Fog of McNamara's Brain: Clouded Judgment

Well played, McNamara.
I didn't enjoy this documentary as much as the other films we've watched, and the main reason for that was this was just...... boring. Not the purpose behind the film, which to me was a vessel for McNamara to tell his side of the story and not look bad to history, but the way it was done. I was so sick of hearing his voice by the end of the film, and I wasn't really all that into him to begin with. He didn't do anything to convince me that my predetermined opinion of him, that he was not a good person, was wrong.
Here's my problem with McNamara, which the film pretty much showed nonstop: He's a conman. He says it himself, that he doesn't answer questions, just what he wants to be asked. This is told to us out of his mouth about 2/3 through the film, and my opinion of him had slightly changed before this. He was learning about his mistakes, he had made the seatbelt a necessity (more on that later...) and he was a family man who loved his wife and kids (the happiest time of his life was right after he was married and had his first kid, "what a great guy"). After his confession (which he was absolutely not ashamed of), I had to take everything he had said and throw it out the window. Nothing he said was sincere; everything out of his mouth was planned and meant to manipulate his audience. Sadly, his rhetoric skills aren't nearly as good enough to fool me, and hopefully not any of you, either. There were times when he threw in a little pathos, tearing up while talking about JFK's gravesite being one of them, but most of the time he sounded like he was reading a script he'd been preparing since his departure from his seat in the cabinet. He never presented any logos, just what he claimed to be the truth; all the logos was shown by the director, and almost always this was some sort of image or newspaper article contradicting what McNamara was explaining.
To sum all of that up if it doesn't quite make sense to you (I'm not sure how to explain some of this, but I believe that this example will set things straight and hopefully have an impact on how you viewed the film), I'm going to talk about the part of the documentary where he discusses his time at Ford. But Ron, you ask, why would you focus the main point of your blog on Vietnam about his time at Ford? That's the entire point. McNamara, when asked to transition into Vietnam, blurts out that he has to talk about Ford first, almost like if he didn't his entire plan would fall short. This was another moment that made me question his intent. The entire point he makes with his commentary on his Ford days is that he helped the company turn around and made the seatbelt standard, in fact it was basically his idea! What a great guy, this Robert McNamara, he saved countless lives (he is sure to point it out, too). All of this somewhat large chunk of the film is just an attempt to get our minds off of the consequences of his actions regarding Vietnam; we shouldn't think of him as the person responsible for the deaths of 58,000 soldiers, but instead a savior, bringer of safety to automobiles. Hogwash. I see through your bullshit, McNamara.
The thing is, though, the director kept this part of the interview, which I read was 20 hours long, entirely intact. I had initially thought that the intent of the director was to provide McNamara with a chance to tell everything about what happened, to show that we needed to learn from war, to finally learn what went through the man's head. He accomplishes these things, in fact I liked the list of lessons McNamara learned, but now I believe he also wanted us to see that this war was started and maintained for ridiculous reasons by ridiculous people. Through the conversations between various presidents and McNamara, we see how dishonest and dodgy the men at the top were. This was the good part of the film for me, but it couldn't take away how much I hated listening to McNamara talk.
Back to the eleven lessons McNamara learned. While these are all solid things that are all logical, I can't help but notice that McNamara uses them to justify his past actions. The biggest example of this is number nine, "In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil." Sometimes you gotta kill to stay alive. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Please. He might as well have said, "Killing civilians and ruining the lives of countless Americans? Hey, there was a good reason!" How did he "do good" by sending more troops into Vietnam, when he clearly knew it wasn't going to won anytime soon? What good would that have done anyways? Stop communism from spreading? No. It would have stopped a nation from achieving its independence from an imperial power. He shows his ignorance about this when he discusses his meeting with the Vietnamese leader who I can't remember the name of at this moment. The other man, clearly angry at the fool he's speaking with, points out that McNamara didn't know jack shit about what was going on in the nation. McNamara, being the smart person that learns from his mistakes that he is, gets angry and leaves. Oh, wait, the smart person that learns from his mistakes would have apologized, admitted his mistake and ignorance, and worked to improve his relationship with whomever he had wronged.
One more thing that irked me was the whole bit about his Medal of Freedom. He seemed damn proud of it while speaking of it, but it didn't seem to hold any significance to me. LBJ gave it to him right after he was out of the cabinet, so to me this seemed like just a going away present, a gift for a fellow conspirator for all his years of backing him up. McNamara tries to look like he is a great man, a hero, but anybody who watches the film will see that he doesn't deserve this medal, he deserves a beating. This is like if Obama presented Bush with a Medal of Freedom for his fantastic reasoning and wisdom that lead him to go to war in Iraq. We are shown evidence by the director that not only did McNamara know that there was no reason to go to war in Vietnam, he even gave to go ahead after learning that the ship that had been "attacked" by torpedoes was actually just nervous radar crew members overreacting to something on the radar. His judgment is completely garbage, and that's where his medal would be better off.
I know the point of this wasn't for all of us to turn out how I am right now, which is even more upset at our involvement in Vietnam. This documentary, after all, is another way for the whole situation to be broadened in our minds. We are shown the personal story of one of the main characters for the US, and that by itself should be an interesting, if not highly enjoyable, film. I didn't dislike the documentary; in fact I like it very much for the way it showed the flaws in his stories and how deceitful the government can be. It's just too hard to enjoy something heavily anchored on a person who spent his life using his mind to manipulate people.
But Ron, you point out, McNamara always did research and "get the data" is one of his lessons! True, but he gets statistics to prove his point. For example, when he thinks that less pilots would die if they fly higher in the B-29s, he gets information to prove his point (they can fly at higher altitudes, won't get shot by artillery, etc). This, of course, leads to less accuracy, which leads to the strategy of "just drop more bombs so you HAVE to hit your target," which leads to fire bombings (he tries to say it wasn't because of him, but... come on, you really believe him?), which lead to the destruction of Japan.
All in all, the idea behind the film is great, but there's just not enough diversity when it comes to information (it all comes out of McNamara's mouth; we can barely hear the director shout his questions, most which challenge what he's saying). When a man who admits to saying things that he wants to instead of what he's asked tells you that he's learned a lot from his mistakes, it's impossible to not consider that perhaps he just wants you to think that and he's avoiding the real issues. Perhaps he's been so used to telling people whatever it is he wants to say that he stopped even telling himself the truth. Perhaps he's so convinced that he's changed and learned that he'd be willing to film a documentary about his past. Perhaps he'll make a list of things he learned and tell emotional, personal stories about his president buddies. Perhaps he'll bring up that one time he had a good idea to save some lives to distract from the death he brought. Perhaps someone will see through his charade and use his interview to show the real person that made the decisions during this pointless war. Perhaps a class will watch it for a rhetoric class to see how we can't really believe what we're told, even if a person says it's true and this person was physically involved in the situations discussed. Perhaps.
Oh, by the way, the music in this was awesome. Philip Glass is fantastic, and I was really happy to see that he did the score for this. His music is very epic and moving, and fit perfectly with the imagery from Vietnam. Great choice by the director, and a very effective way to show us the ugly part of the war. If you can, watch Koyaanisqatsi, I'm not going to explain what Wikipedia can do for me, but it's worth checking out.