Errol Morris’s stunning documentary is about one of the 20th century’s most significant players: Robert McNamara, who reprises the highlights of his life and professional career. Subtitled ”’Eleven Lessons of Robert S. McNamara,’ The Fog of War organizes his reflections into a list of maxims about war and human error, with the cumulative message suggesting that in wartime nobody in power really knows anything. This documentary, which has a solemn, anxious score by Philip Glass, incorporates White House tapes of conversations about Vietnam that Mr. McNamara had with both Kennedy and Johnson, along with vintage clips from World War II and Vietnam.
The film covers a lot of ground, his participation as a war planner in World War II, and his crucial involvement as secretary of defence under President John F Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, and under Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson during the Vietnam War.
There are some remarkable revelations, including his role in the firebombing of Japan, as well as the nuclear face-off between the United States and Cuba. McNamara was a member of the team that agreed a strategy of firebombing 67 Japanese cities, with the loss of 1.9 million civilian lives – before the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one of the film’s most powerful moments, a tearful McNamara tells Morris that if his side had lost the war, he might have been tried as a war criminal. ‘What makes something moral if you win and immoral if you lose?’ he asks plaintively.
McNamara was pivotal in two of the most significant events of the Sixties – the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam. His role (or as his critics have it, his culpability) in both of them have been the subject of academic debate for ages. Morris’ style is to let his subjects speak for themselves, though what little editorialising there is in The Fog of War tends to support McNamara’s portrayal of himself as someone who fought against the hawks who wanted to bomb Cuba. ‘Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war,’ he tells Morris.
What has tortured McNamara most is Vietnam. As is the case with the Cuban crisis, the historical record is open to varying interpretation, much of it rendered archaic by non-historians – as time moves on. Still, Morris has uncovered some interesting new material that undermines the conventional argument that McNamara was a consistent advocate for ratcheting up US involvement. In one taped conversation from October 1963, he is heard telling Kennedy that they must find a way of pulling out completely within two years. However, this evidence must be considered along with the documents that point to McNamara urging Johnson to use ‘selected and carefully graduated force’ to crush the Viet Cong.
McNamara remained silent about his feelings about the Vietnam War until his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect, whose reflections, including the eleven lessons, are tersely recycled in the movie. The gist of his rationalization for escalating the war is twofold. He was serving a president (Johnson) who was strongly opposed to withdrawing American troops from Southeast Asia. Shortly before leaving office in February 1968, he sent a private memo to Johnson urging a scaling down of the war but received no response. Beyond that, he suggests in a tone sadder and wiser but not apologetic, the complexity of war, its ‘fog’ if you will, makes it all but impossible for military planners to see the whole picture, except in hindsight.
The film is a 20th century fable, a story of an American dreamer who rose from humble origins to the heights of political power. McNamara was both a witness to; and a participant in many of the crucial events of the last century; the depression of the 1930s; the industrialisation of the war years; the development of a different kind of warfare based on air power; and the creation of a new American meritocracy. He was also an idealist who saw his dreams and ideals challenged by the role he played in history.
The Fog of War is an astonishing piece of work. Morris has long been one of the unsung geniuses of modern cinema. Although strictly speaking, neither a work of biography nor a work of history, The Fog of War has produced significant, new biographical and historical material. This is another brilliant coup for Morris, who has made a career out of conversations with the most fascinating subjects. He tells a story that knocks you right off your feet.