DVD REVIEW: Why We Fight

Why We Fight looks at the motivation of the current Iraq War by documenting the half-century of the growing “military-industrial complex.” Lucidly and forthrightly presenting the business and political needs for war, this documentary powerfully explains the current imperial folly our country has undertaken and the institutions in place that allows it to do so. As one speaker explains it, the idea of war – and the businesses that manufacture the weapons, the armed forces that spend the money to buy those weapons, the think tanks that write policy supporting the use of those weapons, and the politicians that protect the weapons-makers - is so embedded in the fabric of our foreign policy that it is invisible. For example, while as Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney saw a proposal for the army to outsource its service programs to private concerns. Later as CEO of Halliburton, one of its subsidiaries, Kellogg, Brown and Root becomes the country’s leader in providing these services to the Pentagon. Then as Vice President, Halliburton wins a no-bid contract for non-military services in the Iraq war. Of course, this evolution is by the book in the legal sense and there’s no paper trail of criminal misdeeds or shadowy conspiracy. This allows those that connect the dots to be written off as paranoid. But the dots are there to be connected. And to not be a little paranoid at this juncture is to be guilty of partaking in the “legalized corruption,” in the words of another commentator, of our system of laws that have allowed this entrenchment to become the status quo.