Why We Fight (2005)

Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2005 documentary film about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era eponymous propaganda movies commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers.

Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address. Although it won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for television productions and a Peabody Award in 2006.

Synopsis

Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex and its 50-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter are politician John McCain, political scientist and former CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson, politician Richard Perle, neoconservative commentator William Kristol, writer Gore Vidal, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione.

Acteurs