Why We Fight (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

The list is long, and the case is strong. Since 1954, two years into the first Eisenhower term, the United States has intervened with military force on 40 separate occasions. American presidents have sent troops to Guatemala, Lebanon, Haiti, Cuba, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, The Congo, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Cambodia, Chile, Angola, Afghanistan, Libya, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Lebanon, Grenada, Chad, Bolivia, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Iraq, Bosnia, Iraq again, Sudan, Yugoslavia again, Afghanistan again, Yemen, The Philippines, Colombia, Iraq again, Liberia, Afghanistan again, and Iraq again.

Yes, the U.S. emerged as the only unscathed country following World War II, and yes, the U.S. has seen itself as having a responsibility to serve as the world's policeman since then. The problem, as Sen. John McCain articulates on-camera, is when does it go from being a force for good to a form of imperialism?

Whatever the American people have been told about "Why We Fight," which is the title of Eugene Jarecki's documentary, the bottom line is that the interventions have mostly protected U.S. interests.

Before you start thinking that this is another Michael Moore-style attack from the left, keep in mind that Jarecki's target isn't a single president or corporation, and that he began his project at the urging of none other than Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. No, Ike didn't visit Jarecki in a dream. The young director actually discovered a short film of Eisenhower's farewell address in which the former five-star general warned that the U.S. had to beware of the growing military-industrial complex (a term he coined) which developed after World War II. That is, America had to be vigilant so that the powerful conjunction of Congress, the military, and the corporate interests of defense suppliers did not exert too much of an influence. "We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process," Ike warned, adding, "God help this country when someone sits at this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do."

Okay, that part sounds like a very subtle Michael Moore dig at the current president, but that's not how Jarecki plays this out. Eisenhower emerges as the hero of this documentary, a visionary who predicted the unbalanced influence that the military-industrial complex would exert not just on the nation's budget, but on the nation's foreign policy. Jarecki and his staff did their homework to find numbers and vintage clips to illustrate. Considering the most recent invasion on Afghanistan, for example, Jarecki points out that all of the top 10 companies who profited from the war there had ties to Dick Cheney or a powerful contact at the Pentagon. KBR and Halliburton both had ties to Cheney, and KBR won a 9 million dollar contract to study whether the U.S. Army should start to outsource. Yes, they concluded, and now routine tasks that used to be performed by soldiers themselves, like doing the cooking and laundry, are outsourced to corporations who now perform those services. That means more corporate interests in the military, and Jarecki tells us that the profits of those companies who are engaged in the business of war have gone up by 25 percent. We didn't have an exit strategy for Iraq, a retired Pentagon official says, because we never intended to leave.

Part of the focus of this documentary is on the profiteering of war—the logical conclusion that since corporations are profit driven, the more they're tied to the military and establish U.S. interests abroad, the more corporations will strive to make more money by pressuring the U.S. to act to protect their interests. Time and again Jarecki returns to Ike's speech, at one point showing Ike adamant that "I don't think we should pay one cent more for defense than we have to." The most powerful argument that defense spending comes with a price on American life comes when Ike himself does the math: "The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. This is not a way of life at all." Lines like that are juxtaposed against facts that remind us that the U.S. spends more on defense than all of the NATO countries combined—more, in fact, than any other nation on the planet

Unlike "Fahrenheit 9/11," Jarecki's documentary, which takes its ironic title from Frank Capra's series of WWII propaganda films, doesn't employ a humorous or world-weary tone, doesn't attack any individuals, and doesn't rely mostly on headlines. Jarecki did a lot more homework and came up with four "converts" whose stories are pretty darned compelling. Three of them are retired Pentagon officers who were intimately involved with some of the secret goings-on, while a fourth is about as all-American as it gets. Not only is Wilton Sekzer a retired NYPD officer who lost a son when the World Trade Center collapsed. He also served as a door gunner in Vietnam, and remained patriotic and pro-government even after he realized that what they were told about the Gulf of Tonkin and the reasons why they were fighting in Vietnam was "really B.S." But the last straws came for him when he watched George W. Bush on-camera saying he didn't know where people got the idea that Iraq and the attack on 9/11 were connected (after Bush had previously said they were), and when he asked that his son's name be painted on one of the bombs that were dropped on Baghdad, only to find himself exploited by the government.