War is complex and confusing.

I feel as though as we go deeper into war in general, not even the Vietnam War (because the Vietnam War seems to be the most confusing of them all), that I've began to lose what little interpretation of war I had when I started this class. I think Fog of War not only made me think and rewind more than any other movie we've watched so far but for it to be basically about one man is just amazing to me. For one person to have such a huge impact on our history, even more so than the president's he served, just blows my mind.

To start off, since our RA is about truth, I'm going to tell the truth about what I felt about the documentary. I felt that this documentary was much different from hearts and minds since it revolved around one person and though the content itself was similar it wasn't painting a bad picture of either side, it stayed relatively neutral throughout most of the movie. With that being said, I struggled to stay awake at some parts. Not that the movie was not interesting but I think some parts just put me to sleep, because I was very intellectually intrigued with what McNamara was saying.

The format in which the documentary was laid out I think was one factor that I liked about the movie, like Erica said, it gave you an initial preview of what was to be talked about or what we could gain from this part of the movie. The style in which the documentary was filmed was similar to Hearts and Minds with the interview followed by the footage but only one person was being interviewed, but that was more than enough. The way that McNamara spoke about his past definitely made it feel like he was talking to me, he would smile and be excited or laugh at something he thought was funny, or slow down and speak calmly about a serious matter, or choke up and pause at stories that were heavy on his heart.

As I was watched the movie the beginning scenes talked about his life, where he grew up, how he met his wife, his reasons for abandoning Harvard, etc. so I figured it would be like an autobiographical movie, but as the film progressed, it was so deeply rooted in politics that I completely forgot that it was still about his life, but it still was about his life, his life had become consumed by politics. I think this is when I began to realize that even with a former Secretary of Defense who was THERE during all of this, the Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, etc., detailing out what had happened, I was still having a hard time registering everything being thrown at me. I thought it was amazing how a man in his 80's could remember so much down to every detail of America's history in the past 40 years. Because he remembered everything else so clearly, it made me wonder about the Agent Orange since when questioned he said he forgot, which is believable for a man in his old age but after he just told us his life story from memory, he wants to imply that he forgot about a major decision that killed hundreds of civilians and deformed many more?

I think now that I reflect on the lessons of war that McNamara detailed, I think their connection to war is solidly connected to rhetoric as well. For instance, the first lesson, empathize with your enemy, that's basically knowing what your audience's background is and presenting your argument with their background in mind to get what you want. Like McNamara said, we knew nothing about the Vietnamese, we couldn't empathize with them and thus arguing with them our standpoint that they didn't believe in was useless and we didn't listen to their side so it was a big communication barrier. This is further shown when McNamara visits Vietnam later in his life after the war and has lunch with the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese man (whom I forgot his name..) questioned if McNamara had ever read a history book and that their goal was for independence the whole time, revealing a clear misconception between Vietnamese and US powers.