Power of Nightmares: Part 3

"For a society that values nothing, fear is the only agenda.”

This line, delivered at the end of the Nightmare series, says it all. The systematic fear that has been instilled into the American people has made TERROR the ultimate buzzword of this generation. A lot of elements of the third “Nightmare” installation hit me hard since I was alive and at a very impressionable age when 9/11 happened.

 It is clear that those with the darkest imaginations become the most powerful people in America. They are the ones who come up with the “Preventive Paradigm,” imprisoning people based purely on speculation, or the “Precautionary Principle,” claiming that action taken against a place or person without evidence of their wrongdoing is still justified.

The film pays homage to people who saw how problematic these principles were from the very start. They point out that following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government was hoping to find “Al Quaida” members in America and abroad before they even started looking. They had their conclusion before there was any proof that these people even existed. One expert in the film says that a, “Coherent, structured terrorist network with an organized capability led by Osama” was a completely fabricated myth meant to scare Americans and make them that much more willing to go along with U.S. military action. 

Once again, we were chasing after a phantom enemy, this Al Quaida NETWORK that did not exist! We were not willing to admit that perhaps the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were working on their own terms and for their own reasons, not based in a group that spanned across 60 countries, as Bush’s administration continually emphasized.

 Volume 3 of "Nightmares" is disturbing by the nature of its material. All along, there was a desire by the leaders in America to have terrorists, so they filled in the blanks and convinced everyone of this overwhelming threat. It turns out that most of it was rubbish. As the film points out, the last 30 years in politics have been a recovery from a time when they were actually meant to help people. At this stage in the game, they are simply a form of manipulation.