Eugene Jarecki takes questions seriously. An earnest student of history and precise thinker, he asks questions for a living and answers them with care. His 2002 documentary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, accused the former Secretary of State of crimes against humanity. Jarecki's new film, Why We Fight, winner of the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, extends and deepens the analysis, examining the social, economic and political systems that drive U.S. war-making policy.

Sucking on his Starbucks straw, Jarecki ponders the changes in presidential assumptions and attitudes over the past decades. Noting that the "hero" of his film, Dwight Eisenhower, "saw the press as a conduit to speak in his very 'talking Kansas' way to the American people," Jarecki also sees the irony in John Kennedy's TV campaign, which painted the old war hero as "soft" on national security while the "young upstart was talking hawkish talk about the Soviet Union."

Jarecki sees such manipulations as part of the increasing corporatization of politics and the military, a trend that led Eisenhower to think, in Jarecki's formulation, "God help this country when somebody—potentially John Kennedy, potentially George W. Bush—sits at this desk and doesn't know as much about the military as I do." If one recognizes "Kennedy as the military-industrial candidate," he says, "one realizes this is a bipartisan problem, a systemic, societal problem. When Eisenhower talks about the military-industrial complex, he is not a conspiracy theorist, but a keen observer at the policy-making table, warning us of the way that a society, even with the best of intentions, can lose its way."

Even as "defense spending goes up or down, or our global posture becomes a little more peaceable or a little more bellicose," Jarecki says, "what you see over time is a consistent rise in the pressure exerted by the military-industrial sector and a correlative growth of our global footprint and our willingness to use force to galvanize that global footprint." Though the U.S. once understood its "shepherding" of "less advantaged peoples" as a moral obligation, now it is inclined to use war as a means to other ends.

"There has been a slippery slope" to the current U.S. empire, Jarecki sighs, "starting with that raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. With that symbol, the troops were sending a signal about our struggle to define ourselves as a nation. Today, when an American soldier raises a flag somewhere in the world, it sends a signal of our willingness to impose definition on others."

Asked to consider the role of race and racism in the workings of empire, Jarecki ponders for a minute. "As the heir to the legacy of power established by Western nations [in the 15th century]," he says, "the United States has sought to foster instruments of democracy at home, but has been willing to undermine those when pursuing our interests, even at the expense of non-Western peoples." Though "we've become more polite" since "the black slave experience," Jarecki says, "that legacy remains and it is not easily unlearned."

He describes his critical focus on the U.S. as akin to what "any parent would [tell] a child if that child were addicted to something. We are essentially dependent on the forces of militarism. We have so atrophied most parts of our national life and diverted resources to the military instrument that we have an overdeveloped right arm and the rest of our body is falling away. We've taken the money from the schools, but young people can be educated through the Army. This is what Eisenhower foresaw when he warned of the danger of becoming a garrison state."

In this state, Jarecki says, "the only people who have credibility to talk about war wear uniforms." During the run-up to the Iraq war, he notes, "the mainstream networks adopted the Pentagon's name for the war, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom,' as the name for their coverage and branding. It's one thing for the Pentagon to use such a euphemism, but it's another for the fourth estate to adopt it. In a state-controlled media, how would it be any different?"

Still, Jarecki is optimistic. History, he says, "is the long story of many dark chapters, followed by enlightenment. We are living in a dark chapter and the majority of people feel it. What happens in the darkness, I think, is people wake up, become concerned and frustrated, and look for answers."

He smiles. "I take comfort from a strange place, in the lies we were told to go into this war. The extent of those lies underscores that it was against our better judgment to go to war in Iraq. Revolutionary change takes many forms. We learned we could not turn to the usual source of information, the mainstream media. And so the public looked elsewhere, to documentaries, to the blogosphere, the Internet, satellite radio, or papers they'd never read before. That's very good news for anyone who cares about democracy. Because it says that no matter what you do to democracy in the halls of power or corporate America, you can't take it from human beings."