I Still Know Why We Fight (Last Summer)

Why We Fight (2005)
written and directed by Eugene Jarecki

God help this country when somebody sits at this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are many different kinds of documentaries. Most barely scratch the surface of a subject, a rare few strive for some form of comprehensive study, and some just serve as provocative starting points for further study and thus are meant to invite dialogue and (whether they mean to or not) incite argumentation. Why We Fight is of this latter sort. It scratches the surface of the idea of the military-industrial complex and reveals that added to that traditional pairing now is a political-ideological complex that combines with the other complex to affect the destiny of the entire nation. I have to admire anyone who can start talking about this subject without starting to sound like a wingnut and it takes a lot of work for anyone to approach this subject with an open mind. Lefties and pacifists will immediately start quoting Chomsky and the righties and John Birchers will start quoting Ayn Rand and nobody will think about it all with an open mind. Jarecki's achievement is that he creates a film that won't make anyone happy but he clearly wants to get a conversation started that most people don't want to think about too much. People like slogans and it's really easy to revert to these slogans when you start talking about the military.

This is why Jarecki is clever enough to keep reverting to President Eisenhower's famous farewell address. It's hard to tar and feather Ike (the man who won WW II) with being unpatriotic for warning that the combination of a massive arms industry that depends on government spending on a massive military commitment has serious long-term consequences for our republic.
Ever wonder why we didn't close down all those bases around the globe when the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR imploded? Ever wonder why the theory of Pax Americana reaching across the globe was so appealing? Ever wonder where think tanks get their money? (Hint: it's not from selling delicious cookies.) Think tanks are not houses of philosophical wisdom, they're ideological factories, employed to drive the desired point home and to develop those desired points as much as possible. The brilliance of the military-industrial-political-ideological complex is that anytime you begin to question their premises they wrap themselves up in a flag, slap a yellow ribbon on their foreheads and accuse anyone who doubts their wisdom as traitors. Ike saw it coming, but even he wasn't in a position to do anything to unravel the system. After all, there was a communist threat to be countered. The problem, as some folks in this film point out is that once that threat was gone we created a new raison d'etre for the big giant stick and the big giant collection of stick salesman. We got the Pax Americana. How's that working out for everyone? We went from being the protector of people who didn't want to be swallowed up by communism to being the enforcer of...well, now there's the problem. For all the work of the American Enterprise Institute, what are we really enforcing in the Pax Americana? Is it universal justice? Democracy? More often than not, the peace we are enforcing is our own whim and our national will and our desire to remain unthwarted. Again, the ideological framework is unassailable. It doesn't even need more than a veneer of appealing to our desire to make a better world. All it needs is to appeal to our desire to continue being the top dog. Anyone who challenges that immediately becomes an enemy of our hegemony and the past few decades have been all about establishing that hegemony as part and parcel of our national identity. Questioning America's role as a global empire has become treason. And that's a kind of danger that even Eisenhower couldn't see coming.

So what did Ike see coming in 1961? Well, like a good documentary he scratched the surface hoping to make us think and question and maybe have a dialogue or a debate and like many a documentary what he got for his trouble was a few puzzled scratches of the head and dumbfounded (or just plain dumb) silence. Fast forward to this film and I would hope that we can do a little better and discuss this situation from all sides.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, 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. -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 17 January 1961

See, according to President Eisenhower, the arms industry was a necessary thing, but something dangerous enough that we had to be vigilant about the way it might corrupt us. This film is about how that corruption actually has come to fruition. The depressing thing is that there is no partisan solution to this--the first moments of the opening credits makes it quite clear that this overreach of imperial ambition is one of the few things that really reaches across the aisles. It's a clever maneuver on Jarecki's part to point out how thoroughly ingrained the imperial complex is in both parties and that it is thus ingrained in every aspect of our government. There's no way to vote our way out of this problem by switching parties.

Speaking of Jarecki's cleverness, I should also note that his aesthetic principles are great. His attention to visual detail is great and so it's not merely talking heads and newsreel footage.
Also, Jarecki's storytelling is good as well. Although his explorations of the main subject are sometimes scattered and seem intended to leave us asking more questions his choice of a framing narrative gives us a microcosmic view of how these great waves ripple back to the lives of individuals. It's a little story that helps us see where we fit into the big story. The little story here is of Wilton Sekzer, NYPD whose son is killed on September 11, 2001. And so the grieving father says, "Somebody had to pay for this. Somebody had to pay for 9/11."
The trouble is, many people didn't even care who paid for it. "I wanted enemy dead. I wanted to see their bodies stacked up for they'd done, for taking my son." And again, Wilton Sekzer depended on the government to be the arbiters of this administration of vengeance. He wanted to see bodies stacked up and assumed that the government would stack up the right people. Wilton Sekzer even got to put his son's name on a bomb. Trouble is, that bomb was dropped on Baghdad.

Blowback does not mean simply the unintended consequences of foreign operations. It means the unintended consequences of foreign operations that were deliberately kept secret from the American public, so that when the retaliation comes the American public is not able to put in context and put cause and effect together that they come up with questions like 'why do they hate us?'
-- Chalmers Johnson, CIA (1967-1973)

There was a moment when the entire world was behind us. It was a million people demonstrating in the streets of Tehran in favor of the United States. We had the world behind us.
Now, kids are dying, billions are being spent every month, animosity against the United States is stronger now than it ever has been in history, What happened here? Is it just that the experience of September 11th or is there something else going on here? When something like this happens you've got to take stock of it, you gotta understand what went wrong here.
-- Joseph Cirincione, Carnegie Endowment for Peace

So, working back from 9/11 we are given a primer on the American imperial project, the idea of global American domination, combined with preemptive war to maintain American hegemony whether the rest of the world likes it or not.
Why We Fight looks at that story of American Empire and the military industrial complex through the lens of 9/11 and Iraq and asks us to look at the empire and the industry and question its wisdom. Is limitless power worth the price we may end up paying for it?

No matter where you come down on this question, this film is worth seeing and worth debating your friends over the questions contained herein. Because ignoring these questions or keeping silent about them is the way that democracies fade away. You may love the messages in this film or hate them. Personally, I found enough in here to infuriate me about a lot of things. But mostly I'm glad that someone can make a film of this quality that raises some of the right questions even if it is sometimes more impressionistic. In fact, I think that some of its presentation of uninflected images is one of the strengths of the film as Jarecki provides the beginnings of a discussion that we need to have with each other. Why We Fight is a great starting point. Even 5 years later this film is still relevant as a discussion for the kind of projection of national power that we continue to believe is our birthright. We should be watching this film with our friends and neighbors and debating the issues it brings up. We should remember to take sticks and helmets with us to these discussions because things will no doubt get heated.

Here's one thing that the film doesn't consider: the end of widespread (and compulsory) military service has had the unforeseen consequence of making most citizens ignorant of military matters, which is as dangerous as having someone in the oval office who doesn't know as much about the military as Eisenhower. The result of this is a larger populace that can easily be snowed, or even worse simply has no competence about even the simplest of military matters. In a democracy that is downright dangerous. The dependence of the larger body of citizenry on a so-called "warrior class" of self-selected individuals is inefficient in the long run because these volunteers do not form a deep enough well of reserves in case of genuine emergency and the ignorance of the greater body of citizens about military matters means that in such an emergency a highly inefficient crash course would have to be adopted to catch up and make up for the indolence of our society. It's all good and well to have an all-volunteer army, but the long-term result of it has been to divide society between a small group of volunteers and a larger group of freeloaders who, with no firsthand experience in such matters still retain an equal vote in selected the leaders who decide when and where to use the volunteers. And so, politicians who may or may not know diddly about the military, elected by a majority of people who definitely don't know squat about the military make the decisions to send a small percentage of the population to war. This is a formula for the destruction of democracy and the republic as we know it and it's unfortunate that Jarecki's film doesn't quite manage to get to that point.

At any rate, you should watch this film with your friends and enemies and discuss it. It'll be worth your time. So, take off a couple of days of watching American Idol and
have a watercooler discussion (or tirade) about what you see here.

Special Features
1. Extra Scenes
"Ike's Evolution"
I don't think we should spend one cent more on defense than we have to. -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Something of a mini-biography of Eisenhower, with interviews featuring his son Brig. Gen. (retired) John S. D. Eisenhower and his granddaughter Susan. Eisenhower hated the atomic bomb and didn't think it should have been dropped on Japan in 1945. He thought it was unnecessary. And when he was president he took money from the defense budget and used it to build the Insterstate Highway system under a national defense act.
"The Missing 'C'"
A scene that looks at the emptiness of Congress and the lack of debate before approving action in Iraq and the complete surrender of Congress to the business of military industry. In the original draft of the speech Eisenhower called it the military-industrial-CONGRESSIONAL complex. Chew on that thought. The hero of this section is Sen. Robert Byrd who did stand up and at least challenge his colleagues regarding the fact that there was no debate, merely a rubber stamp.
"Frank Capra's Original Why We Fight"
The story of the original Frank Capra "Why We Fight" series and a brief look at the idea of wartime propaganda.
"The Dangerous Illusion"
A challenge to the idea that precision munitions reduce civilian casualties. I love how the woman from Raytheon says that she hasn't seen any statistics but assumes logically that more precise munitions will reduce civilian casualties. And how did that decapitation strike on the opening night of the war in Iraq work out?
"What You Can Do"
But of the money we spend on foreign affairs in the United States today 93% of it is controlled by the Pentagon, 7% by the State Department. That's militarism. That's not defense of the country. -- Chalmers Johnson
We elect the corporate shills who represent us in Congress and they spend all their time getting earfuls of talk from other corporate shills who convince them that every last project is a matter of grave interest to the national defense and that it would be unpatriotic to not spend on it and we get a corporate shill government that is by and for the defense industry. And we do nothing and we say nothing because we're all working for those corporations and we like having jobs, right?
But "the military industrial complex is not inevitable." There's nothing to say that we can't re-order the world order. It just takes recognizing the way things are to then be able to think about the way things can be. Of course, we could just buy whatever we're being fed and say that we like things the way they are and see how that works out for us.

2. Extended Character Featurettes
"Wilton Remembers Jason"
Wilton Sekzer's memorial for his son Jason M. Sekzer who died on 9/11 and whose name is now on a street sign near Wilton's home. A street sign is a better memorial than a bomb.
"William and Yo-TV"
An Educational Television youth filmmaking project follows a young man named William Solomon who is preparing to enlist in the army, because it beats working in a chain store with no hope for a raise and maybe the army will give him a chance to do something more than just get by.
"Karen's Story"
Lt. Col. (retired) Karen Kwiatkowski spoke out about the cooked military intelligence that was used by neoconservatives to set up the occupation of Iraq and the establishment of permanent bases in order to achieve their longterm plans.
"Franklin 'Chuck' Spinney"
Spinney was responsible for the seminal report on cost overruns in defense spending.
"Chalmers' Evolution"
Chalmers Johnson was a Cold Warrior who was disappointed that at the end of the Cold War "our government started at once to look for a replacement enemy."
Upon evaluating the evidence presented by his career in the military, the CIA and looking at the direction that neoconservatives have taken in their declarations he has decided that there is an ideological imperative being pushed on us to make the United States the "democratic hegemon" of the world in place of the British Empire. Johnson, thus has become one of the chief critics of American Empire.
When I get new information I change my position. What, sir, do you do with new information? -- John Maynard Keynes

3. Filmmaker TV Appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Charlie Rose
An intelligent discussion with Jon Stewart and another intelligent discussion with Charlie Rose. You can watch these before you watch the film itself if you aren't yet sold on the idea of watching the film itself.
4. Audience Q&A with Filmmaker
What do you hope to achieve?
"When I start out on a project I go out and I seek out people whose views are very different from my own. And I know that the art of the movie, if it's going to be any good at all, is the extent to which those views actually challenge mine, actually change mine."
Doesn't America need defense?
"We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined." A good use of Eisenhower to counter the view that we need unlimited resources to defend against threats that pale by comparison to Joe Stalin and mutually assured destruction.
How did you meet Wilton?
Eugene Jarecki used to work in the World Trade Center and knew many people who died there. During the recovery the NYPD found his ID card that he had lost there in 1992 and mailed it to him. This moved him to get involved in thinking about how 9/11 has been used in all kinds of ways and in the process he found out about Wilton Sekzer and got in touch with him through Wilton's rabbi.
What do high school kids think?
This is a great Q&A with high school kids talking about the film, but I think the interesting thing is that Jarecki poses the question of what the kids would do if a draft came. Personally, I think a draft would be the best thing to re-democratize the military and maybe start rolling back the power of the specialized military industry by taking away from them the ability to talk nonsense at people who don't know any better. But, scaring high school students with the idea of a draft is a time-honored means of getting them to talk and have an opinion on matters of national importance.

5. Commentary w/Eugene Jarecki and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
A lively and informative commentary that is a real intellectual bonus. Colonel Wilkerson was Colin Powell's Chief of Staff. If you've taken the time to watch the film once and you haven't gotten enough to chew on, then this discussion will give you a lot more.
6. Theatrical Trailer
I learned about this film by watching the trailer, which is a gripping and somewhat scary ad.
7. Previews (I do love these Sony Pictures Classics trailers)
Sketches of Frank Gehry
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Joyeux Noel
The White Countess
The Passenger
The Fog of War
Lightning in a Bottle

Coming up in the Annex we'll have a discussion of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series.

Why Jury Duty is Always Disappointing

12 Angry Men (1957)
Directed by Sidney Lumet, Written by Reginald Rose

If you care about trial by jury then 12 Angry Men is your film. This is the film that ruined jury duty for everybody in America, not because it suddenly turned all jurors into serious deliberative bodies that thought through cases and tried to work out their individual biases, but because it made most of us expect something better than the panel of bozos that actually show up first thing in the morning at the courthouse.
I’ll say this up front: If I showed up for jury duty early one morning and my peers looked like the jury in this film, I might consider it worth my time to go on with the process without wanting to kill myself.
Instead, even when we get jurors who try hard (probably because they, too, saw this movie at some point) they're just disappointing or incredibly dumb.
Granted, the jurors here are supposed to represent a representative slice of America in the '50s and most of them do start out as assholish as you would expect a representative jury in America to be, but even if it's just the expectation that there'll be some nice guy in a white suit who really thinks things over like Henry Fonda, then every real jury is disappointing after seeing this film.
But, the disappointment of reality is probably the best reason to see 12 Angry Men every so often, because its value as a lesson in civic virtue alone is worth your time. See, it's not that I see this film and think that there's ever been a jury that works like this, but rather I think that it's supposed to make us think harder about what we're doing when we serve on a jury. There's a presumption that we all want to be like the lazy and bigoted people on this jury who just want to call yea or nay and get on with their day and that presumption is spot on. And that's exactly why we need 12 Angry Men in the back of our minds to shame us into giving jury duty the respect it deserves with consideration and thoughtfulness. Democracy as a principle depends on this. Because we should all want to be like Henry Fonda's Juror #8, thinking about the evidence giving it our full attention and listening to others while formulating an opinion on the verdict. We all want Juror #8 to exist, because maybe one day we'll be in need of someone like that and a jury that consists entirely of bozos and dipsticks is a scary thought. 12 Angry Men is all about inspiring us to be Juror #8, or at least open to the possibility of listening to that person.
So, 12 Angry Men will forever ruin jury duty but that's exactly why everyone must see it. It's your duty as a citizen to watch this film and then be forever disappointed when jury duty is crappy.

The other reason to see this film is because it's well-written and chock full of great actors playing characters with names like Juror #4, Juror #6 and Juror #7. These actors are so good they don't even need character names, they just use numbers. #1 is Martin Balsam, who would go on to fall backwards down the staircase of the Bates home in Psycho. #2 is John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet. That's right, Piglet is one of the jurors. #3 is Lee J. Cobb, the original Willy Loman. #4 is E.G. Marshall. Do you think you can handle more? #5 is Jack Klugman. You think you can handle another star? #6 is Edward Binns. Don't know who Ed Binns was? Well, that's okay because #7 is Jack Warden. I don't think you can handle any more, but then wearing the #8 jersey is the aforementioned Henry [echo] Fon-da! [Echo.] But wait, you get four more jurors for the price of 8, including Ed Begley (Sr.) as Juror #10. And rounding out the crew is Joseph Sweeney the elderly Juror #9 and the respectable George Voskovec and Robert Webber. It's hard to think of a more all-star cast this side of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World or The Longest Day.

Sure, there are some dated aspects of the story and characters, but the charm of the film is that it doesn't need to be up to date to make its point. The thirst for justice is never dated. (And if you can say that last line without cracking up, then you, sir/madam are a model citizen.)