I didn’t quite realize this was a response to an earlier Capra film with the same name, so I came to this film expecting more of a psychological study or at least more of a historical examination.

I was a little disappointed at how the film sort of jumped around and contained more interviews/opinions than it did in recounting actual facts/dates and other things that I felt might have taught me more.

On the whole though this film was very good and really made me think. I enjoyed hearing Eisenhower’s speech, since I’d only heard references to it before.

The movie did do a a good job of trying to get a very diverse group of people to interview (pilots who dropped the actual bombs, disillusioned DoD employee, father of 9/11 victim who wants to bomb ‘the right people’, neo-cons, etc.)

All in all, I think the film would have been more compelling if it had
presented more historical analysis, statistics, facts and less “person on the street” interviews and opinion segments—but it definitely was interesting to watch and made me think.

I think the most interesting thing I thought about was the links to the “Think Tanks” in forming the Iraq/neo-con poicies which really made me rethink how I was defining the word TANK (instead of more of a collection of people – I began to see these organizations more as
an offensive weapon).

The day after I watched this, and heard the point about the saving grace of the States against the frankenstein war machine is Habeus Corpus, that Military Act was passed. Heil Bush!

The documentary had a hard time deciding what it really wanted to be. Instead of laying down a hard thesis on why we fight, it was a straggling mess of ideas and possibilities. Why do we fight? You won’t really see a cohesive message until the end of the movie, which pulls the mess of the movie together by it’s ears.