I believe McNamara agreed to do this film because he realized how many mistakes he made and how many mistakes the government made in their foreign policy. He thought this movie might have been a way for him to show that he is sorry in some ways and give explanations to the public.
Throughout this documentary McNamara spoke about the fact that everyone made mistakes but that people should not repeat the same mistakes. However, the U.S. government seemed to make the same mistakes over and over again.
In one of the parts, we listen to a recording of a discussion that McNamara had with Thompson, where thompson says if they stay in Vietnam they are destroying the country and killing tens of thousands of people and if they don't stay communism will take over the entire eastern hemisphere. This dilemma reflects the title the fog of war, meaning that nothing is clear and that war is a very complex issue.
Overall, McNamara expresses that sometimes war is necessary but it should be limited. In lesson #5, Proportionality should be a guideline in war, McNamara brings up the incendiary bombs that killed a hundred thousand people in one shot and raises the question whether it was necessary.
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The Fog of War is a documentary in which Robert McNamara teaches eleven lessons that he says he has learned in his life. Robert McNamara is the former Secretary of Defense and had an active role in the Cuban missile crises, World War Two and the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was an especially controversial war in which hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and McNamara was one of the main men behind this war. In his film McNamara tries to defend himself by expressing that everyone makes mistakes and that he did too. He goes on to say that we should learn from mistakes and not continue to make them but this may be a lesson he didn’t apply to himself.
ReplyDeleteThrough the lessons in his film, McNamara tries to justify his actions during the war. He tries to win over people worldwide as he is quite hated because of all the destruction he caused. The title of the film, The Fog of War, reflects what he is trying to convey to the public about war namely that it is very complex, unclear and that it is not easy to make decisions.
The point in the lessons in which the idea shifts is when McNamara moves from “maximizing efficiency” to “proportionality should be a guideline in war”. Lesson # 4 was to maximize efficiency. McNamara talks about the incendiary bombs that killed 100,000 civilians in one night. Upon being asked whether he knew if this was going to happen, he answers that he was one of the people recommending these incendiary bombs. It is unclear what McNamara is trying to say about maximizing efficiency because he says that he doesn’t mean killing more people but he does mean weakening the adversary. This is a slight contradiction because weakening the adversary is done by killing its people.
In lesson #5, Proportionality should be a guideline in the war; he contradicts himself again by asking whether it was necessary to kill all those 100,000 people in Japan. McNamara does not blame the people who made the decision of dropping the atom bombs but he blames the human race for not setting the ‘rules’ for war. In this lesson, he tries to convince the public of this idea that the people making decisions in these wars were not to blame but rather that there were no rules in war and the people making decisions didn’t have guidelines. Therefore, he was trying to defend himself because he was one of the people making the decisions.
If people are not aware of McNamara’s actions in the war prior to watching this film, they can be easily swayed and believe what he is saying. However the people who lived through his era as secretary of defense know that there is no way McNamara can justify his actions. McNamara made this film because he wanted to attempt to gain his respect and maybe even forgiveness before he died.