Addicted To War; Selected Videos
Important Anti-War Films You Can Watch Online
These films are proof that the United States has killed as many as 20 million or more innocent people since the end of World War II – with many millions more being injured, losing their homes and having their way of life ruined. This list is the best way I can think of to help educate yourself and others who might be interested in knowing about this. I believe that the Americans who have died in these wars have died for lies coming from our government and our mainstream media, which are both owned by the same people who profit from these wars. It is what I call “The Big Lie.” Whatever action this country takes is to benefit the corporations, the oil companies, the bankers and the war machine: also known as:The Military Industrial Complex. The United States is: ADDICTED To WAR. It is up to us to try to stop this horrible situation.
I. Bill Moyer’s The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis (PBS, 1987)
This is the full-length 90-minute version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine.
II. War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death (2007)
Directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp
Produced by Loretta Alper
Narrated by Sean Penn
War Made Easy, made by the Media Education Foundation and based off the book by Norman Solomon, reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. This film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion & exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.
III. The Panama Deception (1992)
Directed by Barbara Trent and David Kasper
Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery
Made by the Empowerment Project
This Academy Award-winning film documents the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama; the events which led to it; the excessive force used; the enormity of the death and destruction; and the devastating aftermath. The Panama Deception uncovers the real reasons for this internationally condemned attack, presenting a view of the invasion which widely differs from that portrayed by the U.S. media and exposes how the U.S. government and the mainstream media suppressed information about this foreign policy disaster.
IV. Hearts and Minds (1975)
Directed by Peter Davis
This film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1975. Peter Davis created one of the most moving accounts of the Vietnam War and the attitudes at home when he produced “Hearts and Minds”. The film looks unflinchingly at the nature of power and horrible consequences of war. It is very much a pro-peace film, but uses the people who were there to speak for themselves. It also seeks to probe deeper underneath the American psyche of the times and evolves into a historical document about the violent social rupture that happened between the fifties and the sixties.
V. Cover-Up: Behind The Iran-Contra Affair (1988)
Made by The Empowerment Project
Directed by Barbara Trent and David Kasper
COVER-UP is the only film which presents a comprehensive overview of the most important stories suppressed during the Iran Contra hearings. It is the only film that puts the entire Iran Contra affair into a meaningful political and historical context. The shadow government of assassins, arms dealers, drug smugglers, former CIA operatives and top US military personnel who were running foreign policy unaccountable to the public, revealing the Reagan/Bush administration’s plan to use FEMA to institute martial law and ultimately suspend the Constitution. Strikingly relevant to current events.
VI. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky & The Media (1993)
Directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick
Produced by Mark Achbar and Francis Miquet
Manufacturing Consent showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America’s leading linguists and political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of the United States populous.
VII. Hijacking Catastrophe: 911, Fear & The Selling of the American Empire (2004)
Directed by Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally
Narrated by Julian Bond
The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11. Hijacking Catastrophe, made by the Media Education Foundation, places the Bush Administration’s original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically increase military spending while projecting American power and influence globally by means of force.
VIII. “The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg & The Pentagon Papers” (2009)
Directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
94 Minutes
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is a 2009 documentary film directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. The film follows Daniel Ellsberg and explores the events leading up to the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the top-secret military history of the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. The film was shown on the PBS series POV in 2010, for which it earned a Peabody Award. The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress.” The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks—none of which were reported in the mainstream media. For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property; charges were later dismissed, after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg. In June 2011, the documents forming the Pentagon Papers were declassified and publicly released. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the United States had expanded its war with the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which had been reported by the American media. The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson) had misled the public regarding their intentions.