Why We Fight
I finally watched a provocative documentary titled “Why We Fight” to the end. Then, I realized how easy I had been; I had thought if I watched this film to the end, I would be able to tackle the assignment Chuck-san gave me at the end of last year; I had been wrong. I realized I didn’t know anything about the history of American war over the past half century; I needed to learn about them first. So, I have read many articles related to this film on Wikipedia and interviews to the director, Eugene Jarecki on BBC web site. I will just try to write my impressions of this film.Dwight D Eisenhower warned the American public of the “military-industrial complex”- a confluence of power that he saw as a threat to democracy itself in his last moment as president. Unfortunately, the phenomenon has been getting worse than his prophesy; we could describe it as the “military- industrial-prison-media complex.” Many numbers of the public reply without hesitating, “freedom” when they were asked the question, “Why do we fight?” What a knee-jerk reaction! Have they asked themselves the question seriously? They should know that the powerful media that they have is incredibly manipulative. Fortunately for them, they can get any information they want on line. Eugene Jarecki brings together voices from a wide range of experts and the insiders, people touched by American war, including Wilton Sekzer, a former helicopter door gunner in Vietnam whose son died in the Sep. 11 attack on the World Trade Centre; Anh Duong, who having been a refugee from Vietnam, becomes one of the leading bomb makers in the United States; Bill Kristol, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard; Gore Vidal, a prominent author and liberal commentator; James Roche, secretary of the U.S. Air Force; and U.S. pilots identified as Fuji and Tooms, who dropped the first bombs over Baghdad when the Iraq war broke in 2003. They show Washington’s foreign policy is overly preoccupied with the idea of military supremacy and military has become too important in U.S. life. Also, Eugene Jarecki focuses on how the invasion of Iraq was designed and carried out. Despite U.S. policymakers’ initial assertion, what they face is a situation of intense chaos. It’s about time that they should seek the ways to sever the continuing cycle of war.