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The Fog of War – Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us

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1130 days
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It is difficult to summarize this lesson any better than McNamara did below (emphasis added):

“I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.”

Poignantly, McNamara notes:

“The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is this: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.”

The Fog of War – Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy

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1130 days
by in film

On October 27, 1967, the White House found itself in receipt of two messages from Kruschev.

  • The first message said that if the US was to guarantee that it would not invade Cuba, the USSR would withdraw the missiles
  • The second message said that if the US attacked Cuba, the USSR would respond with devastating military power

Thomas “Tommy” Thompson, a former ambassador to Moscow, was in the room. He urged Kennedy to respond to the first message. He saw that Kruschev would capitulate if he was presented a deal in which he could say to the Russian people that he saved Cuba from a US invasion.

“We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.”

The Fog of War

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1131 days
by in film

I watched The Fog of War again today. If you’ve not seen this Academy Award-winning documentary, I highly recommend it! The film outlines, as its subtitle suggests, eleven lessons deduced from the life of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The documentary itself, independent of these lessons, is brilliant but I found the lessons themselves to be particularly compelling and applicable in many of life’s theatres. The eleven lessons are enumerated below.

Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.
Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us.
Lesson #3: There’s something beyond one’s self.
Lesson #4: Maximize efficiency.
Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
Lesson #6: Get the data.
Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature.

For each of the lessons listed above, over the coming eleven days, I will share a synopsis of Robert McNamara’s thoughts as portrayed in the documentary. (It is certainly worth purchasing a copy of the film for yourself!)

I should note that all quotes related in the forthcoming posts have been taken directly from the transcript of the documentary provided by the director, Errol Morris, on his website. I will indicate any grammatical modifications made to this text, or any emphasis added.

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