Why We Fight

Netflix offering tonight: Why We Fight. That would be why do we Americans engage in war. Hmmm, let me think now; we fight for freedom, liberty, democracy, the rights of man (and woman); we fight to put down aggressors and terrorists and mean guys who want to destroy our way of life; we fight for the spread of our way of life, for the protection of our interests, for the safety of our kids and grandkids. Let me see now, there might be other reasons, or at least an expansion of the 'protection of our interests' answer. Like we need to protect the oil that runs our air planes and our tanks. Or maybe we need to protect the profits of our arms merchants, you know, one of the arms of the military-industrial complex that Ike (you remember him?) warned us about just before leaving office to the next generation in the person of JFK. That complex has now grown to include a government arm and some would even include a fourth arm, as suggested in the documentary, that being K Street with all it's lobbyists.

This documentary, created in 2005 and inspired by the Iraq fiasco, pretty much goes with the Eisenhower warning and builds the case that all that Ike feared has come to pass with a vengeance. It makes sense and it directs us to a viable reason for engaging in war: we have the means to go to war and we have the moral duty to help our fellow man and we really do need some kind of excuse to use up, not to mention test in real life situations, all these goodies we have spent billions of dollars creating.

In the documentary, one retired military officer who helped in creating and justifying and defending Pentagon policy, wraps it all up in the end by suggesting that we engage in war because there are not enough people out there saying "we aren't going to do this anymore". Guess that kinda puts it right back in our laps, doesn't it? It is our country after all; those guys in the halls of Congress and the WH are our servants, just folk we put there to run things for us.

A couple of times during the film, Crane and it's employees came to my mind. An employee on the bomb line (not Crane) was interviewed about her role in bombing Iraq. She knew what was happening with those bombs, of the people they were killing, the destruction wrought in far off lands. Some times she wishes she were doing something else. Diane came to mind as well: back in 1980 when she went back to work, she decided she was not going to work at Crane cause she did not want to be any part of the production of death dealing machinery. She ended up at National Gypsum and helped make house and home materials: sheetrock and gypsum board. She, in effect, did say "I'm not going to do this anymore".

Gave the documentary a rating of four.