Movie news on your iPhone today!
Advertisement
Sign in
Username   Password         Forgot password?
Wanna join? Sign up
Find movies you'll love

chrismorrell Blog

A Glaring Omission here,but then i'm biased

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Under discussion:

Why We Fight  (2006)

 A very well put together documentary this,but,it's like: "tell us something we dont know". I saw the director on "The Daily Show" last year,so put it on my rental list...The director bases his exposition around the "farewell speech" of President Eisenhower, when he identified the "Military (Congressional) Complex"that the USA ("United States of Amnesia" as GoreVidal says) has instigated ,following victory,by the Allies,headed by the U.S. over the Nazis in 1945 , and the assumption of the pre-eminence of the U.S.A  among the "Western" powers...The "Cold War" with Russia was to fuel this military/corporate machine through the next three decades... He dropped the reference to The Congress seemingly out of politeness,but it is no mistake that Arms manufacturers spread their production facilities across as many States as possible in order to retain congressional backing. The counterpoint throughout to the regular "history lesson" is the story of a retired New York cop,who,having lost a son in the World Trade Centre attack,at first feels some "closure" by having his son's name put on a bomb that would later fall on Baghdad, he obviously comes to regret this,not fully expressing his shame,but ,as many of us surely do now,feels betrayed,and lied to by his President. I say "many of US",because a glaring omission by the film-maker is to make no mention of British P.M Tony Blair in all this.He was a major facilitator of the war!..Following his instigation of the bombing and invasion of Kosovo,to which the U.S (in true WW 2 style) needed convincing of,and came in late,made several speeches ,pre 2001 ,in which he spoke of further justified "pre-emptive strikes" for the common good. This guy really does like playing God. He read Strauss and Berlin ,and venerated them,i wonder wether Dubya had such an ideological approach? His blue-print then extended from the successful and ultimately justified"humanitarian" intervention against Milosovic in Kosovo, to "Rogue States",like Iraq (number one on the list of course) with "WMD" ,yes that famous ringing endightment of an acronym.He was a major political facilitator of the Iraq War.. Eisenhower's worst nightmare of an administration and congress that just gives the "war machine" whatever it wants,and who's members ,in the extreme case of Dick Cheney,are more or less in the business of Arms procurement has come to pass ."Why We Fight"  flags up the skewed priorities of the U.S ,with  TRILLIONS being spent on arms,a million dollars a minute..ready to be deployed in the name of Freedom and Democracy..with "Kellog Brown and Root" doing the catering.

posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 6:51 PM by chrismorrell


Was this review helpful?
Yeah Yeah Nope Nope



Comment    Email me new comments.


lopezdash
Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:24 PM

First of all -- great blog. I think you touch on the main thrust of the documentary. But I also think that the film would have been very different had there been a mention of Blair. Certainly the US-UK relationship has been a key factor to enter into a pre-existing conflict in the past, to start new conflicts, and will probably continue to influence our strategic military decisions in the future. But, that said, I think the film would have been completely different had they included Blair in more than just a cursory, passing mention. The director is trying to expose the underbelly of the military-industrial-congressional complex, the invisible hand(s) that control not just weapons manufacturing, but also the power to declare war. It does that brilliantly.

Like what you're reading?

Subscribe
Search
  Go

Browse previous
<June 2008>
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
25262728293031
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293012345


Categories
 


Advertisement