Review: Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, & the Selling of American Empire

The fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 has spawned the release of a plethora of films and documentaries about that fatal day. In United 93 and World Trade Centre we are exposed to the detail - sometimes excruciatingly so - of the disaster, from the death of innocents to the stories of heroism and the noble struggle of good against evil.

These films, however, are a-historical, in that they make no attempt to locate the events they portray in a broader context or historical narrative. Instead they are disaster films in the classic sense: a freak, unexplained events disrupts the otherwise ordinary lives of the antagonists. Hijacking Catastrophe takes a different approach. A compelling documentary, it posits September 11 not as a climax, nor a freak event, but as an enabling act, one that allowed the otherwise thwarted ambitions of a clique of foreign policy wonks to become reality.

Read the rest at The Program.

Comments

boy_fromOz said…
The Secret History of 9-11 (screened on SBS last Tuesday) is also two hours well spent.

You don't need conspiracy theories, truth is more ludicrous than fiction. The military learns about each hijacking after the crash, because noone from the FAA tells them. The President is sped off by the Secret Service in the wrong direction, then finds he can't call anyone from Air Force One. He gives the order to shoot down civilian airliners, but the air force doesn't receive it. The one fighter jet within range isn't armed...

And this was against a bunch of amateurs who were already on the terrorist watchlist. How would the US govt have coped with a preemptive strike from China or Russia?
17 September 2006 at 03:49
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