The Other Side

“The Fog of War” provides an interesting perspective on the many wars that the United States were involved in. Many films are very quick to point fingers at “conspirators” and skew clips and snippets of past media in order to prove their point. One thing that “The Fog of War” did very well was to let the main focus of the documentary, Robert McNamara, speak for himself. Again no overbearing narrator was present in the documentary, which left the audience to believe they were coming up with their own conclusions. In fact, Errol Morris takes this rhetorical design in a different way by allowing McNamara narrate his own thinking process and background.
The presentation of McNamara’s own account in the documentary humanizes the former Secretary of Defense, by allowing him to tell his side of the story and show true emotion. By introducing this point of view McNamara is not the perpetrator, but he argues that he was a victim of his situation. It would’ve been easy for Morris to make a documentary giving evidence on the incompetence of the government during each of the wars, but instead he chose to let McNamara speak his mind and give the lessons he learned from his experiences. Because of this, I believe that Morris is trying to give a commentary about how war often clouds people’s judgment and that even extremely intelligent and logical people like McNamara can be confused in the “fog of war”. Furthermore Morris explores how even in succeeding wars, many of the same mistakes were made, giving credence to McNamara’s lesson on how "You can't change human nature.”