Tuesday the 31st, on the KAOS Report, I talked with Eugene Jarecki, the director-producer of Why We Fight, a new documentary about Ike’s warning and the misplaced power of the Military-Industrial-Complex.
It begins with short clips of Eisenhower and Bill Hicks.
Are other KAOS Report archives going to become available? The links from the archive page don’t go anywhere for me, and I can’t always listen live.
Gimme gimme gimme.
This might be a very good film, but this guy sure sounds like a statist to me.
The KAOS Report archives expire every couple of months or so, so download ‘em quick!
Re: Statist. Yeah, I tried to reason with him…
Excellent interview. His film is clearly going to be excellent, but yeah, obviously he’s quite wedded to the idea of a state and to “democracy” (i.e., his idealized version of it which would only exist in la la land).
But hey, you can either get into a bareknuckled verbal brawl (ala another fast talker from Austin who is on late at night), or you can try to peacefully draw out the points on which you share common ground and buy time for another chance to interivew him again when he’s even bigger and more famous.
Oh yeah, re: your opinions on Iran and it’s bomb making ability. You and of course Dr. Prather could be right, but I’m glad you began to add more nuance to the discussion when you started thinking about economics and black markets. Particularly the idea that there is a market for anything…Including plutonium for implosion devices or enriched uranium for hiroshima types.
Also, even if Iran does not enrich uranium for fission devices, if they have nuclear reactors, they can still make a pretty nasty dirty bomb in short order.
Not to belabor the technicalities, of course.
The main point is that they pose no real threat to us, because they have tons of oil that they want to sell. And a USA that is in smoking ruins or a collapsed global economy does not a good buyer make. I.e., the Iranians may be theocrats but they aren’t stupid.
I liked the interview and from the sounds of it Mr Jarecki deserves our congratulations and support.
Mr.Jarecki however seemed to mesmerised by the magic word ‘democracy’. I wonder if any democracy anytime anywhere ever lived up to his ideal of what ‘democracy’ was supposed to be about. I was going to say maybe Athens, but they had slaves, had a huge non-voting “guest worker” population, didn’t count women and had an empire to boot.
All this “we’re more democratic than thou” stuff is a bit like those who say Russia wasn’t really communist, and somehow find no fault in the theory.
I’m not an expert on American history, although even I know the founding fathers were more interested in building a Republic, most probably thought of democracy as a word of abuse, a bit like leprosy.
Scott’s question about Israel was pretty pertinent too. Liberals would rather nuke all the planet’s Arabs than be accused of anti-semitism. Political correctness means they are unwilling to tell it like it is.
At the same time Liberal internationalists know that without a military industrial complex up their sleeve, their ambitions for a kinder, sweeter, united colors of Beneton Uncle Sam to help resolve mankind’s sins, become pious prattle. They would no more give up on the m-i.c. than give up the income tax.
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” – James Madison (principal author of the constitution)
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams