Koppel on Discovery/Our Children's Children's War

Our Children's Children's War
Airdate	March 11, 2007
Written by	—
Directed by	—
Network	Discovery Channel
Style	60-minute news documentary
Company	Discovery Channel
Origin	USA
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Koppel on Discovery

Our Children's Children's War (2007) is a TV special about the various and sometimes conflicting ways in which the US government is fighting the global and decentralized threat of Islamic terrorism in Africa and the Middle East.

Host: Ted Koppel

Interviewees: Gen. John Abizaid (CENTCOM Commander), Col. John Nicholson (10th Mountain Division, US Army), Graham Fuller (Fmr Vice Chairman CIA's National Intelligence Council), Adm. Richard Hunt (Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa), Cofer Black (Vice Chairman, Blackwater USA), Lt. Cdr. Ray Alderson (Commander, Manda Bay), Lt. David Afaisen (Guam National Guard), Chris Taylor (Vice President, Blackwater USA), James Fallows (National Correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly), Kalev Sepp (Naval Postgraduate School), Shibley Telhami (Professor, University of Maryland)

Overview

Ted Koppel examines the multifaceted complexities of the concept of a global War on Terror, what he calls "the Long War." He travels to remote outposts of Africa, where small contingents of US troops train and work, as they had prior to 9/11. He also travels to their coordinating headquarters in Florida, where the US military continuously prepares for retaliation for terrorist attacks in the '80s and '90s.

Throughout the Horn of Africa, Koppel finds US troops attempting to win—and succeeding in winning—the "hearts and minds" of Third World citizens by providing protection, medical care and fresh water. He even finds troops in Kenya helping farmers by assisting in the health care of their livestock. Nonetheless, violent measures are still a part of US plans. He videotapes US troops training Ethiopian forces mere days before an Ethiopian invasion of neighboring Somalia in retaliation for attacks on US embassies in the 1990s.

The picture of US involvement is made more complex with the addition of paramilitary forces such as the private corporation Blackwater USA. This "non-governmental organization" has been hired to protect US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. Its company leadership claims the primarily former US military members who make up its payroll are working on the side of the US military, and that they could stop such human rights atrocities as those in Darfur. Meanwhile, Gen. John Abizaid claims they are a detriment, because they are accountable to nobody, not even the US government. Koppel also examines whether these private contractors are an important element of US forces or merely mercenaries for hire.

Koppel's next stop is Afghanistan, where the War on Terror began. Although the Taliban has been gaining ground there, he finds US officers attempting to encourage anti-Taliban forces. Their primary weapon in their arsenal, he finds, is friendship—meeting one-on-one with local leaders and respecting their cultural customs while sharing with them such American customs as cookouts. Nonetheless, in the contested Khyber Pass to Pakistan, US soldiers discuss the attacks they have survived from an invisible enemy firing rockets on their location.

Koppel concludes by speaking with experts who condemn the US overreaction to the 9/11 attacks as the reaction Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups want. He also speaks to a West Point graduating class whose students unanimously agree they will be fighting the War on Terror in 10 years' time. Footage of a three-year-old Arab child in a hood, carting an AK-47, seems to justify their concerns. Koppel concludes the War on Terror extends far beyond the conflict in Iraq, and that it will be a war fought by this generation's grandchildren.