By Douglas Burns
This son of a bitch cut through ‘Fog of War’
Sometimes the best advice, the most illuminating insight, comes from a son of a bitch.
And that’s what former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara is in the eyes of many Americans, particularly of the Vietnam War generation.
“A lot of people think I am a son of a bitch,” McNamara says at one point in the stunning and engrossing documentary “The Fog of War.”
The Errol Morris-directed film won the Academy Award for best documentary of 2003.
It’s a film all Americans, particularly our politicians, should see. Twice.
McNamara, 85 years old when “The Fog of War” was made, talks about the ghosts and demons of wars and presidential decisions past. McNamara died in July 2009 at age 93.
There are few Americans as connected to war as was McNamara, defense secretary for seven years under President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
One of McNamara’s earliest memories was of the end of World War I, and the celebrations he saw as a youngster. He later served in World II, helping to plan some of the bombing missions that resulted in the destruction, and ultimately, capitulation of Japan.
Kennedy tapped McNamara, a Harvard Business School graduate and president of the Ford Motor Company, as Secretary of Defense shortly after his election in 1960.
Interestingly, at Ford, McNamara was one of the executives most interested in car safety. Some of the first seat-belts were installed in Fords in 1956 during his tenure.
“The Fog of War” relies on compelling interviews with McNamara, archival footage and White House audio tapes from both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
McNamara was with President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the United States stood on the edge of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, in the end averting it through a combination of skillful brinksmanship and luck.
In some of the more provocative, and indeed chilling, portions of the 1-hour and 45- minute movie, McNamara explains why the United States was successful in dealing with the Soviets but not the North Vietnamese.
It comes down to empathy, the simple ability to stand in the other guy’s shoes, McNamara says.
The Kennedy Administration understood the Soviet Union and was able to respond in a manner to the Cuban Missile Crisis that allowed Premier Nikita Khrushchev to save face.
But with the Vietnam War, the Johnson Administration couldn’t see that the North Vietnamese viewed U.S. involvement as an act of colonialism, which they experienced under the French. The United States only saw the conflict in terms of the Cold War, and found Vietnamese connections to China and the Soviets that were largely imagined — a shortsightedness caused by ignorance of Southeast Asian culture and history, McNamara said.
“In the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know them well enough to empathize,” he said.
He also said the United States’ unilateral move into Vietnam proved fatal, and that using military action without diplomacy and economic muscle is a fool’s game.
“I think if we do that by itself, it’s suicide,” McNamara said.
He argues that the United States should never apply force unilaterally.
“If we would have followed that rule in Vietnam, we would have never been there,” McNamara said.
The former defense secretary also speculated that if JFK had not been assassinated and lived to prosecute policy in Vietnam, the U.S. would not have escalated the conflict.
“I don’t think we would have had 500,000 men there,” he said. CV
Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa newspaperman who writes for The Carroll Daily Times Herald and offers columns for Cityview.
