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A powerful, award-winning exploration of the American involvement in Iraq by Eugene Jarecki, Why We Fight (2005) applies inspiration from Frank Capra’s World War II motivational films and President Eisenhower’s farewell address that gave us the term military-industrial complex to explain where the thinking behind this adventure originated.
Too frequently documentaries are bland melanges of talking heads, even when the subject matter is compelling an important. 100 straight minutes of talking about almost any subject can just turn into too much yada yada yada and dramatic yet empty images do little to correct things; repetitive shots gliding down overly similar stretches of whatever are just as snore-inducing. Jarecki avoids this by integrating clips from Eisenhower and other important historical figures.
Mainly though, we see the rationale for the Iraq War through interviews with a few relevant, insightful folks:
Karen Kwiatkowski: A career military officer who was actually in the Pentagon working on the morning of 9/11, and had also spent time on assignment to the National Security Agency, she was assigned to the DoD’s policy development office but resigned in disgust after Cheney associates hijacked her bureau’s function.
Richard Perle: One of the original Neocons, Perle is also one of the heavy lifters in the Project for the New American Century, a thinktank which provided analytical firepower for the attack on Iraq and the use of pre-emptive strikes that are the core of the Bush Doctrine. Perle fervently believes, if we are to take him at his word, that bringing down Saddam Hussein was massively important in reducing the threat to America’s national security.
Wilton Sezker: A retired New York City police officer, Wilton’s son died in the World Trade Center’s collapse. Searching for a way to memorialize him, and thinking back to his own service in Vietnam, Sezker wrote to the military to ask that the son’s name be painted on a missile before it got dropped in Iraq. His request was granted and they even sent him photos of the adorned bomb. Shortly thereafter, though, the former cop saw through the Bush Crew lies about Iraq and now spends his days wondering why he let himself be duped.
Susan Eisenhower: The former general’s granddaughter weighs in, pointing out that exactly what he warned of in that historic speech came to pass nearly immediately, to his great chagrin, and the relationship has become so enmeshed in the system that its invisible.
Chalmers Johnson: A professor specializing in Asian politics who was also a CIA consultant in the Vietnam era, Johnson became disillusioned with American government tactics during the scandals of the ’70s and has since been trying to use his insight and contacts to bring wrongheaded policy into public view, including the publication of three books on what he calls the American Empire. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 Johnson wrote an article for The Nation called Blowback, which is a CIA term referring to unforeseen responses to secret government actions, because in his view this is exactly what caused the terrorist horror in Manhattan and DC; in fact he published a prophetic book with that title in 2000 which received little notice until that sad September day, at which time it jumped onto the bestseller lists.
recommended
