I think that the uh... I honestly don't have an answer for you.

WHY WE FIGHT: Named after the Frank Capra series justifying World War II, but dedicated conceptually to D.D. Eisenhower, who warned Americans to be wary in allowing the growing military-industrial complex to compromise our peaceful ways and liberties, this documentary by young director Eugene Jarecki elaborates on that military-industrial complex that of course, has grown to a point that it is so pervasive it is "invisible", as one subject of the interviews says. There are no narrators, just interviewees, who feature the sympathetic and rational-sounding liberals - Gore Vidal, Gwynne Dyer, Chalmers Johnson - the one moderate (John McCain) who leaves off talking about how bad the Halliburton contracts look given Cheney's ties to Halliburton because "the vice president is on the phone" - and the crazy-sounding neo-cons - Richard Perle, William Kristol.

It's not an objective movie, but what documentary is. Documentaries without a thesis, such as the awful "The One Percent", are truly aimless. "Why We Fight" does proffer some interesting... (and I hesitate to call them factoids)... dot-connections, such as: the development of armaments are just good capitalist competition (instead of creating "necessary" new tools) between numerous contractors; war won't stop as long as it remains so profitable; military contractors employ people in many, many states, so that Congressmen from many, many states will go to bat in favor of increased military spending, to keep the voters at home employed and happy. I also didn't know that all of these precision-guided missiles launched in the first six months of the war in Iraq missed their targets.

There's other stuff too - the manipulation of the public by the administration; the misleading embedded media; the planning of the Iraq War dated from September 12, 2001; how we used to be friends with Saddam Hussein. All this, of course, is old news to me and many others. The main problem of the movie is that it throws in too much of that "old news" (complete with the necessary graphic footage - not that I'm criticizing the use of graphic footage, just that it's not wholely necessary here) instead of focusing on military contractors, their role in the defense budget, and the role of think tanks that influence government policy. As a result it does not turn out as strong as it could have been, and left me needing to know more about the military-industrial-congressional-thinktank complex. Despite this, however, it's a good, calm, level-headed movie for those citizens who don't know what's been going on, explaining why its RottenTomatoes Cream of the Crop rating is 74% while its user rating is 84%. After all, it was produced by the BBC. A poignant voice in the film comes from people like Wilton Sekzer, a veteran whose son died in 9/11 and asked the military to put his son's name on a missile, only to hear Bush say that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 that he wants vengeance for. This movie is for people like him - Recommended.

( I think we fight for ideals and what we believe in, so... I hope that's what it is. )