Fog of War

In the film, Fog of War, McNamara explains his different lessons that can be learned from the mistakes that he himself and the U.S. government made during the Vietnam War. His fifth lesson, "Proportionality should be a guideline in war," was one of his most effective and compelling arguments because he was able to redefine his military actions in terms of our own lives, a way of informing the American public about how war can be compared on the home front if we were to be the ones being bombed.

He makes a good point by showing all of his fancy statistics and comparisons, which seems to be all McNamara really has. The images of destruction and percentages of cities destroyed compared to our major cities is extremely effective to his logical argument. He is able to logically show how the destruction we caused on the Japanese cities was ridiculous statistically. Not only did the numbers make it seem unnecessary, but the thought of another country destroying 50+ of our major cities with fire bombs.

What he did lack was a conclusion about how we could have fought the japanese logically without bombing them. Yes he makes sense by saying we could have lost 20,000 or more troops on the beaches of Japan, but he never comes forward with his own conclusion, that he could have made when he was in office and it would have mattered.