Why We Fight
by Eugene Jarecki
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DVD details
Actor: Gore Vidal, John Ashcroft, John McCain, Ken Adelman, Osama Bin LadenDirector: Eugene Jarecki
Brand: Sony
Producer: Eugene Jarecki
Writer: Eugene Jarecki
Producer: Alessandra Meyer
Producer: Hans Robert Eisenhauer
Producer: Julie Fischer
Producer: Mette Hoffman Meyer
Producer: Nick Fraser
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: Arabic (Original Language); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-06-27
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of Why We Fight
DVD Review: Please tell me if you know the song!
Summary: 5 Stars
There is a jazz song at minute 8 that I really want the name of. Please someone know!DVD Review: My thoughts
Summary: 5 Stars
Truly a "MUST SEE" video! I am shareing this with all of my family and many friends. We had better wake up to what is happening while we let "them" run the country and pay little attention to what is happening to our industrial complex. It may already be too late!DVD Review: The military industrial complex has three legs, the third one is Congress
Summary: 5 Stars
What I most like in this documentary is that it gives an inside look into the military industrial complex. You see how weapon systems are first being proposed, and also how Lockheed celebrates the winning of a bid. But you also see how Congress supports the military industrial complex. The arms manufacturers act very intelligently, by distributing the production facilities over all the states of America, so each and every congressman applauds when defense budget is going up. You also will see some quite extraordinarily images of ordinary people inventing bombs and producing them. What most amazed me was the high number of women involved ! And when interviewed, one of them said that she would definitively prefer making toys. But that was the job she got... What kind of economy is this ? Well, this huge logistic machinery serves the troops on the front ! Therefore, the US needs to be at war permanently.
When Eisenhower pronounced his farewell speech in 1961 he warned us that we should never let the weight of the military industrial complex "endanger our liberties or our democratic processes". However, he already knew, being president, that he himself was unable to stop them. The defense budget rose continuously when he was president, due to pressure of the Big Arms Producers on Congress.
It is also clear that the huge profits made by this industry influence directly foreign policy of the US. In 1963 Kennedy was killed by the military industrial complex, because he wanted to retreat from Vietnam and make peace with the Soviet Union. In 2001, we got a big fireworks show in New York. Do you remember how many skyscrapers collapsed ? Two ? No : three. That's weird, isn't it, when only two planes hit the WTC-towers. How do they do that ? Maybe, to prevent us from asking too many questions, we got the Patriot Act, fulfilling Eisenhower's fear that one day we will suffer from "endangering our liberties". So less than 40 years after Eisenhower's farewell speech, his predictions rang true. The US abolished its democracy in 1963, and stopped being a free country in 2001. What is left is an Evil Empire - dominating the world.
Why we fight ? For freedom ? No. For business ? Certainly. The arms industry is the biggest industry of the US, so it needs to fuel it profits by making war. And also, like a historian tells in this documentary : "The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is to reposition the US as the country that must be obeyed. It's an easy way to send a signal to the planet that the US is in charge and that it's gone do what it wants. Who defies the US must be punished." The US has no exit plan of Iraq, because 14 permanent bases have been constructed. The second biggest oil reserves of this world will be "safe" - for freedom ?
DVD Review: great video must see
Summary: 5 Stars
this is a must see video. explains the establishment killed JFK to stop him from ending the cold war. DVD Review: A thought provoking cautionary that attempts but ultimately fails to convincingly explain "why we fight"
Summary: 2 Stars
A thought provoking cautionary that attempts but ultimately fails to convincingly explain why America has gone to war several times since the end of World War II.
To its credit, it informs the viewer about the burgeoning business of war, that is, the commerce and industry that exists to manufacture weapons and materiel for war -- which President Eisenhower warned America about in 1961. But the film does not effectively make the case of how that industry has led us into wars.
It does chronicle the lies and half truths that Americans have been fed over the decades and in this regard I think the film is successful. Certainly many Americans today believe that the rationale for war with Iraq was false; that indeed Bush, Cheney, and other neo-conservatives may have been part of a much bigger strategy of global domination through the projection of military power. It rightly points out that our Congress did little in the way of deliberating whether the Iraq war was advisable; that it abdicated its responsibility in this regard. However, the film is not even handed and sometimes is dishonest.
In the latter half of the film, many scenes are added merely for shock value, and in the style of left leaning filmmaker Michael Moore, snippets of news footage of our soldiers in combat are juxtaposed in such a way as to suggest that our men and women in uniform are somehow indecent or even barbaric (for example, a scene of a soldier firing a shot at a combatant shortly after a deadly skirmish) as they go about the mission under extraordinarily difficult conditions that we civilians can never truly appreciate.
Yes, this film does give us pause to reflect, but it does not answer its own question of "why we fight". Ask any survivor of the holocaust why we fought. Ask the French citizenry about Nazi occupation and their subsequent liberation by the Allies why we fight. There are two sides to this discussion -- unfortunately this film chose to only argue for one.
Description of Why We Fight
Why We Fight is the provocative new documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.Named after the series of short films by legendary director Frank Capra that explored America's reasons for entering World War II, Why We Fight surveys a half-century of military conflicts, asking how - and answering why - a nation of, by and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a government system whose survival depends on an Orwellian state of constant war.
The Why We Fight DVD features interviews and observations by a "who's who" of military and Washington insiders including Senator John McCain, Gore Vidal, and Dan Rather. Beginning with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's prescient 1961 speech warning of the rise of the "military industrial complex," Why We Fight moves far beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the deeper questions of why America seemingly is always at war. What are the forces - political, economic, and ideological - that drive us to clash against an ever-changing enemy? Just why does America fight? Unforgettable, powerful and at times disturbing, Why We Fight on DVD will challenge viewers long after the last fade-out.
Fans of Oliver Stone's J.F.K. will recognize the opening moments of writer-director Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, in which outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower warns of the pernicious and growing influence of what he called the "military-industrial complex." But Stone's movie, which uses the same footage, was a work of fiction. While those who disagree with the decidedly leftist point of view in this documentary will probably consider it the product of paranoid liberal fantasy as well, there's enough credible material, much of it supplied by the targets of Jarecki's criticisms, to make Eisenhower look like a prophet and everyone else uneasy about the dark confluence of politics, money, and war that controls the country's fortunes. The message here is that while there may be some who sincerely believe that America's various military engagements (in Iraq, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere) since World War II are the product of our God-given duty to spread freedom and halt the influence of evil ideologies around the world, the real reason we fight is that war is good business. This is hardly a bulletin; anyone who is surprised by allegations that politicians pander to defense contractors, or that Vice President Dick Cheney helped secure huge deals for Halliburton, the company he formerly headed, simply hasn't been paying attention (Politicians lie? How shocking!). In fact, the principal drawback to Jarecki's film is simply that there's nothing particularly revelatory or compelling about it. Only when he takes a personal approach does he go beyond the obvious; the story of a retired New York policeman and former Vietnam veteran whose son died in the World Trade Center, who wanted revenge, but who became seriously disillusioned when Bush admitted that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, adds some much needed human interest. Still, Why We Fight, which includes a director's audio commentary track and a few other bonus features, serves as a grim reminder that the world's most powerful nation has strayed far from the principles of our founding fathers, a development that does not bode well for America's future. --Sam Graham
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