Why They Fight

A while back I posted several episodes of Frank Capra’s iconic WWII propaganda film “Why We Fight.” In addition to having a peculiar historical value of its own, the intent was actually just a preliminary to the modern version of a documentary film with the same title by Eugene Jarecki that won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower’s legendary farewell speech (in which he coined the infamous phrase “military industrial complex” — the film aired exactly 44 years to the day after that address, by the way), this documentary describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial complex and its involvement in the wars led by the United States during the last fifty years, and in particular in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The film alleges that in every decade since World War II, the American public has been told a lie to bring it into war to fuel the military-economic machine, which in turn maintains American dominance in the world.