Aight. So I haven’t
gotten political in a while…and I’m feeling the urge. I recently watched “Why We Fight,” a
documentary which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in
2005. It somehow was gifted into my
small DVD collection like four moves ago when it was abandoned by a former housemate,
and after surviving so many moves I finally decided to watch it. It's kind of out of date now, but actually not really.
The film was inspired by President Eisenhower’s farewell
address in 1961. Featuring commentary by
John McCain, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle, and some seriously high-up former
Pentagon and CIA officials, it examines the relationship between the primary forces
that move the American (and consequently world) economy and the forces which
influence us to go to war. It is with surprising
frankness that people like McCain admit that Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about a
military-industrial complex growing to run the economy and the government has
come alarming true. Read as >> A
small class of movers and shakers run an economy and government based on oil
and war, the ultimate recipe for limitless consumption and therefore limitless
profit. Genius.
My favorite moment of the film is a Cheney moment. So Cheney has inextricable and complex ties
to Halliburton, right? He used to run the company but claims that when he
became VP he cut all ties and never spoke, dreamt, or thought of it again. And Halliburton is an “oilfield services”
company that dabbles in arms and all kinds of lucrative wartime
industries. So my favorite moment is
when John McCain says point blank that if there is evidence that Cheney acted
inappropriately in the whole Halliburton mess, there ought to be a full scale
public investigation. Immediately after
he says this, his office phone rings and there is a bit of confusion as his
assistant comes in, interrupting the documentary interview, to say that Vice
President Cheney is on the phone. OH
SNAP! Cheney has a sixth sense for when he’s getting exposed… Ewww
grrrooooossssss.
Anyway, here is an example of some of the history that the
film talks about, as retold by myself with no Wikipedia cheating and plenty of
personal commentary along the way. So enjoy
the unerring exactness of my knowledge, and go rent the movie. It’s only like
90 minutes.
In 1953 the Prime Minister of Iran gets pissed that Great
Britain is ripping him off on oil. Great
Britain comes to the US with this annoying problem, so Prez Eisenhower declares
Prime Minister Mosadegh a Communist (woo Cold War!) and sets the CIA to
overthrowing him. After Mosadegh is
gone, this douchebag Shah takes over and creates an awful oppressive regime
which Iran tries within 20 years to overthrow cause it sucks so much. The leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah
Khomeini**, absolutely HATES the United States, and is pretty vocal about this,
saying some pretty violent things. I
mean, he might be pissed because it was our involvement that put the douchebag
Shah in charge, just sayin’. Anyway, the
US then props up Saddam Hussein over in Iraq, who begins a war with Iran, and
eventually we need to directly supply him with weapons so that he’ll win. Yay Iraq! Good job Saddam! But then in 1990 Saddam invades Kuwait, which
freaks us out because now it looks like he might invade Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia is where there is the #1 most
oil in all of the world. We then send
troops to Saudi Arabia to defend it against Iraq, which incidentally ends up
pissing off a guy named Osama bin Laden.
Okay so now it is the early 2000s and we get worried about losing Iraq
too (which has the #2 most oil
in the world, incidentally), since we are now fighting Iraq in Saudi Arabia so the government starts to prep the American
public to get behind an overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, we end up fabricating the war in
Iraq as retaliation to 9/11, dropping bombs on people who had nothing to do
with that awful attack. In the process
we create a blanket “War on Terror” which acts as a convenient license to drop bombs on anyone whom we can
claim doesn’t like us, or who doesn’t have our best interest in mind. Which at this point is like, a lot of
people.
Ah, the tangled webs we weave.
**I totally Wikipedia-cheated to figure out how to spell his
name. Sorry ‘bout it.
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