The Fog of War is a documentary style film that chronicles the life and beliefs of former secretary of defense Robert McNamara. The movie uses old footage and recent interviews to depict the thought process of McNamara, particularly during the Vietnam war. I think in making this movie McNamara hoped to share his thought process with the American public. Its clear from the movie that he has a very polarized public opinion. There were scenes where he was called brilliant and there were some people who believed "he was a son of a bitch". I think he believed that many people judged him before understanding all the facts, and his goal in making this movie was probably to better inform the public about himself and the presidents he served under. In an ironic way, I think he wanted his opponents to follow his first rule of war which was "Empathise with your enemy".
Through the medium of film McNamara tried to project just how difficult his terms in office were. In the movie he said that although its easy to point out the mistakes the administration made in hindsight it was much more difficult back then. He made his decisions with the information he had available, and he says some times the Johnson administration did the wrong thing. McNamara is portrayed as a very intelligent guy in the film, he was top of his class and graduated from Harvard; however the war in Vietnam still failed despite the judgment of many geniuses.
I also think the movie tried to portray the stark contrast between data and real life. There were countless images in the film of collections of data and charts. I think this was purposely added to show that to the people making decisions war is all about numbers. They may be able to calculate the chance of success, but they can never feel what its like to actually be out there fighting. I think that is why presidential advisers were so optimistic going into Vietnam. The movie shows that the Americans believed that once our marines were sent in Vietnam would be in for hell. On paper it might seem like the US had a undebateble advantage, but things like dedication are impossible to measure. As the former Vietnamese minister once said to McNamara they were "prepared to fight to the last soldier". In the movie McNamara tried to show that their decisions were based around this data that the administration trusted.
I think that the ideas most shifted around lesson #6. This is when he started talking about getting the proper data, and I thought this was most applicable to his own life. Using the lesson I think he showed once again that getting accurate is very difficult, especially in times of war. Although he tried to gather all the necessary data much of it was subjective and thus invalid. For example when going into the war he said the US believed that the Vietnamese had attacked American naval vessels twice. However, this was later proven to be false. The guy detecting the missiles on sonar misinterpreted the information out of nervousness. Despite his error the data was still used to make the fatal decision to wage war against Vietnam. In this way I think McNamara stressed gathering accurate data from his own experiences. The next lessons are very self critical. The rest of the lessons are about true human nature and examine what constitutes an evil act. McNamara believes that to accomplish a goal for the greater good a person must sometimes follow a path of evil. I think this is how he viewed many of his decisions. Although he believed himself to be a moral person, many of his actions were evil and led to death and destruction. In one part of the film he even says that, had America lost the war to Japan, he could have easily been tried as a war criminal.
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"The Fog of War" is a documentary style film that chronicles the life and beliefs of former secretary of defense Robert McNamara. The movie uses old footage and recent interviews to depict the thought process of McNamara, particularly during the Vietnam War. I think in making this movie McNamara hoped to share his thought process with the American public. It’s clear from the movie that he has a very polarized public opinion. There were scenes showing people who called him brilliant, and there were some people who believed "he was a son of a bitch". I think he believed that many people judged him before understanding all the facts, and his goal in making this movie was probably to better inform the public about himself and the presidents he served under. In an ironic way, I think he wanted his opponents to follow his first rule of war which was "Empathize with your enemy".
ReplyDeleteThrough the medium of film McNamara tried to project just how difficult his terms in office were. In the movie he said that although it’s easy to point out the mistakes the administration made in hindsight, it was much more difficult back then. He made his decisions with the information he had available. McNamara is portrayed as a very intelligent guy in the film; he was top of his class and graduated from Harvard; however the war in Vietnam was still an utter failure despite the judgment of many "smart men".
I also think the movie tried to portray the stark contrast between numerical data and real life. There were countless images in the film of collections of data and charts. I think this was purposely added to show that to the people making decisions war is all about numbers. They may be able to calculate the chance of success, but they can never feel what it’s like to actually be out there fighting. I think that is why presidential advisers were so optimistic going into Vietnam. The movie shows that the Americans believed that once our marines were sent in, Vietnam would be in for hell. On paper it might seem like the US had an undebateble advantage, but things like dedication are impossible to measure. As the former Vietnamese minister once said to McNamara: they were "prepared to fight to the last soldier". In the movie McNamara tried to show that his decisions were based around this data that the administration trusted.
I think that the ideas most shifted around lesson #6. This is when he started talking about getting the proper data, and I thought this was most applicable to his own life. Using the lesson I think he showed once again that getting accurate information is very difficult, especially in times of war. Although he tried to gather all the necessary data much of it was subjective and thus invalid. For example when going into the war, he said the US believed that the Vietnamese had attacked American naval vessels twice. However, this was later proven to be false. The guy detecting the missiles on sonar misinterpreted the information out of nervousness. Despite his error the data was still used to make the fatal decision to wage war against Vietnam. In this way I think McNamara stressed gathering accurate data from his own experiences.
The next lessons are very self critical. The rest of the lessons are about true human nature and examine what constitutes an evil act. McNamara believes, according to rule nine, that to accomplish a goal for the greater good a person must sometimes follow a path of evil. I think this is how he viewed many of his decisions. Although he believed himself to be a moral person, many of his actions were evil and led to death and destruction. In one part of the film he even says that, had America lost the war to Japan, he could have easily been tried as a war criminal. Although it’s clear that no good came out of Vietnam, McNamara still applied this rule to the war. In a way this rule is contradictory because McNamara's most famous act of "evil" did not result in any clear "good".