Fog of War a new perspective

The Fog of War helped to show a different viewpoint on the Vietnam War from Hearts and Minds. I liked being able to hear what Secretary Mcnamara had to say about his entire life and espcecially his comments on the war and what went on when he was Secretary of Defense. Also with the balance of recorded conversations that involved him and the President helped to really create the mindset that our highest leaders were in at the time. I liked how Mcnamara was quite honest about the Tonkin Gulf and other aspects about the Vietnam era and how he described his life up till then too. Especially his time during WWII and at Ford Motor Company helping to show that this man was not a warmonger that most people thought he was but instead showed he was a normal man that was very smart who got stuck in a sticky situation. Along with this he shows mistakes that happened by how he reveals that Tonkin did not happen, but was overreaction by radar officials and military officials. This helped to reveal how Vietnam from the start was being started by mistakes that helps to lead to more and more mistakes.

These mistakes and the realization of many of these are expressed when Mcnamara describes when he was in the meeting in the 1990's with North Vietnamese leaders how they told him they were fighting for independence and the unity of Vietnam while he expressed his thoughts that U.S. was fighting to preserve democracy helped to really show that neither Vietnam or the United States understood each other what so ever. This helped to play in with some of the lessons he learned and through this helps to show why the U.S. was always doomed to fail in Vietnam. No matter how many air or ground campaigns we used the Vietnamese would fight on to gain their independence especially since they have been fighting foreign invaders for so many years. The movie also had scenes such as the dominos lined up knocking one down at time helped to illustrate the idea of the domino effect of communism that the United States believed in that helped to lead to engagements such as the Korean War and eventually the Vietnam War. I liked how the director was able to put a scene like this to help illustrate how this one idea helped to spread so much war across Southeast Asia and further showed how American leaders were completely wrong about their strategy in Vietnam by how Vietnam did not spread communism to the area, but instead they just wanted their independence. The people of Vietnam wanted to be finally free from foreign aggression and thats all they cared about. Mcnamara really helped to put everything all in perspective with his thoughts on the war and how he told through his on mind what was going on in the Vietnam era, his interview helped to contrast greatly with Hearts and Minds and showed an American leaders perspective.