Analysis of The Fog Of War Documentary by Errol Morris - Essay Example

THE FOG OF WAR Hailed as one of ‘the best and the brightest’ of U.S leaders, Robert S. McNamara held the post of U.S Secretary of Defense during the terms of two presidents – John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (Petrakis). Errol Morris delves into the complexities of McNamara exposing the eternally controversial man in his fascinating and grim documentary “The Fog of War” that is a combination of a part filmed biography of McNamara, and part colloquy about philosophical questions concerning war (Turan). In the process, there are many instances where the film deviates from historical facts. The first pointer involves the role of the U.S in the Vietnam War. McNamara was one of the principal U.S leaders that orchestrated the war that resulted in the deaths of 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. In the film, 85 year old McNamara (playing himself) speaks about the Congressional resolution that gave credence and legality to the Vietnam War apparently totally based on the torpedo incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that is widely regarded as the spark that spawned U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. Historical facts however tell a different story. It was later learnt that the U.S Congress, Kennedy and McNamara himself all wrongly interpreted the torpedo incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, which never took place in the exaggerated fashion it was reported. Had it been perceived in its correct context, the Gulf of Tonkin incident would never have injected the U.S into a disastrous war it could not win. The film is therefore guilty of not revealing the true reasons for the country’s foray into Vietnam (Petrakis). To exacerbate matters further, McNamara deliberately shifts the entire blame of the U.S misadventure in Vietnam onto the shoulders of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, going to the extent of wistfully claiming that had his predecessor John F. Kennedy been in office at that time, “he would have made a difference…I don’t think we would have had 500,000 men there” (Morris). This claim too has no historical basis, and is therefore considered pure conjecture on the part of the former U.S. Secretary of Defense. The second pointer involves the firebombing of 67 Japanese cities by the U.S in 1945 that killed nearly 1 million Japanese (Turan), including a single event in which about 100,000 Japanese were scorched to death in Tokyo. Colonel Curtis Le May, who directed the military operations, along with McNamara {“I was part of a mechanism that in a sense recommended it” (Morris)}, were both convinced that the firebombing would bring about a speedy end to World War II. McNamara supports the decision of LeMay and himself that led to so many horrific Japanese deaths by exemplifying it to one of the 11 lessons he learnt in life, namely, “In Order to Do Good, You May Have to Engage in Evil” (Petrakis). There is no historian, past or present that condones the horror firebombing perpetrated by America. There is no historical support for justifying the achievement of the firebombing {the end of Japanese role in World War II} at the expense of the massive loss of human lives. The weight is simply too heavy on one side of the scale – Japan’s. In what is perhaps the lowest point of the film, McNamara tries to actually tilt the scale in favor of America by a bizarre method. He names a number of Japanese cities that were destroyed in part or to a great extent in the American firebombing, compares them to American cities of similar size and then thunderously tells viewers that if they could only ‘imagine’ those American cities suffering the same fate, they would surely support his {McNamara’s} assertion that the American action was proportionate to its objectives {“Proportionality should be a guideline in war” (Morris)}. The supposedly ‘equal’ cities were Yokohama/Cleveland, Tokyo/New York and Nagoya/Los Angeles (Morris). Morris is equally guilty in aiding McNamara’s bizarre contention by adding stylistic bits to the archival clips, showing numbers dramatically falling toward black-and-white aerial scenes of Japanese cities (Loftus). The third pointer involves the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. While both Colonel Curtis LeMay and McNamara actively featured in it, the slippery former Secretary of Defense subtly avoids a major part of the blame, quoting LeMay as saying “Let’s go in, let’s totally destroy Cuba” (Morris), words that do not cannot be backed by historical evidence. This time however, the two superpower leaders {John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushev} managed to pull back inches from the brink of what would have been an outright nuclear war between the U.S and the Soviet Union. The leaders were certain of their individual interpretations of the crisis, and if it were not for Nikita Khrushev’s backing down and withdrawing Soviet missiles from Cuba, and Kennedy’s decision to take the advice of Tommy Thompson who had an acute insight into Khrushev’s thought patterns, the Cuban missile crisis would have escalated into the world’s first nuclear war. McNamara reveals his hypocrisy at this point. Instead of admitting his advisory role in the matter was woefully inept {it should have been him and LeMay who should have read the situation correctly and advised Kennedy}, he tries to associate himself with Thompson’s saving action, saying “That’s what I call empathy” (Morris) as if he was aware of everything that transpired between Kennedy and Thompson and as if Thompson interacted with the President after getting his {McNamara’s} approval. Next, he tries to play down the entire incident, trying to dismiss it as a lucky break: “At the end, we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war” (Morris). He blunders further into the self-created mess by loftily claiming that Thompson’s action does in fact prove one of the lessons he {McNamara} learnt in life, namely, “Empathize with your Enemy” (Petrakis). The overall portrayal of the Cuban crisis in the film by both McNamara and Morris serves to grossly belittle the enormity of the catastrophe that history vehemently records would have developed had the two Presidents not been dissuaded from attacking each other’s countries. The fourth pointer is McNamara’s portrayal of Union General William Sherman who he claims ordered his troops to set ablaze the entire city of Atlanta despite the pleas of its Mayor not to harm the city. This is historically inaccurate. History records Sherman as not only sternly warning his soldiers to torch only military and industrial Confederate establishments while totaling sparing residential property, he patrolled the city with a group of officials to see that his orders were explicitly carried out, and even went to the extent of threatening death to those soldiers that went against his directive. However, while historical records also show that in fact Atlanta was totally burned, historians are undecided about whether it was caused by fire uncontrollably spreading from the targeted areas to other parts or whether it was perpetrated by arsonists – the fact remains however, that historians do not blame Sherman for it. While on the subject of Sherman’s alleged torching activities, the film is also guilty of leaving out an important, allied part of Sherman’s role in the war that is a sequence to the Atlanta incident. It makes no mention of the famous Sherman-led march of Union troops across Georgia. Historical records show that Sherman’s troops did not in fact spend time torching areas of Georgia {as is widely claimed by Confederate sympathizers}, but actually spent more time extinguishing fires caused by withdrawing Confederate soldiers bent on stopping property from falling into the hands of the victors (Loftus). The fifth pointer concerns McNamara’s tenure at the World Bank. The film discloses he served as World Bank President from 1968 to 1981, during which time he was involved in schemes for the poor and world development. The film conveniently ignores mentioning that the 13-year period in question is historically considered as one of the worst performances of the World Bank {and by association as its President, McNamara himself}. This historical viewpoint is well summarized by Canadian writer Ralston Saul who wrote that McNamara is the ‘most perfect example’ of a powerful technocrat ‘crippled’ by a dual personality – ‘mechanical brilliance and childlike idealism’ – with no ‘thread of common sense’ to connect the two (Loftus). The sixth pointer is McNamara’s portrayal of his years at Ford during the 1950s. He talks about the car giant’s experiments to make their vehicles ‘safer envelopes’ for the ‘human meat’ inside. As if that description was not shocking and repelling enough, Morris adds to the horror effect by reproducing the Ford experiments wherein human skulls are covered in cloth and flung down a stairwell (Loftus). There is no evidence to prove that one of America’s most revered car manufacturers stoops to such chilling experiments to make their cars safe for Americans. The last pointer is the lack of credibility in McNamara’s statements. While discussing his “Never apply military force unilaterally” lesson, he takes great pains to distance his remarks from American involvement in Iraq. By doing so, he reveals his partiality – he uses some events to vindicate his ‘lessons,’ while conveniently withdrawing comment when having to apply those same ‘lessons’ to other events involving America (Dunn). Secondly, while discussing his private life, McNamara claims his tenure in the government was such a great source of stress to his wife that it ultimately took her life; still, he bravely says those years were the best years of their lives. Media records however reveal that the ‘best’ years in the lives of the couple were their initial marriage years – something McNamara himself mentioned earlier (Loftus). “The Fog of War” does a good job of unraveling the complexities of Robert S. (it seems appropriate that his middle name is ‘Strange’) McNamara (Petrakis). Even at the end, as Morris tries to show McNamara in favorable light, historic records the man as being very unpopular among Americans, particularly during the Vietnam years, as he was widely perceived as ‘advising’ first Kennedy and then Johnson into dragging the nation into the quagmire that was the Vietnam War. Historical records also show that Americans, particularly students, took strong exception to McNamara’s haughty public stance, his snobbishness and evident emotional unconcern about the brutalities of war. This resulted in McNamara being tagged with captions like ‘Mac the knife’ and ‘Ice runs through his veins’ (Dunn). References used: Dunn, Geoffrey. “The Fog of Robert McNamara.” Metroactive.com. 2004. 1 Dec. 2007. Read More