Hey folks, Harry here with Copernicus and his review of one of the great documentary films of 2005. This is one that unfortunately will be marginalized by the side of the country that should probably pay the most attention. Oh well...
WHY WE FIGHT
It is no accident that Eugene Jarecki's new documentary WHY WE FIGHT
shares a title with Frank Capra's WWII propaganda films – both try to
answer the question of why Americans go to war. In that sense they
are flip sides of the same coin. But if Capra's films are the coin
face with the eagle holding arrows and an olive branch, Jarecki's is
the side with the head. The film cuts through the easy answers to
the title question, and probes the deeper reasons for American
military involvement around the globe in the post-WWII era. The
smart, well-investigated, and thoroughly human documentary is one of
the most important films of the year, and will engage audiences in the
kind of debate we should already have been having over the last
half-century.
Jarecki's film takes its lead from Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell
address. In it, Eisenhower warned against the perils of a large
standing army and permanent war industry:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
Are Eisenhower's fears already a reality? Is pressure from the
military-industrial complex a factor in our decisions to go to war?
This is just one of many avenues that Jarecki pursues in the film. In
the process he asks the title question to Americans of all stripes –
politicians, bomb makers, soldiers, and the man on the street.
Jarecki never forces an answer, plays partisan politics, or pulls
Michael Moore style stunts. Instead we get a thoughtful
investigation, illustrated through five main stories, each with a
unique perspective on the American war machine.
This list of people interviewed for WHY WE FIGHT is impressive:
Senator John McCain, key neoconservative Iraq war proponents Richard
Perle and William Kristol, Secretary of the Air Force James Roche,
author of "Imperial America," Gore Vidal, author and political
scientist Chalmers Johnson, and many others. But the heart of the
film lies with five interwoven personal stories:
-- Wilton Sekzer, retired New York City cop and Vietnam veteran whose
son was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, asked that his son's
name be put on a bomb to be dropped in Iraq. When President Bush
later claimed that he never linked Saddam Hussein and 9/11, Sekzer
feels betrayed, and comes to regret that his patriotism and loss were
exploited.
-- William Solomon, a 23 year old whose mother has just died, is in
financial trouble, and can't seem to finish his education. He decides
to enlist in the military, to be shipped off to Iraq.
-- Fuji and Tooms are the pilots who dropped the first bombs to open
the current Iraq war. They missed Saddam Hussein, and inflicted heavy
collateral damage. While they did consider the consequences of their
actions, the two are still very proud of their role in the war.
-- Karen Kwiatkowski, retired Lt. Colonel, was assigned to the
Pentagon's Iraq Desk in 2002. She resigned after finding that the
intelligence was being manipulated as it went up the chain of command.
She believes that civilian neoconservatives appointed by the Vice
President, who installed themselves as the "Office of Special Plans,"
hijacked defense policy. In one of her most poignant quotes, she
says, "If you join the military now, you are not defending the United
States of America. You are helping policy-makers pursue an imperial
agenda."
-- Anh Duong fled Saigon in 1975. Now she leads the team developing
thermobaric "bunker-buster" bombs used in Afghanistan and Iraq. She
feels she has a debt to the Americans that rescued her in Vietnam.
Anh Duong would say we fight to stop tyranny. Karen Kwiatkowski says
we fight because we have been deceived into furthering a plan to
dominate the Middle East. Fuji and Tooms say they are fighting for
freedom, but ultimately they are fighting because they are carrying
out the orders of their superiors. William Solomon signs up to fight
because he's poor and he has no direction. Wilton Sekzer might say we
fight because politicians have manipulated our desire for revenge to
further their own agendas. Ultimately they are all right, and the
fragmented nature of the answer to the question is at odds with our
need for moral clarity a la Capra. In a world without Nazis, and
where terrorists don't wear uniforms or unify under a national banner,
we find ourselves fighting proxies, and we don't even know why. While
there may not be one answer, the net effect of the film is to show
that anyone that continues to parrot back the simple answer of "we
fight for freedom," is either a dupe or trying to dupe others.
Jarecki's use of personal stories interwoven with quotes by authors,
politicians, and historians is an engaging way to illustrate the depth
of the subject. While it is easy to take a political side and only
pay attention to the squawking pundits who agree with you on cable TV,
it is much harder to dismiss a heartfelt personal story forged through
hardship. Some of the most insightful quotes come from ordinary
Iraqis. One said, "A family is sleeping in their house and they bomb
them. Is that smart? Is that a smart bomb?" Another painfully
incisive comment: "America will lose because their behavior is not
the behavior of a great nation."
The most compelling stories here come from people without an agenda,
who aren't trying to shade facts to add support to their position, but
who have come to change their minds because of what they have
experienced. These are the stories that are not getting told in our
antagonistic media culture where talking points and circus antics
substitute for meaningful discussion.
My one minor disappointment in the film is that there are some
provocative ideas raised, but they are not always followed up with
enough evidence. For example Gore Vidal makes one of the most
explosive claims in the film, that Japan was trying to surrender after
Hiroshima, and the US dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki anyway. In
effect he is saying that the US acted like terrorists, killing
thousands of civilians just to scare the rest of the world. This
could be the subject of a documentary in its own right, but there is
no further discussion in the film. Also, the notion that the
military-industrial complex has exerted real pressure to go to war to
perpetuate itself is interesting, and something we should always be
vigilant about, but the extent to which this regularly happens is
unclear. Is this the reason we went into Afghanistan, Somalia,
Kosovo, Panama, Grenada, or Vietnam? If you believe that Dick Cheney
is war mongering as part of the military-industrial complex, then it
is easy to believe that this was the case for the current war, but
I've never been able to understand his motives.
For most, the downside to WHY WE FIGHT will be that there is no easy
to follow narrative driving you to the right answer. There is no
villain for you to root against. This is where Jarecki is at his most
brilliant. He is saying that you can't blame any one scapegoat of the
moment – the same patterns have been happening for years. A
convenient villain would also be too easy a way to let ourselves off
the hook. Instead, when we go to war we all have to answer for it.
WHY WE FIGHT won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and it will be
released on January 20 in New York and LA by Sony Pictures Classics.
