Why We Fight

Of all the incendiary left-wing, anti-Bush screeds that seem to have become the flavor of the decade in the American documentary community, Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight" is probably the best. Jarecki isn't just a polemicist, he's also a filmmaker. So the movie isn't entirely bloviated experts. He understands narrative.

The argument -- a little wider than usual, as guided by Gore Vidal, is not so much that Bush is a fool and a knave but that American culture is foolish and knavish in that it depends on a war economy and the secret purpose of foreign policy is to find enemies so that we can fight wars to justify our huge military spending and keep our plants running at full capacity.

But a few subtler stories are filtered through the rhetoric. The best is of a young New Yorker who, having recently lost his mother, has decided to join the Army. This young man is such a good egg type, so decent and human and likable, that the war behind him -- which will ultimately engulf him -- comes to seem monstrously evil. Anyone who has ever been in the military will wince at the thought of the first contact between his idealism and the squalor and brutality of basic training culture. Ouch!

Then there's the story of the first raid, the Stealth bomber mission that opened Operation Iraqi Freedom by depositing some bunker busters in what they thought was Saddam's back pocket. It's well narrated by a bland young officer who flew the command ship, and you know where it's going: to the ground and to the scenes of dead Iraqi kids.

Memo to left-wing anti-Bushies: Stories like this work. Don't lecture. Tell stories! Much better!

-- Stephen Hunter

Contains disturbing war images and brief profanity.