Review: Fog of War

This film lets viewers into the mind of ex-Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. The documentary chronicles his time in office, and goes over many of the events that took place during this time – many of these events involving human rights violations. The film is broken down into eleven lessons, given by the narrator himself.

McNamara is an interesting person to interview for this topic, because he notes, he has lived through and done so much. He was a part of the Vietnam War, and worked in the World Bank. He seems to live by the motto of “live and learn,” and he places a great emphasis on learning from experiences.

The first instance in which I notice a mention of human rights is when he discusses the US attempt to attack Cuba with nuclear weapons. He notes how President Kennedy felt very strongly about attacking Cuba, while other governmental officials disagreed. Dissenters felt that instead of attacking, Americans should make an attempt to understand the Cubans and the Russians. In regards to the Cuban Missal Crisis, McNamara sites the lesson as, “Indefinite combination of human infallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.” Fortunately, the conflict was revolved because the missals were removed from Cuba without any kind of war. It is interesting to see how McNamara’s role in the government included the difficult position of considering human rights. “Human race needs to think more about conflict and killing – is that what we want in the 21^st century?” McNamara is clearly tuned into the importance of human rights.

He discusses how in his first grade class, it was held in a wooden shack. He discusses how in his learnings, he studied ethics in school.

He also addresses the bombings in Japan – hundreds of thousands were affected. When asked if he was aware that this was going on, he responded that he was only part of a large group that recommended it, perhaps as a way to deflect any blame. He discusses the exact statistics and kinds of bombs used in Japan – fire bombs. The way he discusses how calculated the whole thing was is very disturbing. He was obviously negatively affected by the bombs dropped in Tokyo, and it is interesting to see his emotions come through in the movie. I often assume that just because someone is a member of the government, they are on board with all government decisions. Based on McNamara’s tears welling up in his eyes during his interview, I now understand that there is dissent, even within the government.

His 5^th lesson, was that “proportionality should be a guideline of war.” In the context of this film, he is referring to the 50-90 percent of certain Japanese cities that were killed from the fire bombs the US set off. Clearly, these statistics are disproportional to the guidelines of the war.

Later in the documentary, we hear a conversation in which McNamara expresses his belief in going into Vietnam with force. He even admits that in the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know their people well enough to be sympathetic or empathetic towards them – this leads to a lack of understanding in the case of human rights. He believed that many things could be achieved without the loss of human life

I really respect this documentary for shedding light on aspects of the government that most citizens are never granted access to. Through this documentary, we hear first hand accounts of the human rights violations that took place in this war-stricken period of time in America. The fact that such an influential member of the government came out with this information indicates that America really did handle some things poorly. I appreciate how the information is presented in a way that feels very real – McNamara’s emotions really shine through, and I would recommend this documentary to others.