The Fog Of War Analysis

The Fog of War is a movie about the life of Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense. The movie has actual footage and has an interview with Robert McNamara by the director. Having McNamara to tell the story of his experiences Of the wars from his perspective, The director also divides the film into eleven lessons that are taken right from McNamara’s life. Out of all of Mcnamara’s lessons there are three that I believe to be more important than the others.
In the first lesson “Empathize with you Enemy” McNamara talks about the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis to show how close we came having nuclear war. He states that although he and Kennedy wanted to keep the nation out of the war, other people within the White House intended on invading Cuba. Kennedy got two messages from Khrushchev during the missile crisis; McNamara calls the first the “hard message” and then calls the other the “softer message”. This message, saying that the U.S.S.R. will remove all the missiles from Cuba if the
Though he says he loved Johnson as a president, in the end they had very different opinions on the war. He assumes that if JFK had lived, that the situation would not have ended up as bad as it did. These tensions between LBJ and McNamara reached their max resulting in McNamara stepping down from his role as Secretary of Defense. But just before he stepped down, LBJ awarded him with the Medal of Freedom. I believe that this is the second most important lesson because no matter how bad things may seem there is always a way out. In the vietnam war many people back home did not agree with the U.S. sending troops. Many people didn't think we would ever make it out of that war. Also back in the great depression many people did not think that we were going to make it. But after a bit of time everything straightened back out and the stock market came back