Nowtopian

Went to see the just-released film “Why We Fight” yesterday. It’s a very well-made, sound bite-style documentary. It begins auspiciously, with Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech in which he warns against allowing the military-industrial complex (M-I-C) to gain unchecked power. Then Gore Vidal appears to announce that we live in the United States of Amnesia. So far, so good.

But as we were leaving the theater 90 minutes later, Hugh told me he didn’t like the film. So we spent the next hour dissecting why. Mainly, the film frames the title’s claim in terms of a bipartisan, industry-driven expansion of the military since WWII. At a certain point every president since Truman flashes by along with a map showing the three dozen or so military interventions and invasions by the U.S. around the world since 1950. While much better than no reference to any of these at all, none are given more than a cursory mention except for the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 (and the ensuing installation of the Shah, which eventually leads to the 1979 revolution and the Iranian theocracy).

The film explains that in 1953 the British were angry after Mossadegh tried to negotiate a better deal for Iran and when the British refused, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry. The British turned to Eisenhower who obligingly labeled Mossadegh a communist (he wasn’t) and green-lighted the CIA-organized coup. This short schematic, sandwiched within a larger narrative, doesn’t really do justice to the complexity of history, to say the least. But this movie is not about a detailed analysis of any given use of the U.S. military, but rather to look at the half century process in which the M-I-C has taken over the government and made itself practically invisible in its ubiquity.

The film is a good antidote to the current last gasp of liberalism, which frames the Cheney-Bush regime as a rogue departure from a democratic norm, a fantasy United States that is basically “good” but has been taken over by a cabal of evildoers. (In this common narrative, plastered all over the blogosphere, from DailyKOS to MYDD to FireDogLake, the Democrats are still the good guys who just have to right the ship of state–this ahistorical, amnesiac frame dovetails perfectly with the regime’s own Manichean worldview.)

Unfortunately, “Why We Fight” makes the same mistake of history that it is is critiquing. The origin of the United States’ culture is based on Indian eviction and genocide, and African slavery. The M-I-C and the projection of U.S. military power dates to at least the late 19th century. The annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines in 1898 (followed by a 15-year war in the archipelago of incredible brutality) are the real beginnings of what Ike and this film frame as a post-WWII phenomenon.

Continue reading Why We Fight History