Why We Fight

1961. Eisenhower gives a speech as he leaves office and issues a warning: the military industrial complex. He had been a general and was not the man expected to say it. The documentary starts from that speech and follows forty years. How the defence budget grew, how weapons production was spread across the states, why members of congress defend the factories, and who moves back and forth between the companies and the department. The narrative carries a personal line too: a man who lost his son on 11 September, two young men enlisting, and a veteran of Iraq. Eugene Jarecki directs. Chalmers Johnson, Joseph Cirincione, Gore Vidal and Charles Lewis speak in it. It is an American and British production. The documentary won the grand jury prize for documentary at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Its title comes from the series of propaganda films Frank Capra made during the Second World War and the reference is deliberate. The matter it treats is war becoming an economic order; the film builds it as an institutional rather than an ideological problem. The documentary talks to people on the other side too; defence officials are on camera. The narrative puts the Iraq war at its centre but does not target one administration. It alternates between statistics and personal story. Its limit is method; the narrative tries to fit a wide subject into two hours and some sections stay superficial. Who it is for: viewers who like political documentary and argument about foreign policy. Who it is not for: it is argumentative, dense, and the ending offers no resolution.