This semester I’m teaching an undergraduate seminar course titled Faith and Political Violence: Perspectives on Religion and Terror in Modern Politics. With Thanksgiving around the corner and students already daydreaming of football and leftovers, I decided we’d watch the 2005 documentary film Why We Fight in lieu of the last class before break. The film, directed by Eugene Jarecki, traces the rise of the “military-industrial complex” in the United States and the imperial ambition behind continued military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In discussion after the film, students quickly turned their attention to the conspicuous absence of any reference to religion. Throughout the course we have encountered theories purporting to explain the dynamics of current global political conflicts (e.g., “Clash of Civilizations” or “Islamic Reformation”). Most of these theories locate religion as a central (albeit not entirely isolable) factor in such conflicts. Why We Fight, however, focuses entirely on economic and political forces at work in modern American foreign policy. The film suggests an intimate connection between windfall profits for the defense industry and a class of political elites willing to mislead the public, but it avoids any mention of contributing theological influences or outspoken religious leadership.

Those who are frustrated with rhetoric that blames religion for society’s ills may find relief in this analysis. Let economics or politics have a turn in the spotlight. But just as I think it’s unfair to blame religion entirely (see: Clash of Civilizations), it’s also unfair to overlook the fact that, as Reza Aslan describes, “international conflicts have increasingly been framed in apocalyptic terms and political agendas on all sides couched in theological language” (No god but God, xxiv). My students rightly noted that the narrative of Why We Fight felt incomplete without any reference to the role of religion, at home or abroad, in current military conflicts.
Perhaps more subtly, the students also noticed that certain characters in the film reflect an underlying belief in the redemptive power of the state. Longing for purpose and community in the wake of his mother’s death, William Solomon prepares for basic training and deployment to Iraq. Later, Vietnam veteran Wilton Sekzer searches for retribution by asking the military to write the name of his son, who died on September 11, 2001, on a bomb to be dropped in Iraq. When Sekzer learns that no ties have been established between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, he grasps for language of repentance and redemption. Both characters appeal to the soteriological power of the state – salvation through national military sacrifice.

While Why We Fight is a staunch critique of American militarism and the George W. Bush administration, it stops short of attacking patriotism directly. That is to say, the problem is not with America, but with American imperialism and the military-industrial complex. With its attention focused clearly on political cunning and financial exploitation, the film leaves untouched the suggestion that religion, including faith in the nation-state, may also play a central role in American foreign policy. Perhaps this is because, as William Cavanaugh writes, “To allow that patriotism might be a type of religion and might carry its own dangers of violence would threaten the very basis of our social order” (The Myth of Religious Violence, 192). Perhaps it’s also because untangling the threads of religious and nationalist fervor in this country is a tricky enterprise.