Early in the documentary film "Why We Fight," Wilton Sekzer, a retired New
York City police officer whose son was killed in the World Trade Center
attack, describes his personal feelings in the immediate aftermath of Sept.
11.
"Somebody had to pay for this," he says. "Somebody had to pay for 9/11. ...
I wanna see their bodies stacked up for what they did. For taking my son."
Lost in the agony of his grief, Mr. Sekzer wanted revenge. He wanted the
government to go after the bad guys, and when the government said the bad guys
were in Iraq, he didn't argue.
For most of his life Mr. Sekzer was a patriot straight out of central
casting. His view was always "If the bugle calls, you go." When he was 21 he
was a gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam. He didn't question his country's
motives. He was more than willing to place his trust in the leadership of the
nation he loved.
"Why We Fight," a thoughtful, first-rate movie directed by Eugene Jarecki,
is largely about how misplaced that trust has become. The central figure in
the film is not Mr. Jarecki, but Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican president
who had been the supreme Allied commander in Europe in World War II, and who
famously warned us at the end of his second term about the profound danger
inherent in the rise of the military-industrial complex.
Ike warned us, but we didn't listen. That's the theme the movie
explores.
Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to a national television and
radio audience in January 1961. "This conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," he
said. He recognized that this development was essential to the defense of the
nation. But he warned that "we must not fail to comprehend its grave
implications."
"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will
persist," he said. "We must never let the weight of this combination endanger
our liberties or democratic processes." It was as if this president, who
understood war as well or better than any American who ever lived, were
somehow able to peer into the future and see the tail of the
military-industrial complex wagging the dog of American life, with inevitably
disastrous consequences.
The endless billions to be reaped from the horrors of war are a perennial
incentive to invest in the war machine and to keep those wars a-coming. "His
words have unfortunately come true," says Senator John McCain in the film. "He
was worried that priorities are set by what benefits corporations as opposed
to what benefits the country."
The way you keep the wars coming is to keep the populace in a state of
perpetual fear. That allows you to continue the insane feeding of the
military-industrial complex at the expense of the rest of the nation's needs.
"Before long," said Mr. Jarecki in an interview, "the military ends up so
overempowered that the rest of your national life has been allowed to
atrophy."
In one of the great deceptive maneuvers in U.S. history, the
military-industrial complex (with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as chairman
and C.E.O., respectively) took its eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan and
launched the pointless but far more remunerative war in Iraq.
If you want to get a chill, just consider the tragic chaos in present-day
Iraq (seven G.I.'s were killed on the day I went to see "Why We Fight") and
then listen to Susan Eisenhower in the film recalling a quotation attributed
to her grandfather: "God help this country when somebody sits at this desk who
doesn't know as much about the military as I do."
The military-industrial complex has become so pervasive that it is now, as
one of the figures in the movie notes, all but invisible. Its missions and
priorities are poorly understood by most Americans, and frequently counter to
their interests.
Near the end of the movie, Mr. Sekzer, the New York cop who lost his son on
Sept. 11, describes his reaction to President Bush's belated acknowledgment
that "we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved" in the Sept. 11
attacks.
"What the hell did we go in there for?" Mr. Sekzer asks.
Unable to hide his bitterness, he says: "The government exploited my
feelings of patriotism, of a deep desire for revenge for what happened to my
son. But I was so insane with wanting to get even, I was willing to believe
anything."
