Why We Fight -

The term “military-industrial complex” rolls easily off the tongue.  It’s a term we read in the newspaper or hear on the TV with great regularity. But have we ever given much thought to how vast this complex really is, to what degree it influences our nation’s policies and, more fundamentally, determines who we are?

Combining up-to-the-minute testimony from a range of insiders and luminaries with impeccable historical research, director Eugene Jarecki’s WHY WE FIGHT examines the extent to which the military-industrial complex not only profits from war, but also becomes a force that makes war happen.  Neither an op-ed polemic (e.g. “Fahrenheit 911”) nor an anti-capitalist screed (“The Corporation”), WHY WE FIGHT is more like an essay from the Week in Review: unblinking reportage on what’s going on today balanced with serious doses of historical perspective and human interest.

The film opens with a warning from the grave.  On January 17, 1961, in his farewell address, Dwight Eisenhower – the only five-star general to be President – warned that a “Military-Industrial Complex” was acquiring influence over American life that could imperil democracy on a global scale.  Forty years later, with a defense contractor sitting at the President’s elbow, casualties rising, and defense profits skyrocketing, Ike’s prophecy may have come truer than he feared.

Amid the onslaught of the Iraq war and interwoven with fifty years of U.S. foreign policy, WHY WE FIGHT follows the personal stories of a group of characters in America’s military family.  They are its soldiers and its victims, its dreamers and its disillusioned.

If, like many, you experienced a sense of dread as the Iraq war inexorably approached, the film will answer lingering questions not just about how we fight, but why.  If you were supportive of the war as a cause for freedom, it may even make you reconsider.  Either way, WHY WE FIGHT will certainly make you think about America and the world she so defines.  “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” Eisenhower warned, could be trusted to protect the country from the risk of “destroying from within that which you are trying to protect from without.”

With the country deeply divided and American militarism showing no sign of waning, hearing firsthand from those who actually drive the American military machine makes WHY WE FIGHT a truly important – and alarming – film for our day.

WHY WE FIGHT is a Charlotte Street Film in association with the BBC and Arte.  Written and directed by Eugene Jarecki, the film is produced by Jarecki and Susannah Shipman, with Roy Ackerman, Nick Fraser and Hans-Robert Eisenhower serving as executive producers.

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Movie Review: Why We Fight