McNamara recounts important events in his life that contributed to his policy decisions later on as Defense Secretary. Kennedy eventually changed his mind to agree with Thompson. Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning. As the Soviets supported and fostered a Communist revolution, the Americans stood by their policy of containment wishing to protect democracy at all costs. This page was last edited on 29 October 2020, at 13:54. The United States withdrawal and subsequent reunification of Vietnam after a Northern Vietnamese victory has allowed Vietnam to remain a socialist state espousing communism to this day. Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war. [6] Morris interviewed McNamara for some twenty hours; the two-hour documentary comprises eleven lessons from In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995). .Morris, E., Williams, M., Ahlberg, J. McNamara opens with the statement that while all military commanders make mistakes and try to learn from them, there will be no learning period with nuclear weapons. McNamara emphasized it was luck that prevented nuclear war. McNamara talks about the proportions of cities destroyed in Japan by the US. Of course, they have responsibilities to, War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. After the war McNamara and friends began working for Ford Motor Company in 1945 as the company was in need of leadership from people with higher educational degrees. Under his supervision, tension was eased during the zenith of the Cold War and from then on, successive Secretaries of Defense were able to prevent a nuclear outbreak. [12] From Robert McNamara's 1995 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.[13]. Moreover, at the U.C. While the U.S. could understand what motivated the Soviets, they could not rationalize with the Viet Cong as each had starkly contrasting self-interests and were fighting for greedy motives. While McNamara believes in very distinct limitations on troop commitments, the Joint Chiefs do not. Tags: Cuba • Cuban Missile Crisis • Ford • Gulf of Tonkin • JFK • John F. Kennedy • LBJ • Lyndon. Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war. McNamara's interview, along with archival footage, offers a close look at international security and the international relations of the US, and an insight into why certain conflicts occur and the lessons that can be learned from these conflicts. McNamara believes this to be empathizing with your enemy. Realism can explain how each side was able to mitigate conflict and maintain visibility so that escalation was avoided. His opinions, personal experiences and lessons learned while serving as a Secretary of Defense can provide the audience with an enlightening philosophy and outlook on American politics. ALFRED EISENSTAEDT, TIME LIFE PICTURES / GETTY IMAGES. The Fog of War has an approval rating of 96% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 142 reviews, and an average rating of 8.32/10. It was thought the B-29s could destroy targets much more efficiently and effectively. The author is very insightful. McNamara was in charge of analyzing bombing operations and how to make them more efficient. The documentary explores recent events in American history and also focuses on McNamara's life and how he rose from a humble American family to be a politician who achieved enormous power and influence. The film focuses primarily on the interviews of former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, who was interviewed for about 20 hours by the director of the documentary, Errol Morris, through a special device called the "Interrotron" which projects images of interviewer and interviewee on two-way mirrors in front of their respective cameras so each appears to be talking directly to the other. Senses of Cinema 31 (2004):. Then the war came. After leaving the U.S. government Robert McNamara served as president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. Morris, E., Williams, M., Ahlberg, J. He believes that human nature will make it impossible to end war any time soon, and though we are rational creatures that rationality has limits. As McNamara declares, “I am very sorry that in the process of accomplishing things, I made errors,” he strikes a dissonant After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did. The documentary covers important events such as World War II, Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, and many others that McNamara himself witnessed. McNamara worked at Ford in an executive position and conducted studies on buyer demographics to accident reports to make cars safer. He posits, discourses upon, and propounds the lessons in the interview that is The Fog of War. ", McNamara discussed when he started to court his wife, Margaret Craig, and had a child. Use of this device is intended to convey actual interaction with each other and direct eye contact with the viewer. Even though we have to engage in evil at times, we must do our best to minimize it. These tensions between LBJ and McNamara reached a boiling point resulting in  McNamara stepping down from his role as Secretary of Defense. If we cannot convince our allies and friends of the correctness of our actions then we should reexamine our reasoning. He discusses the moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he and Kennedy were trying to keep the United States out of war but General Curtis LeMay wanted to invade Cuba. McNamara claims that potential for nuclear war still exists today. Nevertheless, it would have been beneficial to hear why it took him nearly twenty six years to come out and talk in depth about the war, its causes, and his role in it, subjects that many people wished he had addressed long before 1995. Realism as a popular theory emerged in the aftermath of World War II and remained important throughout the Cold War era. Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School, Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Fog_of_War&oldid=986047837, Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners, Documentary films about nuclear war and weapons, United States National Film Registry films, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2013, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, The human race will not eliminate war in this century, but we can reduce the brutality of war—the level of killing—by adhering to the principles of a ", We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our responsibility to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the world to help them advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of, Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction between a soft heart and a hard head. McNamara is the former United Stated Secretary of Defense, therefor has a large military background. McNamara’s views are best viewed through the realist lens as he looks back on the Vietnam conflict and other Cold War conflicts such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Fog of War is a film about the life and times of Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Harvard received a contract with the government to start up an officer candidate school for what was then called Statistical Control in the U.S. Air Force. Privacy guaranteed. This type of war was inevitable as a matter of interstate politics from a realist perspective and to go further, realists place the blame on human nature. McNamara compares destroyed cities of Japan to cities in the US before the dropping of the nuclear bomb. [8], Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Although McNamara is photographed through the Interrotron, the movie is far from offering only a talking head. He ends on the note that you cannot change human nature and implies that while war may eventually be of minimal brutality, we will not see its disappearance anytime soon. For the military phrase, see, Ten additional lessons from R.S. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. That is not to say that all of our leaders are necessarily ineffective at what they do. But a bigger reason is that most of what I know about Robert McNamara I learned from Errol Morris' excellent, essential documentary, The Fog of War: 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. McNamara was brought back from the 8th Air Force and assigned to the 58th Bomb Wing flying planes to the Pacific theater. McNamara states that even though we are the most powerful nation in the world today, we should not use that power unilaterally. Neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the United States is, should or could be the global gendarme. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community. McNamara himself explains that there was no learning period for nuclear weapons such that each side feared a single mistake as too much. Llewellyn Thompson, a former US ambassador to Moscow, urged Kennedy to respond to the soft message. It just helps us to remember that they are human too and the decisions they make are colored by the same kinds of biases and shortcomings from which all human beings suffer. The Cold War is a prime example of the Security Dilemma, defined by Essentials of International Relations on page 251 as a situation in which “even actors with no hostile or aggressive intentions may be led by their own insecurity into a costly and risky arms race.” While neither side was making land grabs or invading the other state’s territory, the Cold War became an arms race as both the United States and U.S.S.R. competed to construct nuclear weapons. The piece is a mix between historical footage and an interview with Robert McNamara by the director, Errol Morris. If McNamara was managing the war from a liberal perspective he would have sponsored plans to control arms and work toward disarmament, rather than dramatically build up the U.S. military. That was extended multiple times and Morris decided to make a feature film. Lesson #2: Rationality alone will not save us. Berkeley event, McNamara disagreed with Morris's interpretations in The Fog of War, yet, on completion, McNamara supplemented the original eleven lessons with an additional ten lessons; they are in The Fog of War DVD. McNamara became an officer with the 8th Air Force where he worked on statistical analysis. Some of the more notable figures are: Tokyo, roughly the size of New York at that time, 51% destroyed; Toyama, the size of Chattanooga, 99% destroyed; Nagoya, the size of Los Angeles, 40% destroyed; Osaka, the size of Chicago, 35% destroyed, all of which was done before dropping the nuclear bombs. Who Are the DeBolts? McNamara's affirmation (of Morris's relation) of lesson 7 to the Gulf of Tonkin incident:,"We see what we want to believe.". McNamara held the office of Secretary of Defense at a tumultuous and transformative time and although he had only three years of military experience, he made difficult decisions and stood by his convictions. As he says himself, McNamara’s words can be inflammatory and he is very adept at moving an interview where he wants it to go. What results is an inside look at one of the most important and controversial figures of 20th century American government. "Making History: Errol Morris, Robert McNamara and The Fog of War."

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