Why We Fight, winner of the the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, it is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine,
weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a whos who of
military and beltway insiders.
Featuring John McCain, William Kristol,
Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle and others, Why We Fight launches a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military
industrial complex and the rise of the American Empire. Inspired by
Dwight Eisenhowers legendary farewell speech (in which he coined the
phrase military industrial complex), filmmaker Jarecki (THE TRIALS OF
HENRY KISSINGER) surveys the scorched landscape of a half-centurys
military adventures, asking how and telling why a nation of,
by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system
whose survival depends on a state of constant war.
The film moves
beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the
deeper questions of why why does America fight? What are the forces political, economic, ideological that drive us to fight against an ever-changing enemy? Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called Why We Fight that explored Americas reasons for entering the war, Jarecki notes.
Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far
less clear, I think its crucial to ask the questions: Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us
