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Why We Fight and Sir! No Sir!

The Grand Prize winner at last year’s Sundance Festival was a political documentary on US foreign policy called “Why We Fight.” Film maker Eugene Jarecki brought back President Eisenhower’s farewell address where he warned Americans against the “military industrial complex.” Jarecki examines the state of the current “military-industrial complex” – now a 500 billion dollar business that corporations like Lockheed & Martin and Halliburton make millions on. Why We Fight also features the father of a September 11th 2001 victim, and the two fighter pilots who dropped the first bombs onto Baghdad on March 19th 2003. He interviews Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Charles Lewis, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Senator John McCain, Dan Rather, as well as Eisenhower’s son and granddaughter. Jarecki’s earlier film was the acclaimed, “The Trials of Henry Kissenger.”

Why We Fight is on the verge of being released on DVD.

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We turn next to Sir! No Sir! a film by David Zeiger, on the little known GI anti-war movement during the US war with Vietnam. By the Pentagon’s own estimates, there were more than half a million “incidents of desertion” between 1966 and 1971; officers were being “fragged,” that is, killed with fragmentation grenades by their own troops at an alarming rate; and by 1971 entire units were refusing to go into battle in unprecedented numbers. In the course of a few short years, over 100 underground newspapers were published by soldiers around the world; local and national antiwar GI organizations were joined by thousands; thousands more demonstrated against the war at every major base in the world in 1970 and 1971, including in Vietnam itself; stockades and federal prisons were filling up with soldiers jailed for their opposition to the war and the military. Sir! No Sir! is the first documentary to cover the GI resistance against the Vietnam war.

On Saturday July 15th, KPFK presents a benefit screening of Sir! No Sir! for our listeners at the Laemmle One Colorado Theater in Pasadena, at 11 am. David Zeiger will be present, and Sonali Kolhatkar will moderate. Tickets are only $30 a pair and available at 818-985-5735 during our fund drive.