Why We Fight--good interview with Eugene Jarecki from CBC this AM...

[Gloria]

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2006/200602/20060222.html

Scroll down to Part 2 audio after the blurb...


The Current: Part 2


Why We Fight

Frank Capra was the first American filmmaker who tried to answer the question of "why we fight". Before he made the Christmas classic, "It's a Wonderful Life', Mr. Capra was commissioned to make propaganda films for the US military. His job was to paint the Nazi war machine as an evil empire that had to be stopped. And with films such as "The Nazis Strike", the director was able to answer that question handily: we fight simply because we must. But after Vietnam, after the first Gulf War, after 9/11, and now amidst the on-going conflicts in the Middle East, it seems the answer to that question has never been more elusive.

Now another filmmaker is taking a stab at it. Eugene Jarecki's award-winning documentary is called, 'Why We Fight", and it's part history-lesson, part polemic. It's also been called a full-scale criticism of the so-called American "military industrial complex". The film takes place against the backdrop of the war in Iraq, where, at last count, more than two-thousand Americans soldiers---and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians---have been killed.

We first started this discussion with a clip from Eugene Jarecki's documentary "Why We Fight". It recently won the grand jury prize at the Sundance film festival, and it made its Canadian debut this past weekend in Toronto and Vancouver. Eugene Jarecki joined us from Burlington, Vermont.



Listen to The Current: Part 2

[JohnyCanuck]

1. kick