Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire (Study Guide)

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire examines how a radical fringe of the Republican Party used the traumatic events of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks to advance a pre-existing agenda to radically transform United States foreign policy while rolling back civil liberties and social programs at home.

The documentary places the Bush Administration's controversial justifications for the war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically increase military spending in the wake of the Cold War, and to expand U.S. power globally by means of military force.

At the same time, the documentary argues that the Bush Administration has sold this radical and controversial plan for aggressive American military intervention by deliberately manipulating intelligence, political imagery, and the fears of the American people after 9/11.

Narrated by Julian Bond, Hijacking Catastrophe features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers (see biographies in the back of this guide). At its core, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the mainstream media: 'What is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions?' 'How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda?' 'And what is at stake for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented during a second Bush term?