THE POLITICS OF FEAR (TURNING POINT: 9/11 AND THE WAR ON TERROR

 

The 9/11 attacks have been the subject of so many brilliantly made, insightful documentaries, it's simply overwhelming.

James Hanlon and Gedeon and Jules Naudet's stunning CBS documentary '9/11' was one of the first and best eyewitness accounts of the day.

Telling the story from the perspective of two French brothers who were making a documentary about New York firefighters but ended up getting separated during the attacks, it stunningly conveyed the terror of being caught up in the events of that day.

Nicole Rittenmeyer and Seth Skundrick's '102 Minutes That Changed America' for the History Channel did likewise in 2008, setting the bar high for all other 9/11 documentaries, with its innovative stitching together of news footage with home video and mobile phone video to build a picture of how events unfolded in Manhattan.

Since then, filmmakers have examined the attacks and their legacy from it would seem almost every angle.

Henry Singer's Channel 4 documentary 'The Falling Man' was based on an Associated Press photograph of a man who jumped from one of the Twin Towers.

Dan Reed's documentary 'Mosque at Ground Zero' dealt with an ultimately unsuccessful bid to build an Islamic cultural centre near the site of the World Trade Center aimed at bringing faiths together but which generated huge controversy.

His other film 'In the Shadow of 9/11' focused on the Liberty City Seven who were accused of being in a terrorist cell in Miami.

Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was fuelled by a deep anger over President George W Bush's controversial election victory over Al Gore and his administration's use of the 9/11 attacks to strip away civil liberties and justify a questionable invasion of Iraq.

Few documentaries, though, have been as comprehensive or as epic in scope as Brian Knappenberger's new Netflix series 'Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror' which has come out in time for the 20th anniversary.

Knappenberger's five part documentary series interviews survivors of the atrocities in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, members of the Bush administration, the FBI, US soldiers subsequently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, journalists, foreign affairs analysts and the lawyer for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks.

As with all great documentaries, it builds a compelling narrative that covers the events before, during and after 9/11, reflecting on their significance but it also draws out some hair raising anecdotes, insights and revelations from its interviewees that force the viewer to question what it was all for.

Partially bookended by the observations of Desiree Bouchat, an employee in the South Tower of the World Trade Center, it opens with her setting the scene of the gorgeous sunny morning on the day of the attacks and the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 after it took off from Boston's Logan Airport.

Towards the conclusion of the fifth episode, we see her talk about the impact 9/11 had on her and her compulsion to tell its story after realising that for five years she was so traumatised she "became a zombie".

The first episode very much focuses on the events of the day, drawing upon the experiences of those caught up in the dreadful events that unfolded in Manhattan.

Marriott World Trade Center hotel engineer Gregory Frederick, Department of Transportation employee Leokadia Glogowski, Port Authority worker Stephen Kern and Bouchat give chilling eyewitness accounts of what it was like to be in the Twin Towers when the first plane struck and about what happened as the enormity of what was unfolding started to register.

Lacing their accounts with audio from air traffic control, video footage and firefighter Gregg Hanson and Department of Investigations Assistant Director Vincent Green's observations about the response to the first plane hitting the North Tower, Knappenberger builds a sense of foreboding as we wait for the story to inevitably lead to the second plane hitting the South Tower and then their eventual collapse.

The canvas, however, broadens after the credits to examine the history of Afghanistan and the rise of Osama Bin Laden, focusing on the history of the Taliban.

It quickly becomes clear that Knappenberger is not interested just in the terrible events of 9/11 but also their wider implications for the US and the world in the two decades that followed.

Bruce Hoffman, a Senior Fellow at the Council Foreign Relations, helps set the context of the Taliban's resistance to the occupation of Afghanistan by troops from the Soviet Union, the support received from President Ronald Reagan's administration, the emergence of Osama Bin Laden as an extremist and the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center.

While the second episode continues to detail the grim events of 9/11 bringing in the experiences of those in the Pentagon like Retired US Army Colonel Marilyn Wills, Knappenberger benefits from the contributions from key officials in the White House like Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

In a powerful prelude, though, Wills recounts how she led a group of Pentagon workers to safety, only to find herself lapsing out of consciousness after she jumped from the burning building and being taken to hospital on the back of a flagged down freight truck while CPR was performed on her.

In an episode that examines the circumstances surrounding the crash of United 93, there is a compelling account by Andrew Card of how he had to break news to President Bush of the second plane hitting the Twin Towers during a photo op with second graders at an elementary school in Florida.

Card reveals he told him: "A second plane hit the Second Tower. America is under attack" and it sheds even more light on an image many of us have seen of a US President sitting uncomfortably in the spotlight, chewing his bottom lip, processing the information.

The former Chief of Staff recalls how the President had barely boarded Air Force One and hadn't got into his seat as the plane barrelled down the runway for take off - just in case it might be attacked. 

Such was the paranoia in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The series covers the invasion of Afghanistan, the introduction of the Patriot Act and the sanctioning of torture methods in Guantanamo but as the episodes roll on, a picture emerges of one monumental blunder after another not just by the Bush administration but President Barack Obama's and then Donald Trump's.

With fear and revenge the main motivating factors of the US's response to 9/11, the Bush administration makes some catastrophic decisions like pulling troops out of Afghanistan when Al Qaeda and the Taliban were under the cosh to fight the war in Iraq.

Knappenberger's documentary reaffirms the view that the sole purpose of the war in Iraq appeared to be to finish the job that President Bush's father's administration failed to do - toppling Saddam Hussein.

But it also proves to be a costly and fatal distraction from the effort to weaken Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies and build a progressive society in Afghanistan.

The failure to produce evidence to back up their claim that Saddam Hussein's administration had weapons of mass destruction proves hugely damaging.

A section on the waterboarding and sensory deprivation tactics used on Al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo Bay demonstrates how the administration's eagerness to find loopholes in the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners not only damaged America's international standing but was a fool's errand.

Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, observes torture tactics often yield unreliable information because those subjected to them tend to say anything if they think it will make them stop.

"The difference between cooperation and compliance is with compliance people will tell you what you think you want to hear to stop the pain," he says.

And it soon becomes clear these tactics were the source of the dubious information the Bush administration relied upon about unproven links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Soufan goes on to note the CIA inspector general in 2004 did not believe the tactics deployed against detainees in Guantanamo yielded any significant information that could have prevented future terror attacks - a claim disputed at the time by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he defended waterboarding.

Given recent events, some of the most damning observations in Knappenberger's series are centred around the US's engagement and disengagement in Afghanistan.

A failure to go after Osama Bin Laden when he was believed to be cornered in Tora Bora comes in for heavy criticism because of the Bush administration's reticence to get involved in a ground war and their fixation with Iraq.

The Obama administration's desperation to get out of Afghanistan comes in for heavy criticism too - especially its very public spelling out of the plan for an initial surge of US troops followed by a withdrawal.

The administration's move is shown to be tactically naive - encouraging the Taliban to draw them into a prolonged, costly and gruelling conflict.

While there is a compelling account of the US military operation that resulted in the shooting of Osama Bin Laden, the series questions the focus of administration on equipping and preparing the Afghan military to defeat the Taliban. 

There are some damning anecdotes about the US Government's indulgence of Afghan Generals, including one about the purchase of camouflage uniforms designed for use in forests in a country with only four per cent forestry just because one military leader liked it.

Eyewitness accounts from soldiers about the Taliban's use of IEDs to slow down troops and of suicide bombers to change how US forces engaged with locals also hit home, conveying the sense of sliding morale.

America's eventual weariness with prolonged engagement in Afghanistan is also starkly illustrated by one soldier's tale about phoning his family and realising his son is more interested in the party he is going to than his safety.

With $2.3 trillion spent on the war in Afghanistan, 2,400 US soldiers dead, 50,000 injured, 140,000 Afghans killed - - the majority of them civilian casualties - Knappenberger's series shows the corrosive effect 9/11 and the subsequent military engagement has had in America's faith in its politicians, its system of government and its place in the world.

President Donald Trump's administration desperation to disengage and Mike Pompeo's talks with the Taliban are presented as a throwing under the bus of the emerging Afghani political class - particularly the generation of educated young people, especially women, who have benefitted over the past 20 years.

With President Biden carrying on the Trump policy of disengagement and focusing on pulling US troops out of Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, former National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General HR McMaster delivers some of the most scathing comments about the final capitulation to the Taliban - noting they said one thing in the Pompeo peace talks while suppressing their fellow countrymen and women.

Where's the outrage, he asks, about the Taliban being allowed to slaughter expectant mothers and children in a maternity ward just hours after striking a deal with the Trump administration?

Where's the fury about them attacking marketplaces or killing young people, including women, studying at the American University in Kabul?

He asks: "Where are the humanitarians and why aren't they concerned about us empowering this terrorist organisation - this organisation which has a brutal and murderous agenda - on our way out of Afghanistan?"

Towards the end of the series Bruce Hoffman makes a telling observation that the mistake US leaders made after 9/11 was casting the effort to avenge the attacks as "the War Against Terror".

He muses: "The phrase 'War Against Terror' was an enormously compelling summons to battle but it was enormously misleading. 

"It should have been a war on terrorism because then it would have been focused on the group, on the individuals who had caused the attacks and were continuing to threaten us.

"Once it became a war on terror, it became anything that scared us."

And that is the central thesis in a brilliantly edited and thoroughly researched documentary series.

The 9/11 attacks instilled so much fear and anger into US and Western society, our leaders just couldn't think straight.

Bad tactical decisions were made that could avoided the US and its allies getting sucked into a prolonged conflict in Afghanistan.

Catastrophic decisions were made about giving the White House too much power to wage war, to sanction spying on its own citizens and to bend the rules to allow the torture of terror suspects in return for dubious information.

Perhaps the most telling observation in the whole series comes exactly at its halfway point - halfway through the third episode.

After a withering critique from several commentators of George W Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney's strategy of giving the White House absolute power to wage war, Michel Paradis, a senior attorney at the Department of Defense, makes its most forensic observation.

"It's as if the politics of fear had set in.. to see that fear, which I certainly had and everyone had, become a poison in the society where you just abandon the things that make the United States unique."

'Turning Point: 9/11 and the War On Terror' is quite frankly the best documentary about recent history since 'The Death of Yugoslavia' which aired on the BBC after the atrocities in the Balkans.

That recommendation is as high as you can get. 

Not only is it impressive in scope but it delivers the kind of insights you would want from a documentary of its kind - insights only those on the inside could deliver.

But it also does it sensitively - mindful of the impact of 9/11 on the victims families, on the US troops deployed abroad and on the people of Afghanistan.

Caitlin Langone, whose police officer father died in the rescue operation at the World Trade Center, tells Knappenberger's documentary at one point: "It’s important to learn your history.

”It’s important to know the full scope of what led to 9/11, 9/11 itself, the aftermath. It’s important to know the good, the bad, the ugly, the real.”

'Turning Point: 9/11 and the War On Terror' helps do exactly that.

For anyone wishing to understand 9/11 and its impact, it is a sobering, yet breathtaking essential watch.

('Turning Point: 9/11 and the War On Terror' was released on Netflix on September 1, 2021)

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