The Fog of War

Released 2003
Stars Robert S. McNamara
Directed by Errol Morris

Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, has been an observer of and participant in many of the key events of the 20th century. History has not been more kind to him than his critics have been, so McNamara has used this opportunity - a 106 minute edit of several interviews given to documentarian Errol Morris - to set the record straight and expound upon his role in firebombing Japan during World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam. The product of this collaboration between McNamara and Morris represents an engrossing piece of cinema that may offer a surprise or two to even the most learned scholars of recent American history.

The Fog of War is loosely divided into eleven chapters. Each offers a "lesson" that McNamara learned during his life ("Never say never," "You can't change human nature," "to do good, you may have to commit evil," etc.). If one seeks to find an overarching theme, it's that, even when dealing with intelligent, rational men, the baser parts of our nature often come to the fore. And also that we too often don't learn from our mistakes. Especially on a world level, we repeat them ad nauseam. Morris doesn't have to specifically draw parallels to what's happening in the Middle East today for the similarities to be obvious.

Summary by James Berardinelli

This is a fascinating documentary about a brilliant man who's amazingly open with the camera, even though everything he says may not be completely factual. At 85, Robert McNamara is sharper intellectually than 99% of all men (including myself) at any point in their lives, and it's impressive to watch. I wish I had his level of recall over the past two years, let alone 80. I was intrigued enough about his views on the Vietnam war, that I plan to read his book, "In Retrospect : The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." I'd prefer to read a third party's version that would filter several points of view from some of the insiders involved in the war, but I'm fascinated to read this point of view. One of McNamara's revelations is when he talked to Ho Chi Minh years after the war about the North Vietnamese motives, and both sides were surprised and disbelieving of what the other said. It reinforced the fact that war should always be the final option, and that no other options were really explored in the case of Vietnam. It was a difficult time due to the paranoid cold war climate, but we didn't try to avoid this fight. It seems the White House knew it was a mistake, but the war machine wanted this conflict. To make things worse, so did Ho Chi Minh. He wanted to unify Vietnam regardless of the cost to his own country, and he wasn't willing to accept a North/South partition. It's unlikely, but it's possible that talks between the U.S. and Ho may have convinced us this was a civil war and not a communist domino precipitating the fall of southeast Asia to communism.

There are so many parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, and McNamara makes them without ever mentioning Iraq. I believe he and/or Morris wanted to make these comparisons, and I wish the current White House had learned some of the lessons McNamara learned. For example, one of his rules is don't act unilaterally. If the rest of your like-minded allies disapprove of your action, don't pursue it. In other words, if people who have the same interests as yours disapprove of your course of action, you need to reevaluate your thinking. He said our allies didn't support our actions in Vietnam, and they obviously didn't approve of ours in Iraq. If the arrogant Bush administration had listened to the rest of the world, we wouldn't have acted unilaterally, and we wouldn't have the quagmire we have today in Iraq. I shudder to think of what that country may look like in ten years. It may make Iran and the Taliban look moderate. If so, we'll be fighting our third war in Iraq in two decades. It's arrogance and ignorance that lead us to repeat history we should never repeat. --Bill Alward, May 16, 2004