christ, who is my Lord and Savior 530 00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:43,400 being dumped in a vat of urine by a homosexual 531 00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:47,320 and then have my money to pay for it! I think tha?5 obscene! 537 00:36:43,90 --> 00:36:49,400 Satan, be gone! Out from this moment on! C'mon! 532 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:55,800 For the religious right, this campaign was a genuine attempt 533 00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,840 to renew the religious basis of American society. 534 00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,000 But for the neoconservatives, religion was a myth 535 00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:08,200 like the myth of America as a unique nation they had promoted in the Cold War. 536 00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:12,600 Strauss had taught that these myths were necessary 537 00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:18,920 to give ordinary people meaning and purpose, and so ensure a stable society. 538 00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:22,240 Do you ever worry that they're playing too much Nintendo? 539 00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:24,800 Oh, not anymore. See, Matt has Bible Adventures. 540 00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,600 They're actually learning Bible stories while they're playing Nintendo. 541 00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:32,200 For the neoconservatives, religion is an instrument of promoting morality. 542 00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:36,600 Religion becomes what Plato called a "noble lie." 543 00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:40,600 It is a myth which is told to the majority of the society 544 00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:45,600 by the philosophical elite in order to ensure social order. 545 00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:50,200 What better way to enjoy God's creation than a Praise Walk? 546 00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:54,880 In being a kind of secretive elitist approach 547 00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:58,240 Straussianism does resemble Marxism. 548 00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:02,600 These ex-Marxists, or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians 549 00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:06,600 could see themselves as a kind of Leninist group, you know 550 00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:13,600 who have this covert vision which they want to use to effect change in history 551 00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:18,040 while concealing parts of it from people incapable of understanding it. 552 00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:22,800 Out of this campaign, a new and powerful moral agenda 553 00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:25,600 began to take over the Republican Party. 554 00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:30,800 It reached a dramatic climax at the Republican Convention in 1992 555 00:38:31,240 --> 00:38:35,400 when the religious right seized control of the party's policy-making machinery. 556 00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:40,200 George Bush became committed to run for President 557 00:38:40,240 --> 00:38:45,000 with policies that would ban abortion, gay rights, and multiculturalism. 558 00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:49,400 Speakers who tried to promote the traditional conservative values 559 00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:53,000 of individual freedom were booed off the stage. 560 00:38:56,600 --> 00:39:00,200 I happen to think that individual freedom 561 00:39:00,240 --> 00:39:03,800 should extend to a woman's right to choose. 562 00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:21,000 I want the government out of your pocketbook and your bedroom! 563 00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:29,800 For the neoconservatives, the aim of this new morality was to unite the nation. 564 00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:36,200 But in fact, it had completely the opposite effect. 565 00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:40,000 Mainstream Republican voters were frightened away 566 00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:43,400 by the harsh moralism that had taken over their party. 567 00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,600 They turned instead to Bill Clinton 568 00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:51,960 a politician who connected with their real concerns and needs 569 00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,600 like tax and the state of the economy. 570 00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:57,680 In the week after the Republican Convention 571 00:39:57,720 --> 00:40:02,560 Republican moderates, young people, and particularly women 572 00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,840 saying, "I've been sort of torn between the two parties 573 00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:08,600 but where do I sign up to help Clinton get elected? I am 574 00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:14,160 frightened by this ultraconservative agenda I hear coming out of Houston." 575 00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:16,480 I've been a lifelong Republican. I'm a registered Republican. 576 00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:17,880 I am voting for Bill Clinton this time. 577 00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:22,000 Enough is enough. It is time for a change. 578 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:27,000 At the end of 1992, Bill Clinton won a dramatic victory. 579 00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:30,800 But the neoconservatives were determined to regain power. 580 00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:34,800 And to do this, they were going to do to Bill Clinton 581 00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:37,000 what they had done to the Soviet Union. 582 00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:43,800 They would transform the President of the United States into a fantasy enemy 583 00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:48,400 an image of evil that would make people realize the truth 584 00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,000 of the liberal corruption of America. 585 00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:01,960 We realise that other nations have surpassed us 586 00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:04,000 In what? In knowledge. 587 00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:06,040 And Islam 588 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:25,400 In the early '90s, Algeria, Egypt, and other Arab countries 589 00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:29,400 were being torn apart by a horrific wave of Islamist terror. 590 00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:33,200 The jihadists who had returned from Afghanistan 591 00:41:33,240 --> 00:41:35,600 were trying to topple the regimes. 592 00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:37,960 At the heart of their strategy 593 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:41,400 was the idea that Ayman Zawahiri and others had taught them. 594 00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,800 That those who were involved in politics could legitimately be killed 595 00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:50,000 because they had become corrupted and thus were no longer Muslims. 596 00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:54,800 This violence, they believed, would shock people into rising up 597 00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,000 and the corrupt regimes would then be overthrown. 598 00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,600 "They must die!" Not only "must die," they DID kill. 599 00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:05,000 They did kill people. 600 00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:11,400 Not just any It's not just an idea from far 601 00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:14,200 it became true. People killed. 602 00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:21,520 Many many rulers, many many holy men, many many scholars 603 00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:27,600 many many politicians in Islamic world have been killed because of these idea. 604 00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:33,400 Why? Because simply they are against the Koran. They rejected the Koran. 611 605 00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:42,800 Ayman Zawahiri was now based with Bin Laden on this farm in the Sudan. 606 00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,400 He used it as a base for his group, Islamic Jihad 607 00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,000 to launch attacks on politicians in Egypt. 608 00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,600 But as one of the leading ideologues of the revolution 609 00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:57,400 he also traveled throughout the Arab world, advising other groups on their strategy. 610 00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:03,200 But the revolutionaries soon found that the masses did not rise up and follow them. 611 00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:08,600 The regimes stayed in power, and the radical Islamists were hunted down. 612 00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,600 Faced by this, the Islamists widened their terror. 613 00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:14,600 Their logic was brutal: 614 00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:18,600 it was not just those who were involved with politics who should be killed 615 00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,000 but the ordinary people who supported it. 616 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:26,200 Their refusal to rise up showed that they too had become corrupted 617 00:43:26,240 --> 00:43:29,200 and so had condemned themselves to death. 618 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:34,600 There was definitely a logic. The logic is that you assault the leaders 619 00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:39,560 you assault those who are associated with them, and eventually you assault 620 00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:47,200 the people who have consented to the presence of such a despotic leader 621 00:43:47,240 --> 00:43:50,640 even if they are passively supportive through their silence. 622 00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,400 And then you start attacking economic institutions 623 00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,160 you start attacking the tourists, because the tourists bring money to the country 624 00:43:57,200 --> 00:44:00,160 and that money goes into the pockets of the corrupt elite. 625 00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,720 So, it is an endless process. 626 00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:08,600 In Algeria, this logic went completely out of control. 627 00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:13,760 The Islamist revolutionary groups killed thousands of civilians 628 00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:17,400 because they believed that all these people had become corrupted. 629 00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,880 All these innocents, what did they ever do? 630 00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:27,920 Legs blown off! Such horror! 631 00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:31,320 Even the French extremists never did things like this. 632 00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:36,240 Why? What have we done? What have out children done? 633 00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:39,640 Leave me alone! I want do die! 634 00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:45,600 In turn, the generals running Algeria inftitrated the revolutionary groups. 635 00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:51,400 They told their agents to persuade the Islamists to push the logic even further 636 00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:53,600 to kill even more people. 637 00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:59,000 This would create such horror that the groups would lose any remaining support 638 00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:04,400 and the generals could use the fear and revulsion to increase their grip on power. 639 00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:10,800 The generals inftitrated the jihad ideas, the jihad groups 640 00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,560 to put the society under fear. 641 00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:19,760 By creating terror and violence 642 00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:26,800 to stop everything in the society, no politic, no economy, no everything 643 00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:31,200 just to stay and saying to the West, "We are facing terror." 644 00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:37,000 Using fear? Using fear to stay on the power. 645 00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:41,080 Today the kill, they kill everybody 646 00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:45,320 innocent people, children, old people. 647 00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,680 They have een cut up their victims. 648 00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,040 Who will trust them 649 00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:52,040 if tomorrow they take power? 650 00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:56,360 Down with fundamentalism! 651 00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,600 By 1997, the Islamist revolution was failing. 652 00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:05,200 There were mass demonstrations against the Islamist groups 653 00:46:05,240 --> 00:46:08,000 by thousands of people horrified by the violence. 654 00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,480 And then, in June of that year, a group of Egyptian Islamists 655 00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:16,600 attacked Western tourists at the ruins of Luxor. 656 00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:20,600 58 were killed in three hours of random violence. 657 00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:24,400 The massacre shocked the Egyptian people 658 00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:28,600 and the leaders of the revolutionary groups agreed to call a cease-fire. 659 00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:34,600 In Algeria, a few groups held out. But they began to tear each other apart 660 00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:37,800 as they followed the logic that had driven their revolution 661 00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,600 to its ultimate, and logical, end: 662 00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:44,000 they started to kill each other. 663 00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:48,560 It led to their own destruction. 664 00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:56,200 A group that believes in 100% pure Muslim 665 00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:01,400 will not see that purity in anybody else but themselves. 666 00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,200 So whoever disagrees with them becomes the enemy 667 00:47:04,240 --> 00:47:07,760 becomes out of the House of Islam 668 00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,200 and then if they happen to disagree with each other themselves 669 00:47:11,240 --> 00:47:12,760 then they will start liquidating each other. 670 00:47:13,240 --> 00:47:16,000 And they keep fighting each other, there will be infighting. 671 00:47:16,240 --> 00:47:20,400 Eventually it ends in suicide. 672 00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,600 The main Islamist group in Algeria, the GIA 673 00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:28,600 ended by being led by a Mr. Zouabri, a chicken farmer 674 00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:31,000 who killed everyone who disagreed with him. 675 00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:33,400 He issued a final communique 676 00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:37,200 declaring that the whole of Algerian society should be killed 677 00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:41,600 with the exception of his tiny remaining band of Islamists. 678 00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:45,200 They were the only ones who understood the truth. 679 00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:56,280 By the mid-'90s, politics in Washington 680 00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:58,200 was dominated by one issue: 681 00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:02,200 the moral character of the President of the United States. 682 00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,200 If you believe you've been a victim of sexual harassment by the President 683 00:48:10,240 --> 00:48:11,600 we want to help. 684 00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:17,400 Behind this were an extraordinary barrage of allegations against Clinton 685 00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:19,000 that were obsessing the media. 686 00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:22,600 These included stories of sexual harassment 687 00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,800 stories that Clinton and his wife were involved in Whitewater 688 00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:28,200 a corrupt property deal 689 00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,600 stories that they had murdered their close friend Vince Foster 690 00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:36,600 and stories that Clinton was involved in smuggling drugs 691 00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:38,800 from a small airstrip in Arkansas. 692 00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:42,400 But none of these stories were true. 693 00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:46,800 All of them had been orchestrated by a young group of neoconservatives 694 00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:49,000 who were determined to destroy Clinton. 695 00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:54,000 The campaign was centered on a small right-wing magazine 696 00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:55,800 called the American Spectator 697 00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:59,160 which had set up what was called the "Arkansas Project" 698 00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:01,600 to investigate Clinton's past life. 699 00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:06,600 The journalist at the center of this project was called David Brock. 700 00:49:10,240 --> 00:49:14,400 In the crossfire: David Brock, of the American Spectator magazine. 701 00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:18,400 She was dressed in a raincoat and a hat, and came in at 5:15 in the morning 702 00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:22,200 and had a liaison with Clinton in the game room 703 00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:24,200 in the bottom floor of the Governor's mansion. David, David, David, this is getting a little bizarre. 704 00:49:24,240 --> 00:49:25,600 Next thing we gonna see 705 00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:28,400 I?5 bizarre! But hey, Bill Clinton is a bizarre guy. 706 00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:33,200 Since then, Brock has turned against the neoconservative movement. 707 00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:36,800 He now believes that the attacks on Clinton went too far 708 00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:39,400 and corrupted conservative politics. 709 00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:41,200 Was Whitewater true? 710 00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:45,200 No! There was no I mean 711 00:49:45,240 --> 00:49:48,840 there was no criminal wrongdoing in Whitewater. Absolutely not. 712 00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:51,320 It was a land deal that the Clintons lost money on. 713 00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:53,760 It was a coplete inversion of what happened. 714 00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:57,000 Was Vince Foster killed? 715 00:49:57,200 --> 00:49:59,400 No. Killed himself. 716 00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:02,400 Did the Clintons smuggle drugs? 717 00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:04,000 Absolutely not. 718 00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:10,080 Did those promoting these stories know that this was not true 719 00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:11,600 that none of these stories were true? 720 00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:13,200 They did not care. 721 00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:18,200 Why not? 722 00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:26,600 Because they were having a devastating effect. 723 00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:28,200 So why stop? 724 00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:31,400 It was terrorism. Political terrorism. 725 00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:37,000 And you were one of the agents? Absolutely. Absolutely. 726 00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:43,200 The stories began to grip America, and despite Clinton's denials 727 00:50:43,240 --> 00:50:46,400 the Republicans in Congress seized on the scandals 728 00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:48,400 and began to press for investigations 729 00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:51,400 into this immorality at the heart of government. 730 00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:54,600 Basically, the press 731 00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:57,600 has editorialized and pressured the politicians into saying 732 00:50:57,640 --> 00:50:59,960 "Here's a guy that as far as we know hasn't done anything wrong 733 00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:02,760 nobody's accused him of doing anything wrong 734 00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:04,560 there's no evidence that he's done anything wrong 735 00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,960 but we think the presumption of guilt almost should be on him. 736 00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:11,000 He should somehow prove his innocence." 737 00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,760 Out of this pressure, Clinton was forced to agree 738 00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:18,000 to an independent investigation into Whitewater. 739 00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:22,400 It was headed by a senior judge in Washington called Kenneth Starr. 740 00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:25,360 But what was not widely known 741 00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,600 was that Starr was a member of a right-wing group of lawyers 742 00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:30,440 called the Federalist Society 743 00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:34,800 that had financial and ideological links to the neoconservatives. 744 00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:40,800 And like the neoconservatives, they saw Clinton as a danger to the country 745 00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:44,760 and they were determined to prove this to the American people. 746 00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:46,600 In the Merck manual. 747 00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:51,600 Merck is a pharmaceutical company, they have a manual listing 748 00:51:52,240 --> 00:51:55,480 various disorders, and they listed "sociopath." 749 00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:59,000 And if you look at "sociopath," it tracks Clinton exactly. 750 00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:01,160 Somebody who's charming 751 00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:05,160 who has no particular feeling at all for the people he's charming 752 00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:08,200 unable to resist instant gratification 753 00:52:08,240 --> 00:52:10,600 and so on and so on. Goes right down the list. 754 00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:15,400 We had a very dysfunctional man in the Presidency. 755 00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:18,960 That was very dangerous, both as a model and as 756 00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:23,000 if crisis had arisen, I had no confidence that he would meet it. 757 00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:25,800 But despite all his efforts 758 00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:29,800 Kenneth Starr could find no incriminating evidence in Whitewater. 759 00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:34,400 Nor could he find any evidence to support any of the sexual scandals 760 00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:37,200 that had come from the Arkansas Project. 761 00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:39,880 Until finally, his committee 762 00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:45,200 stumbled upon Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, which Clinton denied. 763 00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:49,000 And in that lie, the neoconservative movement 764 00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:51,800 believed they had found what they had been looking for: 765 00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:55,720 a way to make the American people see the truth 766 00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:58,000 about the liberal corruption of their country. 767 00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:02,400 A campaign now began to impeach the President. 768 00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:06,400 And in the hysteria, the whole conservative movement 769 00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:11,800 portrayed Clinton as a depraved monster who had to be removed from office. 770 00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:18,760 But yet again, the neoconservatives had created a fantasy enemy 771 00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:22,000 by exaggerating and distorting reality. 772 00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:29,240 They were trapped by a mythological 773 00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:34,080 person that they had constructed, or persons, the Clintons, these 774 00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:41,680 scheming, terrible people who they, the noble pursuers, were going to vanquish. 775 00:53:41,720 --> 00:53:44,760 I think, in the leadership of conservatism 776 00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:48,600 during the Clinton era there was an element of corruption. 777 00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:51,800 There was an element of a willingness to do anything 778 00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:55,000 to achieve the goal of bringing Clinton down. 779 00:53:55,040 --> 00:54:00,200 There was a way in which the people who perceived Clinton as immoral 780 00:54:02,200 --> 00:54:04,000 behaved immorally themselves. 781 00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:08,400 They ended up behaving worse than the people who they were attacking. 782 00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,800 All the moral fury, and the deception, came to nothing. 783 00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:18,240 The impeachment failed because the polls consistently showed 784 00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:22,200 that Americans still did not care about these moral issues. 785 00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:26,200 One leading neoconservative, William Bennett 786 00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:30,000 wrote a book called The Death of Outrage, which blamed the people. 787 00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:34,200 He accused the public of making a deal with the devil. 788 00:54:34,240 --> 00:54:37,360 Their failure, he said, to support the impeachment 789 00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:40,200 was evidence of their moral corruption. 790 00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:54,600 By 1997, Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had returned to Afghanistan 791 00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,400 where they had first met ten years before. 792 00:54:58,200 --> 00:55:00,800 Back then, it had seemed as if Islamism 793 00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:04,200 might succeed as a popular revolutionary movement. 794 00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:07,000 But now, they were facing failure. 795 00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:11,600 All attempts to topple regimes in the Arab world had not succeeded. 796 00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:16,600 The people had turned against them because of the horrific violence 797 00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:20,800 and Afghanistan was the only place they had left to go. 798 00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:27,400 Well, 1997 was their failure. Egypt, Algeria, it worked nowhere. 799 00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:30,800 It went wrong because populations would not back them. 800 00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:35,120 Because people, even people who were sympathetic of them in the beginning 801 00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:40,160 were frightened away by their violence, by their incapacity to communicate 802 00:55:40,200 --> 00:55:43,560 and to have access to the people, and this was very clear 803 00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:46,760 in Zawahiri's book "Knights under the Prophe?5 Banner," 804 00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:51,760 where he sort of goes back from this experiment, and laments 805 00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:56,800 over their incapacity to raise the consciousness of the masses 806 00:55:56,840 --> 00:56:01,080 and feels that, you know, as a vanguard they did not manage to communicate. 807 00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:04,200 They remained isolated, and this is why they failed. 808 00:56:04,240 --> 00:56:07,400 And this is when they started this new strategy. 809 00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:10,800 In May 1998, Bin Laden and Zawahiri 810 00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:13,600 invited a group of journalists to this press conference 811 00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:15,800 where they announced a new jihad. 812 00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:18,200 Zawahiri was convinced 813 00:56:18,240 --> 00:56:21,000 that it was not their theories that were to blame for the failure 814 00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,400 it was the fault of the Muslim masses. 815 00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:27,600 Their minds had been corrupted by the liberal ideas from the West. 816 00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:30,200 But rather than give up 817 00:56:30,240 --> 00:56:35,000 he believed that the solution was to attack the source of the corruption directly. 818 00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,000 The new jihad would be against America itself. 819 00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:42,000 As I mentioned before 820 00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:47,000 we focus our efforts 821 00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:51,000 to fight against Jews and Christians or Americans. 822 00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:56,120 We have no objection against any party or any person 823 00:56:56,160 --> 00:57:01,000 who fights Americans all over the world. 824 00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:06,800 And we want to tell you that we will win the war against Americans. 825 00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:15,320 America will be defeated. Americans know our power, and 826 00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:17,560 This was a strategy of desperation 827 00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:21,400 born out of failure by a small group whose revolution had failed. 828 00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:24,200 And the anger that came from that failure 829 00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:27,600 was about to be directed at the United States. 830 00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:37,800 What Zawahiri and Bin Laden were about to do 831 00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:42,000 would dramatically affect the future of the neoconservative movement. 832 00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:47,160 By 1998, all their attempts to transform America 833 00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:49,800 by creating a moral revolution had failed. 834 00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:53,400 Faced with the indifference of the people 835 00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:56,320 the neoconservatives had become marginalized 836 00:57:56,360 --> 00:57:58,600 in both domestic and foreign policy. 837 00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:03,000 But with the attacks that were about to hit America 838 00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:07,200 the neoconservatives would at last find the evil enemy 839 00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:11,400 that they had been searching for ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 840 00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,000 And in their reaction to the attacks 841 00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:18,600 the neoconservatives would transform the failing Islamist movement 842 00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:22,760 into what would appear to be the grand revolutionary force 843 00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:25,400 that Zawahiri had always dreamed of. 844 00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:30,200 But much of it would exist only in people's imaginations. 845 00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:32,680 It would be the next phantom enemy.