NewsWeek: Profits and War

[Robbien]

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 2:13 p.m. ET June 23, 2006

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It’s worth pointing out to generations who barely know Eisenhower’s name that he was in a unique position to call our attention to the unholy alliance between profits and war. He was a Republican and a military man, and he experienced firsthand the pressures pushing for a defense buildup. “God help this country when someone sits at this desk who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do,” he said—a remark that drew titters from the present-day Washington audience. Director Jarecki updates Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” by adding think tanks to the mix, specifically the Project for the New American Century, a group of influential neoconservatives, including Perle, who promoted America as the new Rome. They argued for elements of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption long before Bush became president, and they brought with them a calculated and predeveloped foreign policy that had Iraq in its sights.

The story is told through the eyes of a retired New York City cop and Vietnam vet who lost his son in the World Trade Center on 9/11. “If Iraq is responsible, let’s kick the hell out of them,” he says. He asks the Pentagon to put his son’s name on a piece of armament in the Iraq war. His request is kicked around in the bureaucracy until finally he gets an e-mail declaring, “Can do—Semper Fi.” A photo follows with his son’s name on a bomb with the words “In loving memory,” the date the bomb was dropped and the assurance of “100 percent success.” Well into the war, when Bush is forced to say that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, this burly cop feels betrayed. “My first thought, ‘You’re a liar',” he says. “I’m from the old school. Certain people walk on water, and the president is one of them … The government exploited my feelings … I was so insane with wanting to get even that I was willing to believe anything.”

After the screening, Perle complained his side is underrepresented in the film and wondered, “Would he have felt cheated if the bomb had been dropped in Afghanistan?” He acknowledged the cinematic effectiveness of “Why We Fight,” and, reading from notes he took during the screening, took issue with the way Vice President Dick Cheney is portrayed. “Richard, you’re a smart cookie and I’ve admired you for years,” Judith Kipper, a Mideast specialist with the Council on Foreign Relations, said at the screening. “Whether Cheney is treated this way or that way, who cares? Why has the American public, which no longer supports this war, allowed our elected leaders to get away with it?” A good question, and one the public will answer in November.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13505073/site/newsweek/