"Fog of War" Study Guide

I know this documentary can be a little tough to understand so I went ahead and pasted some of my notes here. If you use these in your journal, cite them as "Lecture Notes."

“Fog of War” Study Guide

1) McNamara’s eleven lessons:

(1) empathize with your enemy

(2) rationality will not save us

(3) there's something beyond one's self

(4) maximize efficiency

(5) proportionality should be a guideline in war

(6) get the data

(7) belief and seeing are both often wrong

(8) be prepared to re-examine your reasoning

(9) in order to do good you may have to engage in evil

(10) never say never

(11) you can't change human nature.

2) McNamara says that any military commander “who is honest with himself” will admit to making mistakes, but hopefully learns from these mistakes. However, McNamara says there is no “learning period” with nuclear weapons since one mistake will “kill nations.”

3) During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union sent missiles to Cuba (it’s ally) for potential use against the United States. The CIA thought the warheads weren’t there yet. US mobilized for an invasion and to block the warheads from arriving. In 1992, McNamara learned that the warheads were actually there and that Castro had wanted to use them. “That’s how close we were.”

4) McNamara (in a taped conversation with JFK) spoke of the danger if they attacked Cuba. “How do we stop at that point? I don’t have an answer to this.”

5) General Curtis LeMay’s opinion was that we should invade Cuba and attack the Soviet Union now, while we had superior strength.

6) JFK received two memos from Khrushchev and the Soviet Union. One said that if the U.S. backed down, the USSR would take the missiles out of Cuba. The other “hard-liner” message issued threats. Most of the joint chiefs suggested JFK focus on the second message; Ambassador Tommy Thompson suggested he respond to the second. Thompson was right. McNamara uses this as an example of empathy.

7) McNamara’s earliest memory is of people celebrating the end of World War I, aka “The War to End All Wars”. President Wilson believed (as did many at that time) that from now on, major wars could be avoided.

8) McNamara speaks of his role in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, which burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in one night. McNamara goes on to characterize LeMay’s position on proportionality in war, i.e. whether or not fire-bombing 67 Japanese cities and killing 50% to 90% of their population is acceptable. LeMay says that if the U.S. had lost the war, they would have been tried for war crimes. McNamara agrees. McNamara: “What makes it immoral if you lose but not immoral if you win?”

9) If you responsible for prosecuting McNamara for war crimes, what would your arguments be? On the other hand, if you were charged with defending him, how would you do so?

10) Johnson’s feeling about Vietnam: the U.S. had a commitment to “Vietnamese freedom” in the context of the Cold War. In actuality, the Vietnamese viewed it as a civil war, that the U.S. was trying to colonize them, which was why they would never have surrendered.

11) The Tonkin Gulf Resolution gave the president authorization to wage war without Congressional approval. It was thought that U.S. ships Maddox and Turner Joy had been attacked by the North Vietnamese on August 2^nd and August 4^th, 1964, respectively. In the case of the Maddox, this was true. In the case of the Turner Joy, however, it turns out the attack never happened. This ties in with what McNamara said about belief and seeing often both being wrong. How does this relate (or not relate) to other conflicts in recent history?

12) McNamara states that he, the president, and the cabinet avoided the near-total destruction of the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis because they empathized with their enemies—something he doesn’t believe they did during the Vietnam War. Don't just view this as a historical tidbit; think about how to apply this lesson (and the other lessons of this documentary) to your own life, to our country's social/political/economic situation.

13) McNamara says we are the strongest nation in the world but we should never apply our power unilaterally. In other words, if we cannot persuade like nations with comparable values that our course of action is the right one, we should be prepared to reexamine our reasoning. How does this compare (or differ) to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

14) Norman R. Morrison was a Quaker who did not believe in war. He doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire outside McNamara’s window. Afterward, Morrison’s wife issued an anti-war statement that McNamara says he agrees with. However, McNamara also shows the complexity of this when he says, “How much evil must we do in order to do good? We have certain ideals, certain responsibilities. Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it.”

15) McNamara eventually resigned (fired?) because he could not agree with President Johnson on the course of the Vietnam War. On November 1, 1967, he presented a memo that he paraphrases as, “The course we're on is totally wrong. We've got to change it. Cut back at what we're doing in Vietnam. We've got to reduce the casualties, and so on.”

16) About 58,000 U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War. Suicide rates among veterans were higher; a U.S. veteran of the Vietnam War was about 1.7 times more likely to kill himself as was the average U.S. civilian. About 9,000 U.S. veterans of Vietnam have committed suicide. Additionally, about 75,000 Vietnam vets were severely disabled.

17) The Vietnam War is a VERY complex issue that most of us (myself included) can’t begin to understand. It involves competing ideologies, centuries of complex historical back story, geopolitical conflicts spanning the entire globe, misunderstandings of others’ motivations, and TONS of guesswork and speculation. The same can be said for the Cuban Missile Crisis and the bombings of Japan during WWII. So…

18) why are we talking about this in an English class? Well, aside from just being things we should know about, since this is part of our history and similar situations are bound to affect us and our loved ones in the future, these are also good illustrations of how the learning process (like the writing process) never really “ends.” We can always learn more. These issues are also a great exercise in research and persuasion, gathering opinions and raw data, trying to verify or debunk said data, critical thinking, etc. It’s an intimidating and difficult process (critical thinking always is), but like Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”