WHY WE FIGHT

In his famous 1961 speech, Eisenhower warned Americans to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the "military-industrial complex."

Unfortunately, Eisenhower didn’t point out congressional compliance with the interests of the military-industrial and left the public to wonder how such a warning should be heeded.

Now, America is a police state whose militarized goons send their warning message of ongoing murder and brutality on a daily basis. Ike may have had his heart momentarily in the right place, but that didn't last long.

Eisenhower’s concerns for the country’s destruction from within are shown to have come to full fruition in the guise of corporate warmongers such as Haliburton and Lockheed Martin. Jarecki thoughtfully illustrates how neocon think tanks have robbed the American people of their imagined democracy in a country that spends more money on its military than all other military nations combined.

Director Eugene Jarecki ("The Trials Of Henry Kissinger") methodically uses Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Presidential farewell speech as a talking point for such people as Richard Perle, Gore Vidal, and Wilton Sekzer, a Vietnam vet and retired New York City cop, to discuss America’s corporate-led military crisis.

"Why We Fight" is an essential cinematic document toward understanding the historical links from WWII to our modern times that allowed corporations to seize a stranglehold on congress, enabling them to create a permanent system for generating war for the sole sake of generating enormous profits. Retired Pentagon Lt. Gen. Karen Kwiatkowski sends a shocking distress signal with her persuasive statements about leaving her job due to the connections that she saw between neocon think-tanks and corporations responsible for setting military policies–both domestic and abroad.

Just as John Wesley Harding borrowed the title "Why We Fight," from director Frank Capra’s series of WWII propaganda films, for one of his albums, so too does Jarecki utilize the pithy epithet to set a broad-reaching narrative tone.

The film can be viewed as a solid companion piece to Errol Morris’s exceptional documentary "The Fog of War," about the lessons of Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Like Morris’s film, "Why We Fight" is a movie that commands repeated viewing to fully digest its dense layers of crucial information. Entertaining, informative, and thought- provoking "Why We Fight" clearly exposes the enemy within. Don’t miss it.

Rated PG-13. 98 mins.