REVIEW: FOG OF WAR

"Never answer the question asked of you….a very good rule,” Robert S. McNamara

An Academy Award-winning documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003) consists mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara and archival footage. Sounds dry but it is a must see. It features original music by Phillip Glass, amazing and creative editing, and gut-wrenching footage. But it is most amazing because it ever so delicately lasers in on the capacity of the human for deceit: self and otherwise via McNamara’s simultaneous desire to absolve himself of blame, and yet not confess to error.

When asked who was to blame, McNamara says “The President,” then one shot later recants. Apparently, everyone and anyone but not him. Similarly, the protagonist says that his family was torn up by his tour of duty in the high stress Defense job, but “they all benefited.” McNamara begins the drama as a sympathetic character, but his unwillingness to come clean on any issue dissipates all that and more by the end. It was said that the truth will make you free; the last shots of the film show a truly bound man, bound in lies and deceits of his own making. Still crazy after all these years……………….

The 11 rules are worth repeating:

1. Empathize with your enemy.

2. Rationality will not save us.

3. There’s something beyond one’s self.

4. Maximize efficiency

5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. (USA firebombed Japan cities before Hiroshima, killing 50-90% in 67 cities.)

6. Get the data.

7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong.

8. Be prepared to re-examine 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.

More on McNamara from Wikipedia: His memoir, In Retrospect, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view. Reviews were very mixed. The book was viewed as McNamara's attempt to apologize for his role in the war, but it also has been seen as shifting blame to other people and as an attempt to transform his image from an architect of the war into a virtual opponent. Also Noam Chomsky points out that McNamara in his memoir does not appear to be "sorry" for the Vietnam War itself, but rather to be "sorry" because it has been a waste of resources for the USA, without a clear gain. He quotes McNamara himself from his memoir In Retrospect: "We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

A picture of McNamara's 1995 meeting with General Vo Nguyen Giap hangs in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, near pictures of John Kerry, Elmo Zumwalt, Warren Christopher, and other American dignitaries who visited Vietnam after normalization of relations between the two countries.

During their 1995 meeting, Gen. Giap asked McNamara, how a country so rich could not afford history books, because Vietnam had no intention of becoming a Chinese puppet, evidence being the epic 1000 year war between China and Vietnam for independence. (paraphrased from McNamara in The Fog of War.)

McNamara maintained his involvement in politics during recent years, delivering statements critical of the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.

On January 5, 2006, McNamara and most living former Secretaries of Defense and Secretaries of State met briefly at the White House with President Bush, to discuss the War in Iraq.

Special thanks to son Franklin S. Sarkett for recommending.