United States Marine Corps Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler wrote those words in 1935.  He had retired from the Corps by then, becoming well known on the lecture circuit and as a political candidate.  Butler was outspoken on the issues of war profiteering and the fascism he saw creeping into the country.  Butler, a two-time recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, wrote a book called War Is A Racket in 1935, in which he describes in detail the lengths to which business interests have benefited from warfare.

Butler did not live to see World War II (though he describes that war’s groundwork in War Is A Racket), and he is not mentioned at all in Why We Fight, but he talked about the same issues in detail.  Smedley D. Butler was talking about the military-industrial complex before Eisenhower coined the term.

Eisenhower is at the core of Why We Fight, particularly his 1961 farewell address, where he warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of the unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  The position the film takes is that Eisenhower did not know how right he was, or that, if he did, he was the only one who knew.  He is compared to George Washington, who in his own farewell address warned against entanglements with foreign governments.  Eisenhower’s family (his son and granddaughter) and historians talk about the Oval Office at the time, and how much of what Ike was talking about was beginning to show itself even in the 1950s.  There were many dark elements circling in the corridors of power, elements that Eisenhower was all too aware of, but that he was powerless to do anything about.  In a meeting in the Oval Office one day, he could be heard to remark, “God help this country if there’s ever someone sitting in this chair who knows less about the military than I do.”

The growing influence of business in government frustrated Eisenhower, and he spoke about it frequently.  Why We Fight also uses his “Cross of Iron” speech, made in 1953 at the start of his first term as President, to illustrate how he was vehemently trying to wake the country up.  In that speech Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.  Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”  The message was nothing new.  Smedley Butler wrote about the exact same thing almost twenty years prior, and peace activists have been saying the same thing ever since, but here was a President, man who had spent his life in military service and led the Allies to victory in World War II, telling the country and the world that there was no future in it.  The military build up he saw during the war gave him pause.  It goes without saying that no one listened.

Why We Fight (which takes its name from a series of World War II propaganda films made by legendary director Frank Capra) is not about Eisenhower.  His farewell address is at the core, but the film is more about the results of this country’s failure to heed Eisenhower’s warning.  The other main focal point is the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq War.  The war is put into broad historical perspective and shown as just the latest in a long line of imperialist ventures, something that had been in the works since the end of the Gulf War.  Following the story, it is as if they were dusting off an old screenplay, revisiting a movie project now that there were executives interested in making it.

The inevitable comparisons will be made between this film and Fahrenheit 9/11, but they are only alike on the surface.  Moore’s film was one-sided propaganda, a documentary adaptation of books like Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud.  Moore has a way of lying with the truth, and his films are self-serving and exploitive.  No matter what the subject, Michael Moore’s films are always about Michael Moore.  Why We Fight is so much broader in scope; the reach is so much greater.  The people interviewed here come from such a broad spectrum that the result is as nonpartisan as one can expect.  We have the expected anti-war voices, but we also have neo-cons like Richard Pearle and a group like Project For A New American Century, who, as their spokesman says, advocated the Bush doctrine before there was a Bush doctrine.  They believe the path the United States is on is the right one, though it is hard to agree with them by the end of the film.

Chalmers Johnson, a former head of the CIA, describes the 9/11 attacks as blowback, and he defines the term for anyone who does not know.  He describes it as a response to operations of which the public is not aware, so when something happens – like planes being flown into buildings – the average person is left wondering why.  Johnson says that the first question is always, why do they hate us.  The film spends an hour and a half explaining why, including a laundry list of countries in which the United States has flexed its military muscle since World War II.  In just the last fifty years, the number is staggering.

If Fahrenheit 9/11 had Lila Lipscomb, Why We Fight has Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City police officer and Vietnam veteran who lost a son on 9/11.  Cirincione is an interesting character, and his story is one of the most powerful in the film.  He talks about serving in Vietnam not long after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which at the time he took at face value, and he talks about how duped he and his fellow soldiers all felt when they realized that there was nothing to that incident, that it was made up to facilitate the war.  Fast forward almost forty years, and Cirincione is pro-war on Iraq.  He bought the party line and saw it as payback for 9/11.  He petitions the military to have his son’s name written on one of the bombs that will be used, and they send him pictures of the plane and describe the mission on which the bomb was used.  He is hawkish because he thinks 9/11 and Iraq are related, so it comes as a slap in the face when he sees Bush on television making a now-infamous statement: “We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11th”  Joe cannot believe his eyes and ears.  “He wasn’t involved?  What the hell did we go in there for?”  Why indeed.

One could say that Cirincione should have learned from the Gulf of Tonkin, which came as such a blow at the time, but that failure to learn is a large part of what Why We Fight is all about.

William Solomon is one of the sadder figures in the film.  In his early twenties, Solomon has recently lost his mother, the only family he had, and cannot afford to continue going to school.  He does not see much in his future, and he has decided to enlist in the Army.  It is hard not to cringe at the naïve excitement he has when talking to his recruiter.  “Because of you guys I’m going to retire real good,” he says in one scene.  What is most interesting is the look on the recruiter’s face, a look of slight discomfort, like he is pulling one over on the kid and is embarrassed about having it on film.  We do not get an end to Solomon’s story, though the film ends on him.  The last few moments have him getting in a car with his recruiter and being driven away to a future as uncertain as the country at large.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who has also appeared in Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, left the military after serving in the Pentagon during the build-up to the Iraq War.  The war was something she saw no justification for, to the point that she had to remove herself from the process, which ended her military career.  In Kwiatkowski we have a once-proud soldier who now would not allow her two sons to enlist.  She brings the discussion back to Smedley Butler territory when she says, “If you join the military today, you are not serving your country.  You are helping a group of pundits advance an imperialist agenda.”

Why We Fight has enough interesting characters to talk about for days.  Between segments, random people are asked why they think we fight.  No one seems to know.  Freedom and democracy are mentioned more than anything else, but no one ever seems sure.  No one says profit, which is probably more accurate.  Smedley Butler argued seventy years ago for taking the profit out of warfare.  Underneath it all, this may be a nation that has been holding on to the rifle for so long, we don’t know how to put it down.

This film is a wake up call, an unfettered look at the state of the United States.  The result is blistering, a far cry from the nightly news.  This is not a feel-good movie, but it is one that must be seen.  Why We Fight poses many questions, and it brings to light many issues, but it offers nothing in the way of answers.  There is no spoonful of sugar with this medicine.  We as a nation are locked into something from which there is no easy escape.  Why We Fight is the most important film that will be released this year.

Film Rating:  **** (out of 4)