Errol Morris' "The Fog Of War"



I watched this two weeks ago, but didn't blog about it immediately, because I felt at some level that Robert McNamara was being deeply dishonest about his central role in the Vietnam War and I wanted to think about why.

He never spoke up about his disillusionment with the Vietnamese War at the time. Why? His voice would have been vastly influential at the time. Well, because Lyndon Johnson gave him a Presidential Medal Of Freedom. It's a little more complicated than that, of course, but not much more. He felt it was his duty to keep quiet. LBJ enforced that.

The scene of the movie where McNamara is awarded the medal is amazing. The expression of LBJ is utterly fascinating: LBJ is *watching* McNamara with cobra-like intensity. Just fascinating.

McNamara's duty to his country was to talk. Instead, he remained loyal to his commander-in-chief.

This YouTube clip (of a different scene) describes how the American leadership utterly misread the motives of their Vietnamese opponents, much like the Bush Administration does today with their Iraqi opponents.



McNamara's dishonesty is directly addressed in this Charlie Rose episode.