An intimate McNamara

THE FOG OF WAR: ELEVEN LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT S. MCNAMARA (2003)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The most dangerous periods in recent U.S. history were the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Vietnam War. The most dangerous man who almost made a grave error in judgment in Cuba (and arguably Vietnam) was former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. Some considered him arrogant, others called him brilliant. The beauty of Errol Morris's "The Fog of War" is that you have to make up your own mind of the man's character and his service.

Robert Strange McNamara was Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administration. This was a man who had to contend with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam, as well as make quick decisions on the right strategy of command, especially in a war that costed upwards the lives of 50,000 Americans. Russia was involved with giving Cuba up to 160 nuclear weapons. The U.S. had to decide whether or not to attack Cuba with missiles within a tense 13 day-period in October.

As for Vietnam, it was a war that shouldn't have happened considering that Kennedy was going to withdraw American troops (though it is a fact that he almost considered keeping them their as well). After Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson sent in more troops than necessary, all presumably to liberate Vietnam from a communist takeover. McNamara didn't want this war to happen, knowing firsthand how many lives could be unreasonably lost.

What's fascinating about McNamara is his acknowledgment that mistakes were made, and he learned from them (the film is broken up into 11 important lessons about war). He is astonished to later discover that Cuba really did possess several nuclear weapons. He is also mystified that no torpedoes were really deployed against "The Maddox," a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, thus ensuing justification for a more rapid advancement against Vietnam. McNamara also expounds on having served in World War II and allowing the bombing raid of Tokyo, reducing that city to ashes since so many buildings and houses were made of wood (100,000 lives were lost in a single night). Through it all, we sense McNamara wished he had not taken part in decisions that he did not agree with. In a chilling moment, he admonishes the bombing of so many Japanese cities, not to mention dropping two nuclear bombs, and claims that if the U.S. did not win, they would have been branded as war criminals. He states very clearly that whether they had won or lost, it was still an immoral action.

Director Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line," "Mr. Death") shot this documentary using a video device called "Interrotron," which somehow allows the interview subject to make eye contact with the interviewer. What it also does is allow McNamara to look into the camera, and the audience can judge who he is more closely, more intimately. Morris does employ hundreds of jump cuts, which will drive you crazy and make you climb up the walls of the Pentagon. This distracts much of what McNamara has to say, as if every phrase spoken was a soundbite. Still, Morris makes up for it by inserting footage of a young McNamara describing his daily briefings, footage of air raids and bombings, dominoes falling into place over maps, and so on.

"The Fog of War" is the ideal documentary that is also the antithesis to Michael Moore's own docs, an unbiased focus on one man's controversial job in the machinations of war. Is McNamara a war criminal or did he just simply do his job? Should he have admitted his mistakes more readily in Vietnam? It's hard to say but the question lingers.