Why we fight - A film by Eugene Jarecki
mitch @ 2:38 pm on December 18, 2006
I rented this movie over the weekend. Its a documentary that won some awards in the Sundance Film Festival, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested. I just wanted to make a couple notes and thoughts about it here, as the movie stuck to the issue and truely was bipartisan with regard to how it treated either of our two dominant parties currently in office. In case your wondering the synopsis of the movie off imdb reads:
He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning “military industrial complex,” foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.
Or in my own words, it talks about why we fight, what have all of our major military excursions been about since the end of World War II. What I got out of the movie was that there is alot of money in war. I also heard a first hand account of the plan to go to war with Iraq months before 9/11 happened. Yeah, thats right, they wanted to go to war with Iraq, not because of the were harboring terrorists, as we’ve now finally had Bush admit to, but because it was predetermined to. The movie makes allegations of a think tank idea that there is some kind of world domination plan which was the reason for the push to get into Iraq and oust our “former friend” Saddam. Which, I don’t find to unbelievable actually… I’m also kind of a cynic.
To however, the most upsetting parts of all of this, is our current administrations alienation of our *inalienable* rights. (namely, liberty, political and due process) Which were sternly warned against by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. Why is it that people can’t seem to remember history? I’m wondering why we have military bases all over the world actually… whats the point of them? If were not trying to rule the world like the ancient romans did, why do we act like it? Why do we constantly dabble in foreign affairs, onces that we don’t have any business in meddling in?
9/11 was a horrible time, and those responsible deserve to be punished, which is why I’ve never heard anyone argue that going into Afghanistan was the wrong thing to do. We *knew* they were there. Iraq on the other hand was a different story. Saddam was doing horrible things to his people definitely. Making claims (read: lies) that there was an immanent threat posed by Iraq unless we take action, without a shred of proof to back it up? How dare you. People need to wake up and look at what the leaders of this country are doing. If you continue to live in denial/ignorance, the day their policies effect you on your front door step will be too late.
