Show Notes
‘Follow the money.’ That was George W. Bush’s directive to the US Treasury after 9/11. Choking off al-Qaida’s finances proved complicated — but what happened next went far beyond that. A small team of Treasury bureaucrats weaponised the global economic system itself, and built a financial nuclear bomb.
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Archive in this episode:
‘Indictment of Islamic Charity Leader’/C-Span
‘UN declares famine in southern Somalia’/AFP News Agency
‘September 11 Commission Report’/C-Span
‘Book Discussion: Treasury’s War with author Juan Zarate’/Center for Strategic & International Studies
‘Juan Zarate: Treasury’s War’/Politics and Prose
‘Horn of Africa Crisis: Somalia's Famine’/Fault Lines/Al Jazeera
‘Former Afghan president slams unjust U.S. plan for frozen assets, urges return’/CGTN
‘Trump: BRICS was setup to degenerate our dollar’/CNBC
‘Obama Lauds N.Korea Sanctions’/CBS News
More from Aftershock: The War on Terror
In May 2002, six months after the invasion of Afghanistan but before the Iraq war, the London Review of Books held a debate: ‘The War on Terrorism: Is There an Alternative?’ The panel comprised Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Jacqueline Rose, Anatol Lieven and Onora O’Neill.
For the final episode, host Daniel Soar is joined by Patrick Cockburn, Laleh Khalili and Tom Stevenson for a live discussion on the War on Terror and its aftershocks.
The events of 9/11 exposed cracks in the US intelligence apparatus. In response, the National Security Agency built the most extensive surveillance system in history. What was sold as a counterterrorism measure was turned on American citizens and the line between security and privacy all but disappeared. The data captured fed the Pentagon's international kill list and the surveillance industrial complex was born.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq created a dilemma for the Bush administration: what to do with the thousands of detainees captured during the War on Terror. John Yoo, a White House lawyer, came up with a new legal argument that allowed detainees to be held indefinitely without trial. Habeas corpus was suspended, the constitution upended and Guantánamo Bay became a judicial black hole.
After the Twin Towers fell, Donald Rumsfeld reportedly told President Bush: ‘Now we can do Iraq.’ The neo-conservatives said it would be easy: American troops would be greeted with flowers and sweets. But the occupation quickly unravelled, leaving Iraq in chaos. Welcome to the Forever Wars.