| "Rush To War" examines the issues surrounding September 11th and American foreign policy. Early in October, three weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, director Robert Taicher and a small film crew drove from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. and New York, interviewing a cross-section of Americans in the aftermath of the events. Following the invasion of Afghanistan and the Administration's un-anticipated war with Iraq, Taicher interviewed a number of government officials, foreign policy experts, and journalists, including former Senator George McGovern, former ambassadors Joe Wilson and Peter Tomsen, Samantha Power (Harvard University), Zia Mian (Princeton University), Thomas Gouttierre (University of Nebraska at Omaha), and Mark Danner (UC Berkeley); nationally syndicated columnists Robert Scheer, Molly Ivins and Chris Hedges (New York Times). The film also includes commentaries from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, former General Anthony Zinni and former Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke. Among the issues explored are: the Cold War and CIA interventions around the world from the 1950s through the 1970s, America's involvement with the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and the history of the United States' two wars with Iraq, with particular emphasis on the current administration's policies and actions in the war on terror and its consequences for global security in the 21st century. |