The Fog of War

Although I felt that Robert McNamara was sincere in “The Fog of War,” I don’t believe that he was successful in supporting every one of his Eleven Lessons. For example, in Lesson #5—proportionality should be a guideline in war—he names a series of Japanese cities that were destroyed, matching them to American cities of equivalent size, and telling us to imagine the destruction. It’s a very effective visual, supported by names of cities along with percentages flashing across the screen, but McNamara then states this "is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve." What does he even mean, where is the conclusion? There is no lesson learned here. Later he states, “LeMay, said if we had lost the war, we would have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right… What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" It is a very good question, but instead of explaining further, he then proceeds to make excuses, explaining that it was the Cold War, and how the government truly believed in the domino. He even says that he was only following the orders of his President. Sometimes his logic just plain doesn’t make sense. For example, he explains how his position as secretary gave his wife and son stomach ulcers, yet exclaims how they were the best years of their lives. The documentary ends with McNarma being asked if he felt guilty or responsible for what happened in Vietnam. He replies with "I don't want to go any further into this… it would arouse more controversy.” But wasn’t that one of the main points of this documentary? Wasn’t it a chance for him to explain the reasoning behind government actions?