The war in America’s soul

WHILE doing research for his last documentary, “The Trials of Henry Kissinger,” filmmaker Eugene Jarecki came across a tape of outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell to the nation in 1961.

The speech wasn’t exactly what one would have expected from a war hero and decorated veteran who presided over the country during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and oversaw military growth in response to a fear of aggression from communists in the Soviet Union and China. Instead of a call for more arms, Eisenhower warned against the expansion of the “military-industrial complex.”

That speech is the linchpin of Jarecki’s new documentary, “Why We Fight,” which opens Friday and offers a look at the American war machine, as well as how -- and why -- the country’s economic survival depends on a constant state of military readiness.

“I had heard of the phrase ‘military-industrial complex,’ ” Jarecki said. “I think I vaguely knew it was attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, but I had never seen him actually give the warning.”

That the alarm was sounded by Eisenhower, the filmmaker says, “gives it special credibility.”

“He brought to that warning the wisdom of both the heroic soldier and also a knowing president. Someone who had a front seat at the policymaking table. No one knew better than Ike the mechanics of both the military world from which he came and the world to which he entered. So bringing those disciplines together and understanding the friction between them and the dangerous implications of our democracy was something that Eisenhower was able to give us that no other public figure really could.”

Jarecki traveled to 30 states to randomly ask people: Why do we fight? “The first word out of everybody’s mouth, literally to a man, was ‘freedom,’ ” says Jarecki. “But what does it say if everybody in a ‘free society’ gives the same answer?”

When he presses the subjects further, to ask, for example, why we are fighting in Iraq, the interviewees weren’t so clear -- revealing “fractures lying just beneath the surface, concerns and doubts about that word ‘freedom’ that we have been taught to say in an almost knee-jerk fashion. These are the doubts that have sprung up in the last half century as this change in course [to building up the military] has been felt by us, the public.”

“Why We Fight,” winner of the Grand Jury Special Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, was made with the approval of the Pentagon. The film features new and vintage clips, as well as interviews with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); author Gore Vidal; former Air Force Secretary James G. Roche; John S.D. Eisenhower, son of the late president; former Pentagon advisor Richard N. Perle; and Wilton Seltzer, a Vietnam vet and retired New York Police Department officer who lost his son in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Jarecki believes the country should be prepared militarily, but “what comes with that role in the world are challenges. They are what you call the ‘cost of empire,’ and it was Eisenhower who gave us the very early warning signal about the cost of empire.”

The filmmaker says he’s passing Eisenhower’s warnings on to Americans “so they can take stock and be vigilant to the dangers to our democracy implicit in the military-industrial complex and more broadly in the kind of imperial direction that this country is heading.”

JARECKI says blame for the rise of the American war machine shouldn’t be put on either political party.

“No matter who is in power, the status quo in America here and abroad is disproportionately on defense. When you take away resources from the elements of your natural life and allocate them to defense, you skew society and you disrupt a terribly delicate framework on which democracy is based.”

Getting cooperation from the military surprised Jarecki. Still, he says, “I think for an independent documentary filmmaker coming with great openness, which I do, we were able to get the kind of interviews and penetrate inside the defense apparatus with the approval of the Pentagon. We let people know that we weren’t doing a contemporary ambush of anybody.

“The film is taking a long, hard look, with tough love, at America at a time of conflict -- and who can argue with that?”

Jarecki says he took the name of his film from the series of patriotic documentaries the late Frank Capra made during World War II, because, he says, if the director were alive today, “I hope he would make very much the kind of film I have made.”

“He was a much better filmmaker, but, spiritually, he would have followed the same type of direction because Frank Capra was, after all, a great advocate of democracy, particularly of the little guy in his struggle against great, powerful interests like corporations and powerful figures in the government.”

In Capra’s “Why We Fight,” says Jarecki, “he was asking America to stand up and fight for democracy.

“At this time of global conflict, I am asking America to stand up and fight for democracy. It’s just that the democracy I see imperiled is here at home.”