There is no better time to revisit this American documentary than today, when our leaders seem to be under the impression that the US is so powerful that a little excursion here and a little killing there is all it takes to make America and the world safe again.
War has existed since time began, is likely to remain a part of human experience, and will always entail death and destruction. As such, war is possibly the most complex of human actions. There is no such thing in war as a “little excursion” to “get rid of some evil,” as President Donald Trump described the current US-Israel war on Iran.
Robert S. McNamara, Harvard-bred technocrat, original Whiz Kid from the Ford Motor Co., hand-picked by President John F. Kennedy as Secretary of Defense, talked about the complexity of war in the documentary The Fog of War – Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. He made a credible point: we are human, make mistakes, often fail to fully understand the situation we are in, but must nevertheless make decisions on “how much evil must we do to do good?” And he offered the hope that we acknowledge these shortcomings and learn how to do better after each mistake.
By way of background, The Fog of War is a 2003 interview with then 85-year-old Robert McNamara, accompanied by archival footage and recordings of conversations from the 1960s. The film won the 2004 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and in 2019, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The film’s director was Errol Morris, and its original score was composed by American composer Philip Glass.
Director Morris divided the documentary into 11 sections representing his interpretation of what Robert McNamara was communicating in the interview. Morris labeled the sections “Lessons.”
The lessons of war from The Fog of War were the following:
Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.
McNamara makes clear that empathy is not sympathy, but understanding what your enemy really needs and acting accordingly. He gave an example.
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, President Kennedy chose diplomacy instead of escalation. He promised Nikita Khrushchev the US would not invade Cuba and would establish a special “hot line” to Moscow. Khrushchev withdrew the Soviet missiles from Cuba, a nuclear war was avoided, and Khrushchev happily took credit for keeping the US from invading Cuba.
Lesson #2: Rationality alone will not save us.
Although Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Fidel Castro were presumably rational individuals, they came very close to annihilating themselves and possibly the world during the Cuban missile crisis. The complexity of rationality and the possibility of nuclear conflagration did not end with the Cuban crisis.
Lesson #3: There’s something beyond one’s self.
We are individuals first, but we are also social beings with responsibilities to others and to society. McNamara gives the example of how he discussed with his wife and 3 children the turmoil that would come into their lives and his significant decrease in income if he accepted the job of Secretary of Defense. He says it was a mutual agreement all around to accept the job.
Lesson #4: Maximize efficiency.
McNamara applied his analytical skills to bombing operations, and replaced the B-17s with B-29s, which promised to destroy targets more efficiently.
Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
This section is possibly the most riveting in the documentary. McNamara explains the magnitude of destruction caused by US aircraft dropping napalm incendiary bombs in Tokyo – a prelude to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Proportionality was not taken seriously, he says.
Lesson #6: Get the data.
Speaking like the Ford Whiz Kid he was, McNamara states that decisions must be made based on hard data.
Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
“We see what we want to believe.” Thus, we “saw” North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack US ships, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the US entered a war that lasted nearly 20 years and caused 47,000 combat deaths.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
“if we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we better reexamine our reasoning.” The US is powerful but must not use that power unilaterally – simply because it can.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
McNamara saw killing for what it is – evil – but at times necessary. So, when avoidance is not viewed as possible, the next best option is minimizing.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
War is way too complex to feel smug about any judgment or prediction.
Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature.
In the fog of war things only become clear in hindsight.
Do these lessons still apply?
Yes, of course they do. But that is not to say anyone today is necessarily following those common sense guides, no more than these guides were followed in Robert McNamara’s time, or perhaps any time.
The complexity of war involves an infinite number of variables – those who benefit and those who suffer, those who decide how many is OK to let die and those who want to “make love not war,” those who want to believe causes are just and those who feed the narratives, those who refer to war as little excursions and those who return home in body bags.
The complexity of war extends not only to things readily seen, but also to things often unforeseen. Was the widespread destruction of Middle East assets following the February 28, 2026, US/Israel attack on Iran anticipated? Did American families foresee price increases at the grocery store due to Iranian disruption of petroleum supplies affecting production of fertilizers?
Here is a quote from 19th century French economist Frédéric Bastiat that should place doubt on statements like “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” (Post on X White House 03/12/26).
“In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — it is seen. The others unfold in succession — they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. ” (That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, July 1850)
Robert S. McNamara would agree with Frédéric Bastiat. In life, in war, in economics, it is better to acknowledge complexity and try to foresee consequences of actions, whether those actions are viewed as necessary or not.
