August 31, 2006

Published February 8, 2006

FILM REVIEW
One Great Big Fight Club

Why We Fight
Directed by Eugene Jarecki
Opens Friday, Feb. 10

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

Preaching to the choir, long belittled as an exercise of dubious efficacy, does not receive its due. Employed as a means of reawakening the once faithful very visibly gone to nod behind the pulpit, it triggers a signal to the back pews that a worthwhile message is at hand.

Whether Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight proves capable of engendering such a ripple is impossible to predict. However, of those who view this cogent work, sculpted by a crack production team, few will emerge unmoved.

The Grand Jury Prize winner from Sundance 2005 seamlessly blends historic footage, scenes of the Iraq war, and interviews with people from soldiers to horse ranchers to think tank associates — all of whose lives directly touch on the current conflict. Jarecki fills the documentary requisite of keeping his constituent parts invigorating as they collectively posit a larger idea: the role of venality and empire-building in America’s decision to go to war.

At the end of his second term in office, President Eisenhower, a World War II hero and certainly no liberal, warned the country of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex. A term he coined himself, it refers to the alliance of the arms industry, the Pentagon, and Congress. His concern was that the dynamic of this relationship would create a juggernaut not easily contained.

Why We Fight sets out to prove Eisenhower’s prescience. As much as Jarecki wants this to be an unbiased examination of facts, 40 percent of Americans, who currently believe the Iraq war was and continues to be just, might find his method of scrutiny a bit questionable.

Those citizens would probably not consider the juxtaposition of conversations with U.S. pilots proud of their bombing mission that opened the war with scenes of the civilian dead to be balanced journalism. Indeed, it does leave a certain impression.

They would most likely see the story of Karen Kwiatkowski, an officer stationed in the Pentagon, as an isolated case. She resigns after witnessing neoconservative appointees of the Bush Administration inappropriately shape intelligence.

It is a little harder to challenge the documented connection between Congress and the weapons industry, or the role of voters who demand continued defense contracts, which keep them employed.

Why We Fight argues that the United States economy (that includes all of us) to a large degree depends on war and the industry that supplies the means through which it is waged.

For the most part the information presented in the film is not hard to find: the dots are not that difficult to connect. Jarecki addresses not what’s going on without our knowledge, but with our approval and often, explicit consent.