One reads in these philosophical “maxims” certain tensions within McNamara himself, troubled interactions between sets of beliefs such as “empathize with your enemy” and “there’s something beyond oneself.” Is McNamara the soulless technocrat he has long been accused of being? Is he the bearer of a deep and terrible guilt? To its lasting credit, The Fog of War does not provide easy answers. This is an idea Morris plays with by structuring Fog of War around 11 lessons, the titles of which are taken from comments made by McNamara.
#THE FOG OF WAR HOW TO#
McNamara’s hindsight can also be read as pedagogical, a series of instructions for how to read historical records when necessarily filtered through individual experience. When McNamara discusses the errors of human judgment and the breakdowns and failures of rationality, one may detect an apologetic tone in his voice.
Johnson, and as a leading strategist during the firebombing of Japan during WWII, McNamara is an individual who has been intimately involved in some of the darkest stains in the bloody legacy of the American 20th century. As Secretary of Defense under presidents John F. Such a statement, coming from someone once considered a clinical intellectual in the business of society and government, and indelibly linked to our disaster of the Vietnam War, feels at once like a life lesson and personal confession. McNamara, the principle at the heart of Errol Morris’s The Fog of War is that reason has its limits.
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