Mistake X 10,000,000,000

Every person that was involved in the Vietnam War had a story, so did Robert McNamara. I didn’t know how much further I didn’t know about the Vietnam War. This guy was the Secretary of Defense! Our ideal vision of the president and his cabin/associates are that they should be flawless and free of mistakes. When they do make mistakes, we the people, blame them for it. Sure, “I don’t think you have to be qualified any to be President,” or even graduate with a perfect score, but that’s our ideal vision, that people with that much authority can NOT make mistakes. I feel like that’s what McNamara was trying to get at. Mistakes here and mistakes there, that’s all that had happened with the Vietnam War, it was a HUGE MISTAKE! Who’s mistake?
“In nuclear war, you make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations.”—Robert McNamara. That was such a strong and smart call. I think many people overlook that outcome. We wouldn’t be happy if some nation just started bombing our cities and homes, which would happen if we get into nuclear warfare. This movie made a big impact with how I interpreted the United States’ involvement. First, it was my anger towards the Vietnamese when I watched Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, then my anger towards the United States when I watched Hearts and Minds, and now my anger after watching Fog of War towards everyone because everyone misjudged things. I think all of this is great because it shows a lot of one-sidedness and I am able to see facts as well as opinions on both sides.
I’ve never seen or heard of McNamara at first, but when he was first presented, it was so casual; it seemed like the director made a mistake already in putting together the film. I’m pretty sure many like myself, didn’t know of McNamara before watching this movie, so at first, I didn’t see how he was involved with the Vietnam War. As the movie went on, I started to see how heavily important McNamara was to the United States. He helped the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, the big guy, the head honcho, make decisions!
What was pretty funny to me was how it was mentioned about how little he actually knew about the role of the Secretary of Defense for the United States. McNamara had to know at least something or had proper training in order to get that position and meet with the big heads of the United States. If that was the case that he got the position even though he didn’t know anything about the role, then maybe I can become Secretary of Defense one day. This was a weird presentation of McNamara because who believes that? The clip was put into the film in order to make the audience believe it. At the same time, it’s hard to trust but it was all to probably cover up McNamara’s mistakes. In other words, he’s saying at first that he wasn’t qualified and didn’t know what to do and he knew very little of the role of the presidents’ cabinets that even though he took the position, he made mistakes, and his cover up could be that, “I knew very little about my role” (not his quote, but just an example of what he could have said).
McNamara showed much knowledge and concern for the well-being of ALL humans living on this planet. The director put clips of conversations he had with President Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to portray this. I think this overall documentary/interview on McNamara was trying to not only show the background and behind the scenes of what the Presidents and his cabinet’s did, but mainly to show what McNamara did as Secretary of State and how people misunderstood and looked at him as.
I think the use of the dominos had great meaning in the documentary because for one it was kind of relating it to the Domino Effect of the war, but on McNamara’s standpoint, it could’ve even meant that mistakes will keep occurring unless we fix it. It so happens that the mistake (dominos) was all over Vietnam and the dominos were just tumbling over the country, because there were mistakes everywhere.
There were parts in the movie were they show disheartening words to portray McNamara. These words play into the screen right after McNamara told the camera that he made mistakes and how he was viewed as. As a part of the audience, I can’t help but sympathize for the man. He had a healthy and happy lifestyle with his family/wife, became president of the Ford Company, and then became Secretary of State. McNamara made it soak into me because the screen went blank right after he explained how he became president of the Ford Company and then said, “Then that’s when everything came down.” Right when he said that is when his role and part in being the Secretary of Defense played in. I thought from that moment, “Man, I’m gonna feel real sorry for this guy.” In the end I did, because the director used clips/interviews/speeches/conversations to show how very little it was McNamara’s fault in many of the mistakes. The director made it so that McNamara can say that he made mistakes so that we can sympathize, but nowhere in the film did I see, “Here, this is what McNamara did and it was horrible.” It was through McNamara’s words that let us know he made mistakes, he admitted it. The mistakes seemed to be directly pointing at Lyndon B. Johnson and the Chief of the military, but were never stated.

ps. something weird happened when I tried to italicize the names of the movies, so just pretend they're italicized =)