Why We Fight Page #2

The opportunity to implement plans

that they had been laying since 1992.

At that time a young Paul Wufowitz

was working in a subordinate position

under Dick Chaney, then

Secretary of Defense, in the Pentagon.

With the collapse of the Soviet

Union in 1991 Chaney orders

Wufowitz to write a plan,

to write a grand strategy.

That it was now our destiny that

without the Soviet Union...

there is no one who can possibly

approach us in military terms.

It says, that's the way it ought

to be and our policy must...

be to maintain and expand

that. That we are the new Rome.

That's their strategy, on 9/11

they began to implement it.

It's not just simply a matter of capturing

people and holding them accountable,

but removing the sanctuary is removing...

the support systems, ending

states response territory...

The people who came in with the

president, there are many of them anyway,

were certainly prepared to

shift direction in a...

radical direction, I think

it's fair to say radical.

When September 11th happened,

the President and...

his top advisors said to

themselves, correctly I think,

'We need to rethink American foreign policy'

And I think that would have happened

even without the September 11th.

But September 11th was really the event,

that changed American foreign policy.

When I was in a Pentagon, when we

got hit, you know, yes it did change.

It was a very dramatic and terrible thing.

And it does change the perspective. But the war

in Iraq had nothing to do with war on terrorism.

There was a huge leap, a

manufactured leap. In order to...

implement a very calculated and

predeveloped foreign policy.

We must take the battle to the

enemy, disrupt his plans...

and confront the worst

threats before they emerge.

The Bush doctrine is that

preemptive strikes or preemptive...

conflicts, which would never

contemplated in the past,

now have to be contemplated

under certain scenarios.

If you saw the missile about to

be launched and you could...

kick it over before it could be

launched, you'd do it, of course.

If you saw someone about to

shoot at you and you thought...

you can shoot first, you'd

do it. It's common sense.

I don't know anybody who

doesn't agree with that.

So what's the big fuss about preemption?

March 19th is a night I will never forget.

March 19th is one for the history books.

It's one for my personal history books.

On March 19, 2003, the U.S. Air Force

Stealth Fighter Wing was ordered...

to conduct a precision airstrike

on a location in southern Baghdad.

When we first got the phone call, all what

they told us, we have a high priority mission.

A high value target. It was one of those SAS,

it was a leadership target.

The F-117 is an extraordinary

machine and it is only ordered...

forward on the order of the President

or the Secretary of Defense.

First night od the conflict, the

All they had to do is be briefed,

have the weapons put on.

The whole mission up to this point

was kept at the top secret levels.

I think they really didn't expect both of us

to come back, which is why they sent two jets.

It's now 3:
30, we have to hit the

target at 5:
30 or all bets are off.

The President of the United States

called it a target of opportunity,

and they wanted to take

advantage of it and they did.

It's quite chilly and cold,

I'm looking southwards,

expecting any attack to come in from the south.

The choice in the timing is entirely now

in the hands of the allies.

The Bush doctrine is certainly not something

unprecedented, unknown in American life.

This statement that we are going to

dominate the world through military power,

that we reserve to ourselves

the right of preemptive war.

It is an extreme statement of what

has been there in the works for a long time.

World War ll is without question

the formation of the American military empire.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme

Commander in Chief of

allied expeditionary force.

I have complete confidence

that the soldiers, sailors...

and Army of the United Nations will demonstrate

that an aroused democracy is almost quantifiable

fighting machine that can be devised.

Eisenhower was there and saw it happening.

He had seen the build up of the

American military to fight World War ll.

I this war, more than any

other in history, we are...

on the side of decency

and democracy and liberty.

He believed very deeply in the

necessity for World War ll.

And felt that Nazism was a terrible tyranny.

And he brought this conviction

to defeating Nazi Germany.

People waited for this moment the

culminating victory, the end of the war.

We were on top of the world.

We were only unwrecked major power on earth.

Europe was bleeding to death, Japan was gone,

those paper cities had all been burned up.

So what are we doing?

At 2:
45 in the morning August 6th,

It is an atomic bomb, it is a harnessing

of the basic power of the universe.

The United States bombed the Japanese city

of Hiroshima on August 6th 1945.

And three days later, they detonated

another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.

What has been done is the greatest

achievement of organized science in history.

I can remember in the Pacific, when the word

spread, that the bombs had been dropped.

delighted, because we'd been...

convinced that if Japan was

not hit by nuclear weapons,

one million of us would be killed.

Drop those bombs and they will surrender.

Well they were trying to surrender

all that summer, Truman...

wouldn't listen, because Truman

wanted to drop the bombs...

To show off, to frighten

Stalin, to change the balance...

of power in the world, to

declare war on communism.

Perhaps we were starting a preemptive World War.

Eisenhower hated the dropping of them

and thought it should not have been done.

We just thought war was

terrible enough as it was.

I can not trace evolution of my dad's thinking.

He was complex, he was a five star general,

but he was never military fanatic, never.

One night in July of 45, that day

the Secretary of War had told...

my father about the development

of atomic weapon, atomic bomb.

He was sitting up in his bedroom

and he said that his all first...

impression, his all emotions

had been to be feeling down low.

He wished we hadn't adverted it.

In the background was the

growing conflict between...

two great powers to shape the postwar world.

Already an Iron Curtain had dropped

around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia.

You see, we had to fight communism

wherever it was in the world.

So a decision was made that the

United States will remain militarized...

... permanently.

We lack the weapons to defend ourselves, build,

prepare as required.

Quickly the government springs an election

and initiate the gigantic rearmament programme,

a programme designed to make

America the arsenal of democracy.

From that moment on the American empire

was in every corner of the earth.

In Burma and Iceland...

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