We all need stories ‘to help us make sense of the complexity of reality’, intones the sensible sounding voice of Adam Curtis at the start of his new documentary about Afghanistan, Bitter Lake.
But stories told by ‘those in power’ are ‘increasingly unconvincing and hollow’. What a relief then that Curtis has raided the archives of BBC News on our behalf for footage of the west’s 13 year engagement in Afghanistan to construct his own more than two hour long story.
His conclusion: the crisis in Afghanistan is all the fault of the witless Americans!
The problem all began on a US warship parked in the Suez Canal in 1945 (cue newsreel). It was there that President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and agreed to buy all of his oil. But the wicked Saudis used their oil wealth to export their ‘radical, violent and extremely puritanical’ form of Islam – Wahhabism – around the world, including to Afghanistan.
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