Eugene Jarecki on Why We Fight By Hannah Eaves February 9, 2006 - 12:08 PM PST Neoconservatives "may have sought to bring democracy to Iraq at the expense of democracy here at home." Following her conversation with James Longley about what the future might hold for Iraq, Hannah Eaves turns to Eugene Jarecki to discuss his documentary, Why We Fight, which addresses, in part, how the US ended up over there in the first place. She also asks what it is he admires in Dwight Eisenhower and Frank Capra. Why We Fight takes for its jumping off point Eisenhower's remarkable farewell address. Do you remember when you first heard that speech? It was during the making of my last film, The Trials of Henry Kissinger. I stumbled upon this speech by Dwight Eisenhower, his farewell address, in which he did something that I found absolutely jaw-dropping. I think never before and never since has an American president spoken with that kind of candor to the American public on a subject that important. Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address was really the catalyst for making this film. When we were making the Kissinger film, I knew that it would be the stuff of the next film I would make, the starting point. You were making The Trials of Henry Kissinger when the attacks on the World Trade Center occurred. So you were already planning to make Why We Fight, which seems in many ways like a reaction to 9/11 and the consequent Iraq invasion. The reaction to 9/11 in terms of the US military response, the idea that all the problems we face need to be solved with military force, served as a reminder when I was contemplating making a film about military-industrial forces in America. It was a reminder that those forces were still very much alive and well all around us, not only because we could see so many members of the current administration, for example, hailing from previous posts in the defense industry - there seemed to be such an cosy relationship between everybody in Washington and the defense establishment - but more because we were now seeing the potential product of that kind of cosy alliance. It's not so simple that you can say, "Well, because all those guys know each other, you'll have wars." But you can say that there is a certain culture that arises when you have this kind of relationship which influences how people think about, for example, the cost-benefit analysis of war. You find that there's sort of a tilt towards war coming out of Washington. Washington doesn't do the same kind of cost-benefit analysis that a mother or father might make if their son or daughter is going overseas. But don't you think that the neoconservatives, above their links to the military and industry, have a moral and ethical frame work? In other words, they really believe that they're doing the right thing here? Absolutely, that's one of the reasons you find representatives of the neoconservative line of reasoning in our film; people like William Kristol from The Weekly Standard, and Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, people who represent that side. They're given a great deal of time in the film to express the way that they view the world. William Kristol at one point says in the film, "People complain a lot about American strength and American arrogance, but the great threat, of course, would be the danger if America would withdraw from the world, would withdraw its forces as a policeman for good." Certainly William Kristol believes that America is a force for good, and a large part of our history would support that view. The problem, of course, is that there is a certain over-rightousness that can set in when a country starts believing that everything it does is right and nothing it does is wrong. Dwight Eisenhower who, unlike William Kristol, is a hero of the battlefield, had seen war firsthand and then been a president. It was he who, more than almost anyone else, saw the danger of slipping down [towards] a kind of imperial superiority in the country, becoming a country that forgets the work-in-progress that is the human condition and starts to apply military solutions which are, afterall, so black and white. You either drop the bomb or you don't, there's no negotiation. He just saw that as a jeopardy to a more real and more textured understanding of the road that we should be on. He talks many times in the farewell address about things more textured than this military-industrial complex warning itself. One of them is that the very soul of a democracy could be imperiled by the very actions you might take to implement your will across the seas. That, in the name of security and trying to defeat my adversary, I may commit actions that blur the line between me and my adversary. There's a great danger in that. That's where I think the neoconservatives may run the risk in their idealism. In having advocated a set of policies which may indeed bring democracy to Iraq - it's hard to imagine that you can drop democracy on a bomb from a B2 bomber - but it's possible that in the rubble of this tragedy the Iraqi people may find democracy for themselves and one can only hope for that happy outcome. But the danger is that, in going to war in the way that this administration did, with the encouragement of voices from the neoconservative movement, those voices may have sought to bring democracy to Iraq at the expense of democracy here at home. So you have to ask yourself, if you have to lie to your public to get them to go to a war to implement democracy, what type of democracy are you exporting? I don't really know that the neoconservative's form of democracy, the type of democracy they'd want, is necessarily the same form of democracy as we think about it here at home. I think they'd prefer that we had a different type of "democracy" here, too. Henry Kissinger in my last film was quoted as saying, when he watched a democratic election elect Salvador Allende, a socialist candidate, in Chile, "How can we stand by a let a country go communist through the irresponsibility of its people?" It's a moment when Henry Kissinger takes a position that democracy's all well and good unless it elects somebody we don't like. That's not democracy. That's a phrase spoken by a person who has, maybe jokingly, a disregard for the global traditions of democracy. I think that the neoconservatives, in thinking that you can implement democracy from outside through force, ignore the traditions of global democracy that long predate the United States and our little experiment in it here. I find it interesting that Eisenhower was critical about the military-industrial complex considering that it was partially his decision not to disarm after WWII, wasn't it? To be fair to Eisenhower, he wasn't in charge after WWII of the question of disarmament. This is one of these old ideas - Republicans somehow are the war-makers and Democrats are the good guys. Republicans do not own the copyright on war in this country - any quick look at the wars of the 20th century will tell you that. It was Truman who, after WWII, brought his cabinet together and very much founded what has come to be understood to be the National Security State, a state that looks at the world as a place in need of management by the United States and its miliarty apparatus. At that moment in 1947, a number of institutions were born; the CIA was born, the Air Force was born - it hadn't existed before - the Department of Defence was born - it had been an Office of War before but without the fullness of the of the new department - the Secretary of Defence job, the National Security Council, the National Security Advisor. All of these don't exist before that. It's on Truman's watch that this new military preparedness is created. Now it is fair to say that Eisenhower was a supporter of that movement, even though he had been an independent thinker even before that. The bombing of Hiroshima, as people will see in my film from Eisenhower's son and granddaughter, was something that Eisenhower was not in agreement with, and there were many policy makers, particularly those in uniform, who did not agree with it. Yet he is somebody who after WWII is advocating military industrialization as a consultant to Truman and he is doing so because of the lessons of WWII. The Manhattan Project and other military industrial co-ventures during WWII suggested that America would be well served by a future in which the military-industrial apparatus was strengthened and supported, and so it's in keeping with that that Eisenhower became a voice for it. But it's thirteen short years later that Eisenhower makes his farewell address. I think in those intervening years he came to see that with perhaps even the right intentions to protect the world from totalitarianism and so forth, they had given birth to a kind of Frankenstein, a dangerous monster that could grow out of all compass and envelop the very democracy it sought to protect. You took the name of the film from the Frank Capra series of the same name. Why did you pick that as a title? People have asked me why I borrowed Capra's title. First of all, I'd say I stole it. Second of all, I say I stole more than his title! I say I stole his whole movie! Frank Capra was a dedicated filmmaker dealing with democracy. He made It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - these are movies which portray the little man struggling against the great power of corporations and what not. I mean, It's a Wonderful Life is about George Bailey trying to stop Bedford Falls from being taken over by Mr. Potter, who may as well be Sam Walton. Pottersville is the Walmartisation of America and that film is about the struggle to stop that - Frank Capra makes clear whose side he's on by casting Jimmy Stewart in the main role. So I think Capra was an advocate of democracy and a protector of it and, when he made the Why We Fight series, he took that concern global. He was criticising foreign countries that were imperiling the prospect for democracy and human dignity in their cultures. I, in making Why We Fight in this time of war, when there are more questions about America's motives than ever before, when we have the ability to think more deeply about why we are doing what we are doing than was available before, I think I am working in the Capra-esque tradition. I think Frank Capra, if he were alive today, would make precisely the same kinds of films that I'm making, that put democracy first above all else, even country. Because if you're not willing to look at America with the same kind of tough love that you would look at your child and hope for their best but be willing to look at their weaknesses, or look at your parent or look at your friend, you're not showing real love to that place. You're just signing on blindly. I for one believe that Dwight Eisenhower and Frank Capra both were people who looked at America closely and understood its potential for frailty, and looked to protect democracy, and the people who inhabited that democracy, from those potential threats. Something that comes through in the Capra films, that I don't necessarily feel in Why We Fight, is a particular brand of optimism he has. Capra really believes that the majority of the people are the "everyman" people, and he has great faith in them. I do, too! I have faith in the American people also and I think that Frank Capra was saying, this is why you have to fight, America, because democracy is imperiled. I am saying, this is why you have to fight, America, because democracy is imperiled. It happens that democracy is imperiled here today and in those days there were forces from outside, but the same pattern is at work and the same recommendation is at work, and I have the same faith in the American people. The same American people who stopped Nazi Germany can stop the internal erosion of this system if they take it upon themselves to do so and, most of all, if they're given the information needed to understand what has to be done. The Why We Fight films have been dismissed as propaganda by a lot of people, but I agree with you that there's more to them than that. Well, it's 20/20 hindsight. It's looking at the way in which those films are vocalized in the past and acting as though it's coming out of the Bush administration today. If you said about a foreign country the same simplistic things that were said in the Capra films about Nazi Germany - I mean, he shows Germans with fangs and he shows Japanese people with slanty eyes that are sort of a caricature of Asian people - you will end up mistaking the historical context. But he also starts the series in Prelude to War with peaceful sayings from the Koran, Confucious and the Bible, amongst other texts. In fact, a recognition of foreign thinking that you don't even see today. Capra's a marvellous subject. There are people who say that Capra's films are patriotic that there's no way he could think so critically of the United States. Go rent a copy of It's a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Jeff Smith of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is ready to stand up and die to stop forces in the American landscape from building that dam on his beloved Willet Creek, and I'm willing to do that, too. next >>> Index Neoconservatives "may have sought to bring democracy to Iraq at the expense of democracy here at home." "It was all well and good for us to bomb and kill men, women and children, but stack them into naked pyramids and now you've really got a problem." back to articles

Hannah Eaves Originally hailing from Australia, the home of greatly-missed Victoria Bitter and the 'laid back life,' Hannah is currently based in San Francisco. Her writing can also be found in SOMA Magazine, The Santa Cruz Sentinel and Intersection Magazine, which she co-publishes with Jonathan Marlow. February 6, 2007. Mark Savage & the D.I.Y. Aesthetic by Jeffrey M. Anderson February 3, 2007. Seeing the Humor in Sexual Identity by Michael Guillen January 29, 2007. Smokin' Aces with Joe Carnahan and Jeremy Piven by Sean Axmaker January 26, 2007. Include Me Out: Interview with Farley Granger by Jonathan Marlow January 25, 2007. Grindhouse: Chapter Four - The 1960's by Eddie Muller January 19, 2007. Charles Mudede: Zoo Story by Andy Spletzer January 19, 2007. Mark Becker: Merging the Personal and the Political by Sara Schieron January 19, 2007. Micha X. Peled: The Lives of the Sweatshop Youth by Hannah Eaves January 16, 2007. Djinn: A Taxi Driver Dreams of Perth by Jeffrey M. Anderson January 12, 2007. Clint Eastwood: Flags and Letters From the "Good War" by Jeff Shannon view past articles