I finally got around to watching The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara yesterday.
All I can say is, wow. Anyone who doesn't think our situation in Iraq today is not similar to the situation in Vietnam needs to see this. It's oh so clear that the people running this country have not learned a damn thing in the ensuing 40 years. Some of the things LBJ said in 1964 (according to the movie) could just have easily come out of GW Bush's mouth. I've blogged previously about how Rumsfeld has channeled McNamara.
One point McNamara made that stands out in my memory was about the huge culture gap between the US and Vietnam, and its resulting problems. He more or less said, "we though we were fighting the Cold War. They (the Vietnamese) thought they were fighting a civil war". This was contrasted sharply in the movie with how the Cuban Missile Crisis was handled, where McNamara describes how the US players put themselves into the Soviet shoes and thought through how to resolve the crisis and save face on both sides.
With Vietnam, LBJ is quoted as saying they didn't know what was going on in Vietnam as they got into the war, except that they knew they had to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese. "We need to be able to guarantee their security" was another phrase I jotted down as I watched. The parallels with today are so obvious it's not even funny.
McNamara paints himself now as someone who had grave reservations about Vietnam but ran the war as best he could out of loyalty, until finally he found himself disagreeing with LBJ so strongly he had to go. Whether that's really how it was, I don't know. And although he was pushed rather strongly by the filmmakers, he refused to say whether he regretted what he did as Secretary of Defense or explain why, if he felt the war was wrong, he would not speak out against it after he left government service. he sys he has his reasons, but doesn't say what they are.
All in all, for history or political buffs, it's well worth renting. In the additional materials on the DVD are several clips not included in the movie. One was the famous 1964 'girl with dasies/nuclear bomb' commercial LBJ used. I'd read about it many times but never seen it. I sat there slackjawed as it played out - it is amazingly powerful.
