Filmaker Eugene Jarecki, author of The American Way of War: Tavis Smiley interview

Tavis Smiley interview with filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, who directed, among other things, The Trials of Henry Kissinger.

Jarecki's book, titled The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril, is a historical account of the United States military establishment, its accumulation of political and economic influence in the wake of World War II, and its relation to American foreign policy adventures, the drastically increased power of the Executive Branch and the curtailing of the civil liberties of American citizens.

I have no idea whether or not the book is any good, and it's not that Jarecki is necessarily the most articulate person in the world. What I like is that he is straightforward and unpretentious, and he describes clearly and succinctly the problems and and possible solutions. I believe that the possibility of political change emerging from a bottom-up movement hinges on whether or not you can explain to your aunt what's at stake in two short sentences. Jarecki speaks in a way that your aunt can understand (and yes, I'm bored out of my mind at work):

Tavis: And what I mean to get to is this -- we were talking about the Bush doctrine a moment ago; this whole notion of we strike first if we think you are going to do something to us -- we'll ask questions later on. There hasn't been, to my mind, at least, a whole lot of criticism of that. He got pretty much what he wanted from this Democratic Congress, so I've not seen -- there have not been hearings.

For all the complaining about George W. Bush and he's got to go and eight years is enough, there's not been a lot of talk, as you know, about this Bush doctrine and whether it's wrong for America. And the reason why that concerns me is because no president ever -- I can't think of a single president who wants to give back executive power.

If one executive grabs a hold to it, the next one surely is going to hold on to it. You see where I'm going with this?

Jarecki: You're asking an extremely important question, and I'll say for the record that my book looks at what the Bush administration did in a historical context. So to some extent, when you read the book, it's not a Bush-bashing book; it's a book that really says here's the Iraq war, and in fact a lot of it is new that happened but a lot of it is not so new.

Some of it is an extension of things that came before; a slippery slope that sort of started around World War II and has led us on this path to sort of permanent war making, the way we're finding ourselves. But at the same time, I have to say that the reforms that I seek, and the book talks about some of the reforms that I think are crucial, none of them can happen unless the Bush administration is held accountable for the crimes and wrongdoings and errors of the past eight years, and it is a moral failure in America that not more people are talking about that.

It's a moral failure that the church and that the general clerical community is not talking about it, and it's an obvious failure of Washington that Washington has so lost its moral compass that these kind of transgressions can happen, from torture to a misbegotten war, to people dying, people getting maimed, and we're sitting here not having those national conversations.

Tavis: So how do you scale back, then, from the creep that the Bush administration has essentially gotten away with, this notion of the Bush doctrine? If one president can get away with this -- we hit you first, we ask questions later -- why, with all due respect to Obama, why couldn't Obama or anybody after Obama -- again, nobody wants to give that up. So how do you reel that back in, is my question?

Jarecki: Sure. Well, I think it comes from --

Tavis: Can you put the genie back in the bottle?

Jarecki: I think you can, and it comes from you and me. And revolutions throughout history have put genies back in bottles. It would have seemed impossible to tell the colonists of America that they would triumph over the British empire and put that genie back in that bottle. It would have seemed impossible to tell the black South Africans that they would triumph over a system of apartheid; put that genie back in the bottle.

So the fact is this can be done, but it's never done, as you point out very astutely -- it's never done from the executive down. Change is not trickle-down; change is trickle-up. ...

Read the transcript or watch video.

I have like three or four posts of substance that are in progress. So, soon there'll be something more interesting upon which to feast your eyes.