The Fog of War...documentary

[3rdpath]

just finished watching the robert mcnamara documentary...truly fascinating.

he reviews his involvment in ww2, the cuban missile crisis and vietnam while explaining the eleven lessons he has learned. the taped conversations between him and jfk/lbj are eerily reminiscent of the us/iraq conflict. the iraq conflict is never discussed but the parallels are unavoidable...from lbj's speech about us "waging a war against tyranney and aggression", to mcnamara's press briefings claiming " progress is being made", it's all too familiar. i rewound the tape and watched that section twice...scary.

one interesting portion deals with the u.s. firebombing tokyo, killing 100,000 civilians in 1 day( many, many other firebombings are also detailed). afterwards, mcnamara and his commanding officer ( lemay?) discuss that if the u.s. had lost the war they would have been tried as war criminals. he has the brutal objectivity to state that immorality can't exist just for the losers of a war...that same judgement of immorality also applies to the victor.

it is also very apparent that rummy has stolen mcnamara's playbook...

see it if you have the chance.

btw, the movie's trailer is on the apple site:
here (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/thefogofwar.html)

[Thanatoast]

looks very interesting. i especially like what he said about the us seeing vietnam as part of the cold war and vietnam seeing it as a civil war. in the glare of national hysteria, thinking about the enemy from the enemy's point of view is often lost or frowned upon when it can in fact be the most usefull tool. a different perspective is needed today, i think.

[meta-ghost]

i couldn't help but focus on whether mac was an "author or instrument". for those of us not around or not aware during the period it's hard to say. seems that most from that time peg him as an author. on one hand, in the film he's quite open about regrets and mistakes but he still doesn't answer the question. he comes from a humble backround (went to cal, not stanford), clearly worked his way up to the top corporate levels. but was he simply working for others?

the moments describing the cuban missle crises are of course fascinating. but particularly when mac express admiration for the fellow who openly told kennedy that he was wrong. was this mac wishing he had done the same?

this sundays nytimes has a great review of the film bringing in the parallels to the recent treasury secretary paul oneal's departure and comments. see it at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/arts/25RICH.html