The New Nightmare

I thoroughly enjoyed (if 'enjoyed' is the right word) The New Al Qaeda documentary on BBC2 on Monday night. It seems that we're drifting away from the 'it's all a big political con' theory a la The Power of Nightmares to 'we're all going to die!' school of thought once again. You could even tell from Peter Taylor's opening narration that his expose was specifically tailored (sorry) to debunk the myth that Al Qaeda is a myth, although that, sadly, became academic a few weeks ago.

The first show was called Jihad.com and it highlighted how the terror network uses the internet to recruit and motivate its 'soliders' with breathtaking efficiency and success. The footage of the suicide bombing that was filmed from three different angles and then uploaded to the web was horrific, and even a quirky story about how a football mom tracked down would-be terrorists in a chat-room couldn't assuage the feeling that the whole world is falling into a very bleak hole indeed.

At least one thing is for sure - we'll never negotiate with the terrorists.

Oh, look - they've just released Sean Kelly...

Cynical, me?

Sky News' coverage of the bombings and their aftermath has been utterly addictive and strangely disturbing. But one thing that really irks me is the way in which Sky attempts to be interactive - providing us with a steady flow of "thoughts" from the general public which share the same newsticker as statements from the likes of Blair and Bush.

It's a neat idea BUT it doesn't appear to be staffed properly. So you get the same three or four statements scrolling across the screen for hours on end (sometimes even days). And the statements they choose to display are hilarious: "Terrorism is bad" - Margaret from Solihul and "Some of my best friends are Muslims" - Mike from Harrow is about as deep as it gets. Still, I don't suppose it's easy to tackle the issues of the day in a text message...

Comments

[Douglas]

Actually Power of Nightmares didn't say Al-Qaeda is a myth. It said the super structure and organisation of Al-Qaeda is a myth.

There's lots of different cells out there doing their own thing using help form other cells if need be - but there's no real C-I-C.

Instead Al-Qaeda is an idea and you can't combat ideas the same way you combat "normal" armys and terrorists. I think that "The New Al-Qaeda" actually backs up that thinking.

[Neil]

Ah, but Peter says in his opening VO that there is a theory that Al Qeada is being used by governments to impinge on civil liberties, even though it's not a "real" threat. This is basically what PoN was saying too, wasn't it?

[Maff]

I thought tPoN's argument was that the threat was being hyped for the political benefit of the Neo-Cons, which is unquestionably true. The part about impinging on civil liberties was less about the Patriot act and more to do with the religious right, and the irony of the similarities they share with the Islamist extremists.

'tPoN' and 'The New Al-Qaeda' don't contradict one another at all. For three years the Neo-cons have inflated the threat to secure power. Iraq, Fallujah and Abu Grab-Ass prison were all preventable atrocities that have simply vindicated Bin Ladens rhetoric for angry, misguided Muslims and made a relatively minor problem worse.