The Fog of War – Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature
McNamara explains the fog of war:
What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily. Wilson said: "We won the war to end all wars." I'm not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war. We're not going to change human nature anytime soon. It isn't that we aren't rational. We are rational. But reason has limits.
McNamara, choking on emotion, shares the following in the last scene of the film:
There's a quote from T.S. Eliot that I just love:
We shall not cease from exploring
And at the end of our exploration
We will return to where we started
And know the place for the first time.Now that's in a sense where I'm beginning to be.
The Fog of War – Lesson #10: Never say never
The film displays a clip of McNamara fielding questions from a reporter about the apparent "stalemate" reached in Vietnam at this point in his career as Secretary of Defence. McNamara quickly contradicts the reporter by alluding to remarks made (then) recently by General Westmoreland which extolled the progress made by the military operations to date. McNamara shares that he learned to never say never. He also learned to never answer the question asked, but to answer the question you wish had been asked.
The Fog of War – Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
McNamara ponders:
"How much evil must we do in order to do good? We have certain ideals, certain responsibilities. Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it."
McNamara recounts having read that General Sherman, during the Civil War, rebuffed the Mayor of Atlanta's plea to spare the city from burning by saying " War is cruel. War is cruelty."
" That was the way LeMay felt. He was trying to save the country. He was trying to save our nation. And in the process, he was prepared to do whatever killing was necessary. It's a very, very difficult position for sensitive human beings to be in."
The Fog of War – Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
McNamara, himself, provided the perfect synopsis of this lesson (emphasis added):
What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning.
The Fog of War – Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong
The USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy both claim to have made contact with North Vietnamese water craft and to have drawn torpedo fire from these vessels. It turns out that the Maddox did, indeed, successfully evade North Vietnamese torpedo fire. (Shell fragments were recovered from the deck of the Maddox which were proven to be North Vietnamese.) The reports made by the Turner Joy, on the other hand, have not been verified to this day. McNamara holds that "we were wrong" about the incident involving the Turner Joy.
After the Maddox incident, the President refused to respond to the act of aggression. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, and retaliatory bombing attacks, proceeded from the reports of the Turner Joy's encounter with North Vietnamese aggressors. The decision to retaliate and seek congressional approval of military action in Vietnam was made based on the observed pattern of escalating aggression in the Tonkin Gulf and Johnson':
"belief that it was a conscious decision on the part of the North Vietnamese political and military leaders to escalate the conflict and an indication they would not stop short of winning. We were wrong, but we had in our minds a mindset that led to that action. And it carried such heavy costs. We see incorrectly or we see only half of the story at times … Belief and seeing, they're both often wrong."
"Let me go back one moment. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets. In the case of Vietnam, we didn't know them well enough to empathize. And there was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Not what they saw it as: a civil war."
McNamara travelled to Vietnam in 1995 to discuss "what might have been" with a former Foreign Minister.
"The former Foreign Minister of Vietnam, a wonderful man named Thach said, "You're totally wrong. We were fighting for our independence. You were fighting to enslave us." We almost came to blows. That was noon on the first day.
"Do you mean to say it was not a tragedy for you, when you lost 3 million 4 hundred thousand Vietnamese killed, which on our population base is the equivalent of 27 million Americans? What did you accomplish? You didn't get any more than we were willing to give you at the beginning of the war. You could have had the whole damn thing: independence, unification."
"Mr. McNamara, You must never have read a history book. If you'd had, you'd know we weren't pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. McNamara, didn't you know that? Don't you understand that we have been fighting the Chinese for 1000 years? We were fighting for our independence. And we would fight to the last man. And we were determined to do so. And no amount of bombing, no amount of U.S. pressure would ever have stopped us.""