At least, that’s the inevitable reaction of any rabidly pro-Bush right-wingers who get a chance to see (or hear about) the superb documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Politics of Fear which just aired on BBC2. If you missed it, leave it a couple of days and hope it appears online. If not, part 2 can be seen at 9pm next Wednesday.

According to the superbly-researched film, and the many high-profile interviewees contained within, our current fucked-up situation can basically be blamed on Leo Strauss – the inspiration for NeoCons like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz – and Sayyid Qutb – the bloke who inspired the bloke who inspired Osama bin Laden. I would go into more detail, but I’m tired, it’s late, and this Guardian article summarises it fairly effectively anyway:

“Straussian conservatism had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at finding new foes to keep them going).”

This is – sadly – no sloppy conspiracy theory, but strangely compelling, and almost cliched in its Orwellian tone. The war with the Soviet Union is over. The war on terror has just begun.

It’s all rather scary, but then again we knew that anyway, and as this superb documentary demonstrates pretty much conclusively, that’s the whole point…

This is not a war on terror, it’s a war on liberalism. Bush and bin Laden want the same thing.

(Disagree with the BBC? Disagree with me? Are you a NeoCon?)

Update: Interesting, if long, article on Bush’s faith in himself and his NeoCon outlook. (Reg req)