Mightier than the Sword

Lost in the clouds: McNamara explains himself, or doesn't.

According to Robert McNamara, history isn't the only thing written by the winners.

by Cindy Fuchs

"Are you ready? All set?" In response to Errol Morris' offscreen query, Robert Strange McNamara sets his face and gazes into the Interrotron. He looks vaguely uncomfortable, but prepared. The question is, for what?

In The Fog of War, Morris edits his series of conversations with the 86-year-old McNamara so that the firebombing of Japan during WWII, the development of seat belts, the Cuban missile crisis and the "quagmire" of the Vietnam War all seem connected. These links are organized into "eleven lessons," each a section titled with an aphorism uttered by the former U.S. Secretary of Defense: "Empathize with your enemy"; "Believing and seeing are both often wrong"; "Proportionality should be a guideline in war"; "There's something beyond oneself."

A compelling meditation on human ambition and fallibility, the movie is comprised of McNamara's exchanges with Morris, archival footage, documents (to underline his interest in numbers and "data"), still photos and taped conversations with Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, played while the tape recorder rolls (reminiscent of the end of Morris' The Thin Blue Line, focusing all attention on what's being said -- here, plans for war and subterfuge).

In his many positions -- Harvard assistant professor (1941), founding member of the U.S. Air Corps Statistical Control School (1942), president of Ford Motor Company (for five weeks, during which time he attended to what he calls the U.S. desire for "conspicuous consumption"), Secretary of Defense (1961-1968, during which time he was accused of being an "IBM machine with legs"), and president of the World Bank (1968-1981) -- McNamara participated in more than his share of "historic" events. He also worked with a range of famous figures, from Fidel Castro and Gen. Curtis LeMay (under whom McNamara strategized to firebomb 67 Japanese cities, killing thousands of civilians), to special Vietnam advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, Gen. Maxwell Taylor and North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap (who revealed to McNamara in 1995 that the Gulf of Tonkin attack that motivated Johnson to enter into the Vietnam War in 1964 did not happen).

As a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force during WWII, he reached another conclusion, which the film deems lesson number four: "Maximize efficiency." The calculations involved in the decision to firebomb Japan (and thereafter, to use nuclear weapons) have to do with comparing numbers of possible U.S. soldiers' deaths to the supposedly lesser numbers of Japanese civilian deaths. (The film shows numerals dropping like bombs onto a map of Japan.) Here he suggests a "counterfactual," an academic thought experiment about how history might have been different. "The world has not really grappled with the rules of war," he notes, adding, "LeMay said if we'd lost the war, we'd all be persecuted as war criminals." The focus remains close on his face, though you're hearing voice-over rather than sync sound as he adds, "What makes it immoral if you lose, but not immoral if you win?"

McNamara's recollection of the Bay of Pigs raises related questions concerning the limits of knowledge, or, as it's termed in political and military circles, "intelligence." In 1992, he's informed by Castro that, contrary to CIA reports in 1961 that Cuba harbored no nuclear warheads, there were, in fact, 162 pointed at the U.S. "Such is the logic of war," he muses, if nations "clash like two blind moles, then mutual annihilation will commence."

This thinking leads later to McNamara's indictment of U.S. unilateralism. "What makes us omniscient?" he asks. How can one administration, one point of view or one presumption of moral ground guarantee correct interpretation or action? Or, as he puts it concerning the Vietnam War, in language that surely resonates today, "None of our allies supported us. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better re-examine our reasoning."

Though McNamara holds firm to his faith in rational thinking, he also admits that "reason has its limits," because of lack of empathy as much as lack of information. During wartime especially, "the human mind cannot comprehend all the variables," the inevitable misunderstandings and misreadings emerging from any engagement between cultures and sets of beliefs. When he says, "Any military commander who is honest will admit that he makes mistakes in the application of military power," he acknowledges that it's rare for commanders to do so in public.

Posing question after question -- about history, inevitability and intentionality -- the movie refutes the very idea of one correct conclusion. When Morris starts pressing his subject for specific answers, some admission of culpability or regret, McNamara pulls back: "I am not going to say any more than I have." Just how this reframes your reading of the film will depend on your own history.

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

Directed by Errol Morris A Sony Pictures Classics release Opens Friday at Ritz Bourse

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