Review of: Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. (Film). Produced and directed by Errol Morris. Radical Media and Smart Films Production. Sony Pictures Classics. 2002.

Considering the present war in Iraq, and the many mistakes made by the American Government (though not admitted by them very often), viewing a movie as important as Errol Morris’s documentary, Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, would be very useful for America’s citizens.

Morris uses raw stock of interview footage he conducted with Robert S. McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961-Jan. 1968, to explore how reasonable, rational men pursued a policy that resulted in the quagmire of the Vietnam War. McNamara was known in the new Kennedy Administration taking office in 1961 as “Whiz Kid:” A highly intelligent, successful individual, who was the President of Ford Motor Company, and who brought a new order of doing things to the Pentagon based on facts and reason.

McNamara served in World War II as a quantitative control analyst with the rank of an Army Air Force Lt. Colonel by war’s end. He recommended some of the most momentous and moral changing events in that war. Using his Harvard teaching skills of getting the facts–the data–and making conclusions from that data to form an opinion, McNamara in early 1945 suggested to U.S. military commanders the firebombing of Japanese cities built of paper and wood. The firebombing resulted in the deaths of 60-90% of the people living in Japan’s 67 largest cities. In the interview, McNamara honestly looks at this decision and, while forming no judgement on his moral guilt or innocence in the policy, he wonders why in war excessive actions lacking moral restraint and used to achieve a limited goals are war crimes only if one’s country loses and not when they win a war.

The entire documentary is composed of these little snippets of insights from a rational man who, like all men, lost themselves in the complex confusion and uncertainty that governs all wars. The phrase “fog of war” has been most accurately described by German 19^th military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz. The impenetrable “fog” envelopes and obscures all human conflict–not knowing what you don’t know, not accepting someone else’s viewpoint, basing decisions on inaccurate or incomplete information–is the prime theme of McNamara’s Eleven Lessons, as the title makes clear. McNamara and his direction of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia from 1961 to 1967 suffered what I call the “poison of one’s own point of view.” While trying to build proper awareness of the reality, the action resulting from a narrow perspective, based on overconfidence or too much self-assurance, is dictated by accepting only what even rational people want to believe. Facts or political realities to the contrary, the poison of our one’s point of view leads all people, like those in the Bush Administration from 2002 to the present, to reject willingness for change, honesty to accept, and open-mindedness to listen as a proper means of directing political policy in war.

McNamara says at the beginning of the documentary, that any military commander will admit he has made mistakes in the application of military power, unnecessarily. Conventional wisdom of life says: Learn from your mistakes. As McNamara was well aware from being at center stage in the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the existence of nuclear weapons, “you make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations,” if not the world.

McNamara’s Lessons parallel his political memoirs on his public service, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. McNamara’s First Lesson explored in Fog of War came from a “successful” resolution of the crisis over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962. To solve the crisis, get the missiles out of Cuba, and avoid open warfare with the Soviet Union, President Kennedy was advised by the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union to view the problem from Soviet leader Khrushchev’s point of view. Khrushchev needed to save his face in the crisis or he would lose control of his dominant position in Soviet politics to a possible military coup. It was believed that a coup by the Soviet military would result in the U.S. having to go to war to remove the missiles from Cuba through war, or a hot war later over some other issue. In the lesson of “Empathize with your enemy,” the U.S. promised the Soviets they would not invade Cuba or overthrow Castro. Khrushchev was able to hold onto power long-enough after the crisis because he could claim a “victory” of sorts by “saving Cuba.” With Cuba’s sovereignty guaranteed, there would be no “reason” to have nuclear weapons on the island to deter a U.S. invasion. Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis Khrushchev and Kennedy did not so much “win” as the world “won” by surviving.

Later in the Vietnam War, McNamara admits that the U.S. failed to empathize with the North Vietnamese communist leaders. The U.S. feared the expansion of communist power in Southeast Asia to the benefit of China and the Soviet Union. Because of the fear of a possible domestic political backlash if he “lost” Vietnam and like a previous Democratic Administration “lost” China and the Korean War to communism, Democratic President Johnson escalated the U.S. military commitment to South Vietnam to “stop” the communist conspiracy. Was it Johnson’s greed for power and “legacy” that he would not admit he was doing the wrong thing. Failure to empathize was America not understanding that the Vietnamese were nationalist seeking to end imperial domination of their land and unify it under home-grown socialism. It was compounded by not reading history and knowing that the Vietnamese hated the Chinese and would never be their “lap dog.”. As a result of only believing what they wanted to believe, to play to fear and greed, Johnson and the people around him followed a policy with no political plan or goal and without the proper courage to win or admit they were wrong once committed. This poison of one’s own viewpoint ended in killing 2 or 3 million Vietnamese, the death of 58,000 Americans and the wounding and permanent scaring of over 300,000 more U.S. soldiers. McNamara’s advice to Johnson to end the war in 1968 and save American lives at the very least lead to Johnson firing McNamara as secretary. Within two months of McNamara leaving, Johnson, like a god-condemned arrogant and proud man in a Greek tragedy, was forced to end all hope of winning Vietnam and end his presidency.

McNamara is not naive enough to think that humanity will ever change basic, instinctual human behavior, the reactions based on fear or greed that determine failure in war. But McNamara is not shy about his lessons. The Eleven Lessons, which are far too complex to do justice here, having examined the first one, can guide political leaders in deciding circumstances or choices between war and peace now and in the future. They were lessons purchased with the blood and flesh of millions of innocent people. As America has sadly witnessed today in Iraq, where decisions have been based on fear and greed, and complicated by the wishful thinking of the leaders, the U.S. is doomed to repeat the same lessons unless the American people decide a different type of leadership is needed. The same type of politics as usual has been pursued by the same political class that has dominated America since World War II, if not before. Average people forcing a change through their individual awareness and personal action is the real lesson that should be drawn from Errol Morris’s unique blend of unguarded dialogue with his subject mixed with the use of powerful historical images and sounds.