Beyond the Multiplex

In his explosive new film, "Why We Fight," Eugene Jarecki argues that America went to war in Iraq because war is what America does best.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Jan. 19, 2006 | One of America's greatest war heroes warned us what might happen. In fact, two of them did, 165 years apart. We didn't listen. Perhaps in the first case it was too early, and in the second too late. Now we have an enormous military empire with tentacles all around the world, and a democracy that's rotting none too slowly from within. What are we going to do about it?

That's the challenge put to us by Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight," a film that stands out for its passion, ambition and clarion-call sincerity, even amid the contemporary onslaught of political documentaries. Most such movies are a thinly veiled form of agitprop, and I don't say that to disparage them. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which I enjoyed, bombast and all, was pretty much an Anyone But Bush campaign commercial (although whether it did John Kerry's cause any good is open to debate). Robert Greenwald's "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices" is a screed against one particularly reviled corporation and maybe by implication against the dominant mode of consumerism.

"Why We Fight," on the other hand, makes a noble effort to transcend party politics and specific questions of policy. Does Jarecki's film, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival, inveigh against the war in Iraq? Sure it does, but Iraq is not his main topic and George W. Bush is not his main target. All American presidents since World War II, Jarecki argues, have been caught in an escalating spiral of militarism. Maybe Republicans and Democrats have administered it differently, but not by much.

With a military budget in excess of $400 billion (about 52 percent of all federal spending, as opposed to the 7 percent devoted to education and 6 percent to healthcare) feeding a vast array of private-sector contractors and K Street lobbyists, the machineries of war have become America's leading industry. Operating virtually without congressional oversight or accountability -- or, to put it less politely, with almost every member of Congress on the payroll -- this "military-industrial complex" has become enormously influential in American politics and policymaking, at home and abroad. Every few years, this enterprise needs the chance to drive its latest models around the block. Whether these product-placement exhibitions are small in scale and rapidly forgotten (Grenada, Panama, Somalia) or bigger and more hazardous (Vietnam and Iraq), the business of America, to twist Calvin Coolidge's famous phrase, is war.

Of course, Jarecki didn't invent this critique. The very phrase "military-industrial complex," and much of the inspiration for this film, comes from Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Address, broadcast to the nation three days before the end of his presidency in 1961. If you've never seen or heard this speech -- and like nearly all Americans under 50, I never had -- it makes for an electrifying experience. That certainly isn't because of Ike's mode of address; for all his time in the limelight, Eisenhower remained a plain-spoken Kansan, prone to Bush-ian manglings of polysyllabic words ("insiduous"). But to see a heartland Republican, the man who visibly embodied American military might in the struggle against Nazism, issuing such a dire prophecy is to be reminded how far our public discourse has fallen in 40 years.

Much of the speech is cautious and sober, mainstream Republicanism of an almost extinct variety. Eisenhower suggests that the Cold War against Soviet communism -- although he uses neither phrase -- will require sacrifices, and that the ultimate goal must be mutual disarmament and respect, rather than confrontation on the battlefield. He speaks of the need for balance in American life -- "balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy ... balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future."

But the biggest threat to American democracy, says this one-time five-star general, may not be the commie ogre but rather the "permanent armaments industry of vast proportions" created since the end of World War II. The influence of this "immense military establishment" -- another new phrase -- is "economic, political, even spiritual." It is felt "in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government."

Next comes the passage that launched Jarecki's film, and that we should all read and hear with a shudder of recognition: "In the councils of government," Eisenhower goes on, "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. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Next page: George Washington saw it coming too