Why We Fight (2005), directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a documentary film about the military-industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era eponymous newsreels commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 20 January 2005, and then was released, rated PG-13, on DVD on 27 June 2005, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Synopsis
Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial complex and its fifty-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was told a lie, so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson, politician Richard Perle, neoconservative commentator William Kristol, writer Gore Vidal, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army because he is poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a military explosives scientist who arrived to the U.S. as a refugee girl from Vietnam in 1975.
Contributors and representatives
Politicians
Senator John McCain
Elected to the United States Senate in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war.
Richard Perle, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard
An influential man in U.S. politics since the 1970s, he founded the Weekly Standard magazine in 1995, and co-founded the Project for the New American Century think tank in 1997.
Charles Lewis, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity — non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989 — investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Civilians
Joseph Cirincione, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs.
Susan Eisenhower, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences.
John Eisenhower, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General (AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson, Central Intelligence Agency 1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute. An academic at the University of California, he has written many articles and books.
Wilton Sekzer, Retired officer, New York City Police Department / Vietnam veteran
His son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks[citation needed].
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sargent in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon][1] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the U.S.A.F., in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
Military participants
'Fuji' and 'Tooms'
U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
A retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel of the Pentagon working with the National Security Agency.
James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Anh Duong
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster bomb.
Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.[2]
See also
References
External links
