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Why We Fight
By Karen Kwiatkowski
02/11/06 "Lew
Rockwell" -- -- Director Eugene Jarecki has put together a
wonderful, moving and important film that examines the modern
American military machine and the modern American militaristic
mindset.
His film is
the 2004 Sundance Film Festival’s Documentary Award-winning
Why We Fight.
The title of the film recalls Frank Capra’s World War II films –
popular movies that promoted, eulogized and helped mythologize
America’s participation and sacrifice in that war. We fought in
World War II for many reasons, but mostly it seems, because we
believed.
Why We
Fight carefully illustrates how our beliefs, our national
character, our shared view of ourselves as Americans have changed
since World War II. Jarecki utilizes President
Eisenhower’s
famous farewell speech
of January 17th, 1961. In this speech, Ike warned of
a growing military-industrial complex, and its possible negative
impact on our democracy and our republic. As the late Colonel David
Hackworth used to remind me, Eisenhower spoke of the dangers
presented by military-industrial-congressional complex.
Eisenhower
advised there was a "…danger that public policy could itself become
the captive of a scientific-technological elite." He reminded us,
"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper
meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense
with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty
may prosper together. He said,
…we – you
and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only
for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the
precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material
assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of
their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to
survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent
phantom of tomorrow.
I had read,
but never before actually watched Eisenhower’s farewell speech until
I saw Why We Fight. Those who are today manning the ship of
state in Washington, D.C., like people my age, completely missed
this prophetic speech. As Ike passed the presidential baton to a
fresh new face, a youthful George W. Bush, like most of his
generation, was focused on high school shenanigans, and the American
people basked in long-awaited economic prosperity.
Ike knew a
thing or two about war, American government, and our nascent
military-industrial complex. Eisenhower worried, but we weren’t
paying attention – at least in 1961. When asked why he made the
film, Jarecki said, "Americans [today] have a visceral sense that
something is rotten, but no-one can seem to connect the dots…. I
wanted to make this film because we need what Eisenhower called an ‘alert
and knowledgeable citizenry’ to compel change, to improve the
public’s ability to monitor those in power."
Why We
Fight is filmed in a new kind of America. It is still filled
with everyday people pulling together for glory, Capra-style. But
this documentary carefully and intelligently reveals the present-day
fruition of Ike’s darker vision.
Many everyday
Americans are featured in Why We Fight. A father who lost his
son in the Twin Tower attacks on 9-11. Workers making armaments on
massive factory floors, and workers writing global engagement policy
prescriptions from inside carefully appointed urban thinktanks.
Politicians and contractors and military recruiters and soldiers.
These
simultaneously common and uncommon people are key to the film’s
humanity and its directness – because these people are us.
However,
Jarecki’s steady hand reveals that while we are indeed Frank Capra’s
Americans, we are today, in Jarecki’s words, " …caught in a vortex
of spiraling militarisation and moral and economic bankruptcy, and
[we] feel remote from and powerless to change those forces."
Why We
Fight grapples with this sense of moral and economic bankruptcy
that many feel as we stay the course and fight wars in Iraq, and
elsewhere. The film illuminates the "insolvent phantom of tomorrow"
that Ike foretold, and it attempts to get underneath the superficial
explanations, and ideological perspectives. In Jarecki’s words, "We
tend to hunt for heroes and villains, rather than study roots of the
problem. I wanted to make a film that goes beyond the focus on the
individual."
Jarecki gets
it. He understands and clearly articulates how the care and feeding
of the American military leviathan has been, and remains, a shared
role of both Democratic and Republican Parties. There hasn’t been an
antiwar party at the national level for decades, and it is easy to
see why. What Cold War competition, massive federalization and
sophisticated and relentless government agitprop pitting "us"
against "them" has produced is summed up in a Raytheon worker’s
reflection on her job. She pauses for a moment, and says, "I’d
really rather be making toys for Santa." But she isn’t.
Will
Washington, D.C. like the film? It is hard to predict whether the
Bush Administration or the loyal opposition in Congress will first
launch a stone at Why We Fight. Jarecki has provided an
apolitical history and an apolitical reality, portraying an America
evolved in the dangerous direction that Eisenhower exactly foretold.
Can the
military-industrial-congressional complex be reined in? Should it
be? To the extent that Jarecki passes judgment on the latter
question, he defers to Eisenhower in the affirmative. It should be
"compelled" and controlled by an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,
such that "security and liberty" may prosper together. But can it
be?
The film is
perhaps less optimistic of whether it can be reined in, as an
interesting clip with Senator John McCain discussing the growth of
the military industrial complex is cut short by an urgent phone call
from the former CEO of Halliburton, and Vice President of the United
States.
But what I
really find inspiring about Why We Fight is that we see the
words, thoughts and deeds of the average American in this movie –
the factory workers, the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters,
the backbone of this nation. To a person, it is these Americans who
exude patriotism and deep abiding love for this country. It is these
Americans who, with all their faults, are founts of common decency
and morality. Jarecki is excruciatingly fair in his portrayal of
war-promoting policy wonks and war policy beneficiaries like Richard
Perle, Bill Kristol, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.
But the fact remains that these policy designers simply don’t make a
hell of a lot of sense.
Jarecki has
both artfully and scientifically pulled away the curtain that
currently shields the pillars of the present-day American
military-industrial-congressional complex. In a time where Abramoff,
Halliburton overcharges, and Duke Cunningham-style "congressional
leadership" has already publicly embarrassed Washington and the
Pentagon, this film will be downplayed by the leadership in
Washington, D.C. on both sides of the aisle. These public servants
and the defense corporations in league with them will say, "Enough
already!"
But Why We
Fight will eagerly be consumed and digested by millions and
millions of real and loyal Americans who are now weary of strange
endless wars in far away places and an economy wasting under the
demands of voracious spending on "defense." These American, as I did
upon watching the film, will begin to really think about what we
have become. These Americans will become newly awake, newly alert,
newly watchful. These Americans will begin to embrace and assert, as
did our forefathers, the blessed idea that we are governed and
directed by our own consent, and none other. Eisenhower would
certainly approve.
Karen
Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send
her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on
defense issues with a libertarian perspective for
militaryweek.com, hosts the call-in radio show
American Forum on Saturday nights, and blogs occasionally for
Huffingtonpost.com. To receive automatic announcements of new
articles and upcoming guests on her American Forum radio program,
click here.
Copyright ©
2006 LewRockwell.com
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