Our Fallibility

I watched Errol Morris' Fog of War on DVD last night, and was scared and entertained at the same time. In terms of journalistic integrity, cinematic style and historical substance, this film hits Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 out of the ballpark.

The documentary is largely based on 20 hours of interviews that Errol Morris conducted with Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967 under Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, interspersed with relevant archive footage, tapes of White House conversations and stylish visuals. We observe Robert S. McNamara looking back on his career, and at the age of 85, he is still at the height of his powers as a speaker and analyst of the events he was involved in. He is obviously trying to come to terms with some of his actions, which directly or indirectly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Robert McNamara in 1964

Despite the near-confessional format of the interviews, (the subject stares directly into the barrel of the camera), McNamara doesn't quite admit any responsibility for the destruction wreaked by US forces in Vietnam. He is however more forthcoming about his role as a statistical officer for General Curtis LeMay's 58th Bomb Wing, the unit which undertook a large part of the firebombing campign over Japan in 1945. McNamara freely admits that in helping plan the wide area destruction of Japanese cities, he and LeMay were probably acting as war criminals. In one raid, on May 10th 1945, 100,000 people in Tokyo were killed in a firestorm launched by 300 of LeMay's B-29 bombers.

As Secretary of Defense, McNamara was personally involved in several of the most violent and destructive acts of the 20th Century. Just as Donald Rumsfeld today has overseen the setting up of detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, the first uses of napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam occurred on McNamara's watch. (Perhaps rather conveniently, McNamara says that he can 'no longer recall' whether he personally authorised Agent Orange spraying operations).

Possibly the scariest thing that stands out from the film is how misunderstandings and human fallibility at the highest levels of command can lead to the destruction of millions of lives. The most striking example of this is McNamara's admission that the US government and military completely misapprehended the situation in Vietnam. They saw Vietnam as the frontline of a global (Soviet or Maoist China-backed) communist strategy to dominate South-East Asia. The Vietnamese saw it as a civil war, and interpreted American intervention as an attempt to reimplement a colonial regime.

The film reinforces how much mutual confusion there was during some of the major crises of McNamara's Cabinet tenure - the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Six Day War. This titular 'Fog of War', the lack of factual information and accurate intelligence, the fleurescence of rumours and suppositions and simple communication breakdowns could have very easily led to much more serious and tragic outcomes.

The similarities between McNamara's Cold War and today's "War on Terror"
are striking, and decades later we are still grappling with the same issues of legality, morality and proportionality in human conflict.

McNamara comes out strongly in favour of non-proliferation of WMDs, (particularly nuclear weapons), the establishment of an International Court of Justice, and, significantly, he argues against unilateral overseas actions by the United States.

While not expressing guilt for his actions, McNamara admits that he and his colleagues did make mistakes. It is disturbing that today's leaders in the United States and elsewhere continue to make many of the same mistakes. Fog of War comes highly recommended.