Fog Of War Analysis
Walking Along a Familiar Path
In Errol Morris’ documentary Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, we follow the life and times of former United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. The insightful piece follows his life from birth during World War I, his success at college, cunning business career at Ford Motor Company, to his involvement in World War II and his controversial political career during the Kennedy and Johnson presidential terms. Morris highlights the documentary around these eleven lessons that McNamara passes through during an interview for the film. In my opinion some of these ‘lessons’ are merely some opinions of McNamara and some seem to be spurred along by Morris, who is asking the …show more content…
This seemed to be a decent excuse to start bombing runs, mobilize troops and deploy them in to South East Asia. The parallels between these chain of events leading to the Vietnam War and the actions taken by the US government in launching campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq are very similar. While the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were a violent catalyst to the conflict in Afghanistan, it was an isolated attack by a handful of terrorist. The US turned 9/11 into a raid on Afghanistan harboring factions of these terrorists, eventually overturning the government in power. Another similar lesson in which McNamara states we should “Get the data,” can be strongly related to the US government’s poor excuse to invade Iraq. The speculation that Iraq was in the process of making or in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was largely fabricated ordeal backed by speculation and no quantifiable evidence. Since 2003, the US has still not found WMDs and have quickly skirted this issue under the rug while they change their war song as an action of freedom against tyrannical Iraqi
In Errol Morris’ documentary Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, we follow the life and times of former United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. The insightful piece follows his life from birth during World War I, his success at college, cunning business career at Ford Motor Company, to his involvement in World War II and his controversial political career during the Kennedy and Johnson presidential terms. Morris highlights the documentary around these eleven lessons that McNamara passes through during an interview for the film. In my opinion some of these ‘lessons’ are merely some opinions of McNamara and some seem to be spurred along by Morris, who is asking the …show more content…
This seemed to be a decent excuse to start bombing runs, mobilize troops and deploy them in to South East Asia. The parallels between these chain of events leading to the Vietnam War and the actions taken by the US government in launching campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq are very similar. While the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were a violent catalyst to the conflict in Afghanistan, it was an isolated attack by a handful of terrorist. The US turned 9/11 into a raid on Afghanistan harboring factions of these terrorists, eventually overturning the government in power. Another similar lesson in which McNamara states we should “Get the data,” can be strongly related to the US government’s poor excuse to invade Iraq. The speculation that Iraq was in the process of making or in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was largely fabricated ordeal backed by speculation and no quantifiable evidence. Since 2003, the US has still not found WMDs and have quickly skirted this issue under the rug while they change their war song as an action of freedom against tyrannical Iraqi