Forty-five years ago - January 1961 - Dwight Eisenhower gave his final address as President of the United States.
[
CENTER]President Dwight Eisenhower, January 17, 1961[/center]
My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. We have been compelled to create a permanent armament industry of vast proportions. Three-and-a-half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
(Dwight Eisenhower was quit a visionary)
Those words are the starting point for a new film that takes a look at the American war machine over the past half century. "
Why We Fight" by filmmaker Eugene Jarecki looks at conflicts from World War II right up to the current war in Iraq to examine the political, economic and ideological reasons that drive American war policy..