Fight Club

On Friday, a cold and windy night, after two days of mild 60 degree temperatures, I was helping navigate a friend on an alternate route to the Bethesda Landmark. Turns out you can take Connecticut (exit 33) to get there, by making a right on East-West highway.

That took us to a parking garage that was empy enough, at least, compared to the parking garage that we would have had to park that's near the Barnes and Noble. But on a windy and chilly night, even the short walk to the theater was a reminder that this was still winter, despite the diversion of a few days of warmth.

We were there to watch Why We Fight, a film by Eugene Jarecki. You can think of this as a kind of companionship documentary to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, though a little less angry.

Ostensibly, the documentary is about an old concept that I hadn't heard about since I was in college, and even then, it was an old term then. The military-industrial complex. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell speech, that the country had to be aware of the military-industrial complex. He was the 34th President. Under Truman, the 33rd President, he had heard that they had decided to drop the bomb on Japan, not so much because the U.S. wanted to force a surrender--there was evidence that Japan wanted to surrender in the months leading up to the dropping of the bomb, but because Truman wanted to intimidate Stalin, to show the US had the military might.

Eisenhower was nervous about the funding of the military. He felt the money spent on the military could be spent better to fund schools, roads, and all sorts of domestic projects. However, since the military is out there trying to justify its existence and its funding, there is huge pressure to keep it well-funded, to have wars, since that is the business of the military.

To Eisenhower, the military-industrial complex included the military, the companies that depended on the military for contracts, and Congress, who approved funding. The military contractors were smart, making sure that the development of certain projects had a piece in every state, so that cancelling these projects meant people losing jobs.

Why We Fight basically starts off with Eisenhower, and explores facets of the military. It does so by looking at a few individuals, one man who served in Vietnam and was a retired cop, whose son died in the 9/11 bombings of the World Trade Center, who felt such anger at what happened, that he wanted a bomb with his son's name on it to honor his memory, before he became disillusioned with what the President was saying about the relationship of Iraq to the acts of 9/11.

There's the story of a teen, whose mother has passed away, who has had trouble getting through college. He thinks joining the military will solve all his problems. It will get him through college, get him regular pay.

There's a former intelligence officer who feels she lied on reports sent to the public where they tied 9/11 to Iraq, which she knew to be false. There's the Vietnamese woman who works at a missile factory in the US, who was brought to the US during the Vietnam war.

There are some comments by conservatives like John McCain, who says Dick Cheney should be investigated for his actions with Halliburton, before he is interrupted by a phone call from...Dick Cheney. William Kristol, part of a think tank, also weighs in.

Although there's commentary from both the left and right, it's clear the message is that the military has gotten out of control, that they may no longer do what's in the best interest of the country, but do what's in its own best interest, which has to do with money. With so much money devoted to the military, the military has a strong incentive to portray the world as a dangerous place.

So what did I think of the film? It made me more interested in Eisenhower. It seems that there were more intelligent presidents in the past, and to have a military man think about the consequences of the military is quite amazing. The basic message isn't so deep, that we are being bamboozled by the military, that the average person in the military comes from the lower class, a message echoed by Michael Moore in his film.

Jarecki has an interesting choice of music, producing happy music with missiles around, or having a man's children in a missile factory run around. He juxtaposes image and music creating, yes, irony.

This film probably won't get that much attention. Only a handful of documentaries come out that people pay attention to. To me, Control Room was a superior documentary, mostly because it has elements of fiction that work well, namely, the character arc of Josh Rushing, who is a good man, realizing he's in the middle of deception. He's the person, much like Wilton Sekzer, the cop who's son died, that shows what happens when you follow orders, but then start to think about what you're doing, and whether those above in the military chain really know what they are doing, and whether they are doing what's right for the country, or have some other agenda that's less than pure.

The documentaries that have received the most attention last year were: March of the Penguins and perhaps Grizzly Man though certainly the first did very, very well. There's also Murderball, which I didn't catch. I thought Tarnation was fascinating, though it does suffer from a need to jazz up the material, about a boy whose mother has some mental difficulties, and how he struggles with his sexuality.

Still, that there are even documentaries I can list attests to the growing popularity of documentaries. It's now possible to watch a few of them each year, when, in past years, this would not have been possible, or at least, not easily so.

Is Why We Fight this a must-see? Perhaps not. I think it's worth watching, because of its information. It's a tad heavy-handed, but nowhere near Outfoxed which was just blatantly silly, even if much of it was true.