Blog 12 CJ

The documentary, Fog of War, portrays the life of Robert McNamara while also giving insight into America’s politics. McNamara makes the film to explain and justify his actions as a politician. He uses eleven lessons as a framework for basing his arguments. Through McNamara’s responses and emotions, the viewer can understand he is troubled by many of the choices he made as the Secretary of State during the Vietnam War. He does not want to take full responsibility of many of his actions that killed thousands of people. McNamara uses lesson number nine, “in order to do good, you may have to engage in evil”, as a guideline to justify his actions. An example of using this lesson was the bombing of Tokyo, which he viewed as a necessary evil. Despite the high death toll and destruction of a city, McNamara still feels as though there was good that came out of the situation. He justifies this by saying their goal was not to kill the most people, but to do what would hurt the enemy the most. McNamara clearly feels guilty for many of the events that happened during the war and must deny much of the blame. McNamara does not admit to authorizing the use of Agent Orange and he rejects the accusation by saying that he does not remember if he authorized it or not. McNamara also expresses his disappointment in the American government for the confusion that was happening during the time. This is seen when he discusses the Gulf of Tonkin and how the military was confused with whether or not the ship was attacked. McNamara is a man who understands statistics and what could be done to maximize efficiency, an idea that was displayed throughout his career.

Through each different lesson, multiple topics were discussed. In the first few lessons of the documentary, McNamara seemed mostly concerned with the statistics of the matter, not necessarily the deeper meaning behind decisions that were made. Also, many of the first lessons discuss McNamara’s younger years, such as working with the ford motor company. Lesson number seven, “belief and seeing are both often wrong”, shows how often leaders can be completely wrong with what both they believe is right and what they have seen. This was the case of the United States ship that was allegedly attacked. This lesson marks a point where McNamara’s thought process beings to change. The idea of efficiency and statistics is replaced for analysis of the reasoning for killing and war. Leading off this analysis is lesson eight which states “be prepared to examine your reasoning”. In this section he discusses the use of Agent Orange and whether or not it is a war crime. McNamara says, “Now what kind of law do we have that says these chemicals are acceptable for use in war and these chemicals are not. We don't have clear definitions of that kind”. Just because it is not a crime does not mean that the harm was not done. This once again leads back to McNamara’s claim that to do good you may have to do evil. In order to connect all lessons and ideas, McNamara ends with, “You can’t change human nature”. He believes that war will never end and that it is part of nature for humans to fight and to kill. He does not condone killing, but believes that it is inevitable. Despite this fact, McNamara says, “And we kill people unnecessarily”. Despite the rationality and analysis of war, it is clear that people will always be killed for unjust reasons.