The Fog of War (VHS, 2004)

During both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Robert McNamara helped make key Executive Branch government security decisions over (at the very least) the Cuban/Soviet Missle Crisis & the Viet Nam war. Now at 85 years of age, McNamara reveals he was not living and guiding us through 'the cold war', but rather, what he calls a very "Hot War."

While the US Military Task Force was advising Pres. Kennedy to go into nuclear war with as Cuba which they thought was only armed with two dozen nuclear warheads, Sect. McNamara was advising Pres. Kennedy to take 'the soft approach' with Soviet leader Kruschev. Good thing! In retrospect McNamara learned there were over 200 nuclear warheads in Cuba aimed at America, and the Pres. Castro was willing to go to the mat with the US, and risk Cuba being annihilated rather than colonized/democratized by foreign occupiers. Close to a hundred million Americans (mostly Southern) would likely have been rapidly incinerated.

The elderly McNamara's ominous facial expressions reveal more than his words when he speaks plainly about the tragedy of losing over 50,000 US soldiers in Viet Nam. Though clearly, documentarian Morris is not giving McNamara a free book expose' ("In Retrospect," and "Wilson's Ghost"), Morris is due credit for using a new technique to bring out the expressive, charming, sincere humanity of a man who faced two of the tensest moments in the second half of 20th century US history. If you go into the film expecting an apology for Viet Nam mistakes of the Johnson administration, they aren't there. Instead, there are quite clear analyses of those mistakes and their impacts.

The eerie thing is that the dove McNamara actually sounds like the voice of war hawk x-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, of the W. Bush administration. The two men couldn't be more polarized philosophically. I found myself asking, what would our lives around the globe be like today if McNamara was in the W. Bush administration? Would we even be in Iraq? I doubt it very seriously since the wise Secretary's message was one of peace making through diplomacy. Making allies instead of adversaries. Doing such things he suggests is much more likely to guarantee the peace. 16th President Abe Lincoln asked white supremacists, "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

In all this documentary gave me hope for a much more diplomatically inclined American future, once W. Bush et al are gone in 417 days from this writing on November 28th, 2006.