WHY WE FIGHT, the new film by Eugene Jarecki which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a “who’s who” of military and beltway insiders.  Featuring John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle and others, WHY WE FIGHT launches a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex and the rise of the American Empire.

Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower’s legendary farewell speech (in which he coined the phrase “military industrial complex”), filmmaker Jarecki (THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER) surveys the scorched landscape of a half-century’s military adventures, asking how – and telling why – a nation of, by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant war.

The film moves beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the deeper questions of why – why does America fight?  What are the forces – political, economic, ideological – that drive us to fight against an ever-changing enemy?

“Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called WHY WE FIGHT that explored America’s reasons for entering the war,” Jarecki notes.  “Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it’s crucial to ask the questions: ‘Why are we doing what we are doing?  What is it doing to others?  And what is it doing to us?’”

...........................................................................................
Watch Film:
.............................................................................................

These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended.

The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington.


.......................................................................
Part I: Baby It's Cold Outside:
.......................................................................

..................................................................................
Part III: The Shadows in the Cave:
...................................................................................

Directed by Errol Morris and released in December, 2003, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, consists of interviews with former United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, detailing his life and the difficult decisions that he made during his career. The term "fog of war" refers to the uncertainty that descends over a battlefield once fighting begins.
Morris interviewed McNamara for over twenty hours, editing down the footage into a two-hour film. The concept of structuring the film as 11 lessons comes from McNamara's 1996 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Morris creates the film's 11 lessons from various statements that McNamara uses throughout the interview. The lessons lend structure to The Fog of War, but they are not explicitly McNamara's. (At the aforementioned UC Berkeley event, McNamara contended that he did not agree with Morris's interpretations in all respects.) After the completion of the film, McNamara responded to Morris by complementing the film's eleven lessons with ten more lessons of his own; these are included in the film's DVD release.

When, at the Berkeley event, McNamara was asked to apply the lessons from his 1996 book to the US invasion of Iraq, he refused, arguing that former Secretaries of Defense should not comment on the policy of the current Secretary. McNamara suggested that other people were welcome to apply his lessons to Iraq if they wanted to, but that he would not explicitly do it, and noted that his lessons were more general than any particular military conflict.

Watch the documentary: