Blog 12 CT

In the documentary “Fog of War” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reveals how his actions affected life for him and the country and his justification behind these actions. The eleven lessons that he tells us about are particularly helpful. They include empathize with your enemy, rationality will not save us, there’s something beyond one’s self, maximize efficiency, proportionality should be a guideline in war, get the data, belief and seeing are both often wrong, be prepared to reexamine your reasoning, in order to do good, you may have to engage in evil, never say never, you can’t change human nature. Through these eleven lessons he proves his justification through what he did. I found this documentary not only to seem like an apology for his actions during the Vietnam War, but also as an insight to his life.

I feel that in many instances McNamara gets criticized for the actions he and President Johnson took in the Vietnam War, but in a situation as such no one knows what actions they themselves would take. Many say that the war was McNamara and Johnsons fault, but I don’t agree with that, although they did make decisions that should’ve been avoided. There is a large shift throughout the documentary and at one point we see the topic reach McNamara’s limit. He no longer wanted to talk about the war, but I feel that he was relieved to tell the public what he thought about the topic. Instead of pointing fingers at whose fault the war was, we should be realizing how we can avoid situations like these happening again.