The Fog of War is a documentary film about the life of Robert McNamara. McNamara served as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, and most of the film is centered around his experiences and opinions of war in a general sense, despite his close experiences with a number of wars. The film depicts so to speak "underground" information during war years that the American government didn't release to the public at the time. There are recordings of conversations between McNamara and both presidents Johnson and Kennedy that have both presidents ask McNamara to offer them advice on how they should handle speaking to the public in regards to reporting the Vietnam War. McNamara's reason for making this film is to make aware the brutalities of war, and provides his eleven lessons of war so that the same mistakes are not made again.
There is a distinct point in which the ideas in the film shift. The beginning of the documentary is mostly McNamara's earlier experiences such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and firebombing in Japan while he served as Secretary of Defense, but the point in which the ideas shift in the film is the introduction of the Vietnam War, and Lesson #7, Belief and seeing are often both wrong. Before this point, the tone of the film was not that war was destruction and aimless killing like it was after this lesson. There are numerous times in the film Beliewhere the American death tolls are announced, including charts and graphs comparing casualties, including destruction of houses and buildings and the number of families killed. Until the end of the documentary, McNamara explains the Vietnam War and his involvement, especially his difference in opinion with Johnson over strategy in Vietnam, which led him to his resignation. McNamara had expressed to President Johnson that he believed that troops in Vietnam need to be sent back home to reduce the death toll.
McNamara is not hestitant to admit that he has made errors and for that he is sorry, but this is the conclusion of the film. He admits that all military officers, if true to themselves, know that they have also made mistakes in war. People are killed unneccesarily during war, and war is written in human nature, so the idea of war is inevitable. However, McNamara offers his lessons in the hopes of allowing future wars to end before they start or not escalade to a point of irreversible destruction.
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The Fog of War is a documentary film about the life and actions of Robert S. McNamara. McNamara is a former United States Secretary of Defense and he served this position under Kennedy and Johnson, the peak of the Vietnam War. McNamara was very elderly when the film was made, and his reasoning behind this film is to leave his legacy before he dies. Throughout the film, he rationalizes his actions and decisions, which many people disagreed with. During the Vietnam War, as the film shows, McNamara was one of the most hated men in America because of his decisions.
ReplyDeleteThe film consists of his eleven lessons, and there are two distinct shifts of ideas. The first three lessons, ‘Empathize with your enemy’, ‘Rationality will not save us’, and ‘There’s something beyond one’s self’ deal with conceptual and ethical issues of the human race. Through these three lessons, McNamara preaches empathy in order to make moral decisions. He references his philosophy classes and addresses the lessons he learned from them. He explains that we each have a responsibility to society to make good, ethical decisions. The next three lessons, ‘Maximize efficiency’, ‘Proportionality should be a guideline in war’, and ‘Get the Data’ deal with the issue of war specifically and how to wage war successfully. McNamara tries to rationalize the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 citizens, by stating that by killing those people, American soldiers were saved. This point is in direct contradiction to his prior lesson, ‘Empathize with your enemy’, because the government clearly wasn’t placing themselves in the Japanese’s position when they killed so many innocent people. The last shift in ideas are the last five lessons, ‘Belief and seeing are often both wrong’, ‘Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning’, ‘In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil’, ‘Never say never’, and ‘You can't change human nature’. These lessons are about human nature in war, and throughout these five lessons, McNamara tries to justify his decisions in Vietnam. He claims that he did give orders or even know about the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, which is nearly impossible for a man who held his position, which shows that he is not willing to accept responsibility for his actions. He also claims that he tried to tell both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to get the troops out of Vietnam and any unpopular decisions he made he was either following orders or wasn’t his personal decision.
At the end of the film, McNamara addresses hindsight of Vietnam. He explains the ‘fog of war’, which is the complexity of war. He states that you cannot see clearly because issues in war are so complex. He seemingly repents for his decisions during Vietnam, but he still maintains that everyone makes mistakes, which again represents how he was not willing to accept responsibility for his actions. When asked to comment on the current war in Iraq, he refuses because he did not want to comment on an incumbent’s policy.