The Fog Of War - Robert S. McNamara
The Fog of War
Robert McNamara is implicated in the deaths of thousands of Japanese
civilians.
by Joe Sinclair, Sept 2004
As a military tactician during World War Two Robert McNamara helped
plan a strategy which included the firebombing of 67 Japanese cities and
the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In a timely meditation on the ethics of war Errol Morris’ Oscar-winning
documentary sees McNamara face to face with the camera, exploring issues
of truth, judgement, responsibility, killing and conflict.
McNamara started his career as a Berkeley statistician and went on to
become US Secretary of Defence under Kennedy and Johnson during the Cold
War and Vietnam. His detractors have called him “a con man”,
“an IBM machine with legs” and “an arrogant dictator”.
However, in his typically detached and analytical mode, McNamara describes
himself as “part of a mechanism” which made “weakening
the enemy” more efficient.
Now in his eighties, McNamara’s mottled face and croaky voice
betray his age, but his intellect and recollection remain sharp. He proves
to be an insightful but elusive character, maintaining the distance and
control of a career politician. “Never answer the question that
is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you,”
he says. And his testimony is more analysis than confession.
McNamara claims that his rule “has been to try to learn, try to
understand what happened, develop the lessons and pass them on”.
Although he doesn’t comment directly on the current world situation,
he clearly believes that the lessons of previous wars should be learnt
and are relevant in today’s world.
During World War Two McNamara served under General Curtis LeMay, “an
extraordinary belligerent, many thought brutal, man”. But McNamara
cannot help betraying a certain admiration for LeMay’s scientific
approach to war. He describes how LeMay “focused solely on the loss
of his crews per unit of target destruction”.
Beneath the euphemistic language McNamara is struggling to deal with
the horror of his own actions. He chillingly describes the firebombing
of Tokyo: “In a single night we burned to death a hundred thousand
Japanese civilians – men, women and children.”
But it was not just Tokyo. McNamara claims that the bombing campaign
killed 50 to 90 percent of the people in 67 Japanese cities. This, of
course, was followed by the dropping of two nuclear bombs. He concedes
that this “is not proportional – in the minds of some people
– to the objectives we were trying to achieve.” But there
is no apology or admission of guilt, and by using the qualification –
“in the minds of some people” – McNamara doesn’t
even commit to an opinion of his own.
On August 6 1945 at 8.15am the Enola Gay B-29 bomber dropped the atomic
bomb “Little Boy” above Hiroshima. The initial blast destroyed
everything within a 1.5 mile radius. By the end of the year about 200,000
people, mostly civilians, were dead. Many died of radiation poisoning.
Three days after the Hiroshima uranium bomb "Little Boy," “Fat Man” –
a plutonium bomb – was dropped on Nagasaki, resulting in a further
70,000 deaths.
The film leaves it up to the audience to read between the lines as to
whether McNamara believes what he did was right, or whether there even
can be such a thing as “right” during times of war. But McNamara
does believe that the human race needs to grapple with the rules of war,
to make the legal framework more clear cut. He asks the appalling question:
“Was there a rule then to say that you shouldn’t bomb, shouldn’t
kill, shouldn’t burn to death one hundred thousand civilians in
a single night?”
He struggles to come to terms with this void between law and morality:
“LeMay said if we lost the war we’d all have been prosecuted
as war criminals, but what makes it immoral if you lose but not immoral
if you win?”
The film goes on to looks at McNamara’s role as Defence Secretary
during the Vietnam War. He orchestrated a bombing campaign of North Vietnam
during which two to three times as many bombs were dropped as on the whole
of Western Europe during World War Two, killing thousands of innocent
civilians and strengthening Vietnamese resolve firmly against the Americans.
He was also guilty of trying to manipulate public perception of the
war and authorising the use of Agent Orange. 58,000 Americans, 224,000
South Vietnamese and an estimated one million North Vietnamese were killed
during the conflict.
Despite all of this the overwhelming impression is that McNamara is
a thinking man, still coming to terms with what he has done. And he encourages
us to think as well. He warns that no country or leader is omniscient,
and that the unilateral application of economic, political and military
power is a great threat to world security. He also cautions against nuclear
weapons which have the power to “destroy nations” with “no
learning period”. The man with ultimate responsibility, he says,
is the man with his finger on the button, and he is ultimately fallible.
Let’s hope that the men with the fingers take time out to watch
this film.
Japan articles by Joe Sinclair
Interview with a Kabuki Actor
Hitch-Hiking in Japan
Japan Travel Tips: Missing the last train in Tokyo
Hot Spring Bathing in Japan
Tokyo Story - Movie Review
Memoirs of a Geisha - Movie Review
Twilight Samurai - Movie Review
Fear And Trembling (Stupeur et Tremblements) - Movie Review
Zatoichi- Movie Review
Interview with David Mitchell, author of "Cloud Atlas"
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