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laurainlimbo at 10:45pm on 19/06/2006
laurainlimbo at 10:45pm on 19/06/2006 "We shall not cease from exploring. And at the end of our exploration, we will return to where we started and know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot, quoted by Robert MacNamara in "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from life of Robert MacNamara" - a film by Erroll Morris
That's the most amazing quote. It says so much about life, about every journey we take, every new thing we endeavor, every place we visit. And in the case of this movie, it sums up the whole idea of learning from hindsight. Learning from our mistakes. Understanding something only by re-examining it again and again.
I just watched "The Fog of War" again and wrote down all of the most important points. All of the most amazing quotes and bits of wisdom from this unbelievable man, Robert MacNamara. What wisdom and experience he has about war, and about the history of war in our country. This movie should be required viewing for every person, no matter what their beliefs on war, or no matter what their politics or biases, no matter what their racial or religious background. No matter what.
Robert MacNamara served three years in WWII, then seven years as the Secretary of Defense under JF Kennedy and Johnson, most predominantly during the Vietnam War. The documentary gives a nice biography of MacNamara, and how he came to be in the hotseat during one of the most controversial conflicts in American history. In interviews with MacNamara, and through various film reels and tape recordings of conversations between MacNamara and Kennedy or Johnson, as well as actual news footage, he outlines the eleven lessons that he learned during his time as the Secretary of Defense, and before that working for the Ford Motor Company. Most of these lessons pertain to war: how to avoid it, and especially how to avoid making mistakes, which cost human lives. As we have seen in so many of the wars in the last century alone.
What MacNamara means by the Fog of War he explains in the end of the movie. War is so complex that it is beyond the human mind to understand it and all of its facets. In war, judgment is often not accurate, and people end up getting killed. Mistakes are made. Reason has limits, and we can't change human nature. But we do need to change the way we look at things, and use our hindsight to try to avoid making the same mistakes again.
One of the major points of this movie is this: The human race will not eliminate war in this century; it is human nature and that is something we cannot change very easily. However we can reduce the brutality of war by adhering to the priciples of "just war" - and therefore the principle of proportionality. this is the third of his "lessons" and something that he illustrates by discussing the firebombing of Japan during the second world war. After the invention of the B29 bomber, America commenced in it's unbelievably horrible bombing of every major city in Japan - and this was BEFORE we dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 50-90 percent of the people in almost every city in Japan were killed by this "firebombing" - and MacNamara compares each of these cities with an American city in order to show the effect if the same thing had happened in our country. 50% of Tokyo was destroyed - that would be 50% of New York. Yokohama is roughly the same size as Cleveland - roughly 80 percent of that city was destroyed. Osaka is the same size as L.A. It goes on and on. His point: killing all of these people throughout Japan, and THEN dropping the bomb on them is not proportionate to the objectives that we were trying to achieve in WWII. It was just not necessary. and the people who ordered the bombs should have been treated as war criminals for what they did. The only reason that they didn't consider what they did as immoral was because they WON the war. So what makes it moral if you win, but immoral if you lose?
the first of his lessons is to empathize with your enemy. For this he uses the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Kennedy Administration. Total annihilation of both cuba and America was avoided because of empathy. Basically Kruschev had sent a message to the U.S. saying that if you guarantee that you won't invade Cuba, they would remove the missiles that were pointed at the U.S. Kruschev wanted to save Cuba, and because Tommy Thompson (who had lived with Kruschev at one point and understood the kind of man that he was) convinced Kennedy to negotiate, both countries were able to avoid total annihilation. But they came very close, which is entirely possible even today.
Another lesson is about belief and seeing. Belief and seeing are both often wrong. That can be illustrated by the events that led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution during the Vietnam War. There were two "supposed" attacks on the Maddox Destroyer ship, supposedly by the North Vietnamese army. One of these reports, which turned out to be incorrect, was ignored. But the second one, which turned out to be right, was not ignored, and was followed by bombing of targets in North Vietnam. This led to the escalation of war, and ultimately to the thousands of soldiers killed (not to mention the Vietnamese lives lost on both sides). All because of an error in judgment. Because we see only half of the story, or see only what we want to believe, we make mistakes, which cost lives. In this case, Johnson had decided that the bombing of the ship was an act of aggression against the U.S. by North Vietnam, which had to be retaliated. That was our downfall.
I've made a list of all of the lessons, and there is so much more to this movie, but I will just end with some of the bigger ideas introduced at the end of the movie. One is that our nation is the strongest in the world. MacNamara says that we should never apply economic and military power unilaterally. if we had followed that rule, we would never have been in Vietnam. Our allies at the time (Japan, England and others) didn't support us. And if we can't convince nations of comparable values of the merit of our cause, we must reexamine our reasoning.
Human beings must stop killing other human beings.
See this movie.
T.S. Eliot, quoted by Robert MacNamara in "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from life of Robert MacNamara" - a film by Erroll Morris
That's the most amazing quote. It says so much about life, about every journey we take, every new thing we endeavor, every place we visit. And in the case of this movie, it sums up the whole idea of learning from hindsight. Learning from our mistakes. Understanding something only by re-examining it again and again.
I just watched "The Fog of War" again and wrote down all of the most important points. All of the most amazing quotes and bits of wisdom from this unbelievable man, Robert MacNamara. What wisdom and experience he has about war, and about the history of war in our country. This movie should be required viewing for every person, no matter what their beliefs on war, or no matter what their politics or biases, no matter what their racial or religious background. No matter what.
Robert MacNamara served three years in WWII, then seven years as the Secretary of Defense under JF Kennedy and Johnson, most predominantly during the Vietnam War. The documentary gives a nice biography of MacNamara, and how he came to be in the hotseat during one of the most controversial conflicts in American history. In interviews with MacNamara, and through various film reels and tape recordings of conversations between MacNamara and Kennedy or Johnson, as well as actual news footage, he outlines the eleven lessons that he learned during his time as the Secretary of Defense, and before that working for the Ford Motor Company. Most of these lessons pertain to war: how to avoid it, and especially how to avoid making mistakes, which cost human lives. As we have seen in so many of the wars in the last century alone.
What MacNamara means by the Fog of War he explains in the end of the movie. War is so complex that it is beyond the human mind to understand it and all of its facets. In war, judgment is often not accurate, and people end up getting killed. Mistakes are made. Reason has limits, and we can't change human nature. But we do need to change the way we look at things, and use our hindsight to try to avoid making the same mistakes again.
One of the major points of this movie is this: The human race will not eliminate war in this century; it is human nature and that is something we cannot change very easily. However we can reduce the brutality of war by adhering to the priciples of "just war" - and therefore the principle of proportionality. this is the third of his "lessons" and something that he illustrates by discussing the firebombing of Japan during the second world war. After the invention of the B29 bomber, America commenced in it's unbelievably horrible bombing of every major city in Japan - and this was BEFORE we dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 50-90 percent of the people in almost every city in Japan were killed by this "firebombing" - and MacNamara compares each of these cities with an American city in order to show the effect if the same thing had happened in our country. 50% of Tokyo was destroyed - that would be 50% of New York. Yokohama is roughly the same size as Cleveland - roughly 80 percent of that city was destroyed. Osaka is the same size as L.A. It goes on and on. His point: killing all of these people throughout Japan, and THEN dropping the bomb on them is not proportionate to the objectives that we were trying to achieve in WWII. It was just not necessary. and the people who ordered the bombs should have been treated as war criminals for what they did. The only reason that they didn't consider what they did as immoral was because they WON the war. So what makes it moral if you win, but immoral if you lose?
the first of his lessons is to empathize with your enemy. For this he uses the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Kennedy Administration. Total annihilation of both cuba and America was avoided because of empathy. Basically Kruschev had sent a message to the U.S. saying that if you guarantee that you won't invade Cuba, they would remove the missiles that were pointed at the U.S. Kruschev wanted to save Cuba, and because Tommy Thompson (who had lived with Kruschev at one point and understood the kind of man that he was) convinced Kennedy to negotiate, both countries were able to avoid total annihilation. But they came very close, which is entirely possible even today.
Another lesson is about belief and seeing. Belief and seeing are both often wrong. That can be illustrated by the events that led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution during the Vietnam War. There were two "supposed" attacks on the Maddox Destroyer ship, supposedly by the North Vietnamese army. One of these reports, which turned out to be incorrect, was ignored. But the second one, which turned out to be right, was not ignored, and was followed by bombing of targets in North Vietnam. This led to the escalation of war, and ultimately to the thousands of soldiers killed (not to mention the Vietnamese lives lost on both sides). All because of an error in judgment. Because we see only half of the story, or see only what we want to believe, we make mistakes, which cost lives. In this case, Johnson had decided that the bombing of the ship was an act of aggression against the U.S. by North Vietnam, which had to be retaliated. That was our downfall.
I've made a list of all of the lessons, and there is so much more to this movie, but I will just end with some of the bigger ideas introduced at the end of the movie. One is that our nation is the strongest in the world. MacNamara says that we should never apply economic and military power unilaterally. if we had followed that rule, we would never have been in Vietnam. Our allies at the time (Japan, England and others) didn't support us. And if we can't convince nations of comparable values of the merit of our cause, we must reexamine our reasoning.
Human beings must stop killing other human beings.
See this movie.
contemplative
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