The documentary The Fog of War is a film about a former US Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. McNamara discusses some of his experiences from childhood in World War II, The Cuban Missile Crisis, Working at the Ford Motor Company and the Vietnam War. This movie is broken up into 11 lessons that McNamara teaches. All of these lessons relate to war but can also be applied to real life.
The Eleven Lessons:
1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There is something beyond one's self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can't change human nature.
I believe that McNamara’s reasoning behind the film is to give an explanation to the actions he took in terms of the Vietnam War.
There is a shift in the lessons after lesson 5. The first five mostly pertain to war and how to go about it successfully. They are more like rules than lessons. They speak of fighting for ones country and realizing what you are there to do. Then next set of rules is a more general set of rules. It is about life in general. Lessons 7,8,and 10 are more mental lessons to live by. They are guidelines one must follow in order to stay sane throughout war.
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The Fog of War is a documentary film that focuses on the life of a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. In this film, McNamara talks about his childhood during World War 1, working for Ford Motor Company, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. There are eleven lessons that McNamara talks about that can be applied to the war but also everyday life.
ReplyDeleteI believe that McNamara used this film mainly to rationalize and give an explanation for his actions while in Vietnam. Many people disagreed with a lot of his policies, and when asked about them, a lot of the time he simply replied with “I don’t know,” or “ I was following orders given to me.” He is obviously not willing to take responsibility for what he has done in the past.
The eleven lessons he speaks of can be broken up into different parts. Lessons 2-4 are more like life lessons. They can be applied to everyday life. He then shifts ideas in lessons 5-8. These three lessons can be applied to warfare. The second shift comes in lessons 9-11.
Another major shift I noticed was, lessons 1-10 are lessons on how to change people or things you do in your everyday life to make what you do moral. By that I mean, he states in lesson 1 “empathize with your enemy.” In lesson 7 he states that “belief and seeing are both often wrong.” These have to do with changes that a person can make to make a better situation for themselves. Lesson 11 however, states, “you can’t change human nature.” This lesson contradicts the above 10 lessons.
One other important point that McNamara brings up is hindsight. He states that looking back on everything; things could have been fixed in hindsight. That in the heat of the moment, decisions one made might have made perfect sense then, but years down the road it could be totally wrong. Another point is the title, The Fog of War. This is the idea that war is too complex for anyone to comprehend and no one understands the meaning of it.