"Why We Fight"
New York Times/Movie Review
January 20, 2006
MOVIE REVIEW 'WHY WE FIGHT'
Casting a Harshly Critical Eye on the Business of Warfare in America
By MANOHLA DARGIS
The title of Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight" sounds like both a declaration and a question. While variations on these three words are repeated throughout the film - posed as a question to various Joes, Janes and sometimes little Timmy - it is clear from the start of this agitprop entertainment that Mr. Jarecki has a very good idea why America has seemed so eager to pick up arms over the past half-century. Calvin Coolidge famously said that the chief business of the American people is business; 80 years later, Mr. Jarecki forcefully, if not with wholesale persuasiveness, argues that our business is specifically war.
Another American president is critical to that argument. On Jan. 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to the country. Writing in longhand - one of the more arresting images in the film is the tablet on which he wrote his famous speech, scratched-out words and all - Eisenhower took stock of the nation, its recent wars and its military might. "In the councils of government," warned this president and former general of the Army, "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."
MOVIE REVIEW 'WHY WE FIGHT'
Casting a Harshly Critical Eye on the Business of Warfare in America
By MANOHLA DARGIS
The title of Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight" sounds like both a declaration and a question. While variations on these three words are repeated throughout the film - posed as a question to various Joes, Janes and sometimes little Timmy - it is clear from the start of this agitprop entertainment that Mr. Jarecki has a very good idea why America has seemed so eager to pick up arms over the past half-century. Calvin Coolidge famously said that the chief business of the American people is business; 80 years later, Mr. Jarecki forcefully, if not with wholesale persuasiveness, argues that our business is specifically war.
Another American president is critical to that argument. On Jan. 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to the country. Writing in longhand - one of the more arresting images in the film is the tablet on which he wrote his famous speech, scratched-out words and all - Eisenhower took stock of the nation, its recent wars and its military might. "In the councils of government," warned this president and former general of the Army, "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."
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