Just a quick plug. I’m just back from watching Errol Morris’s “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001L3LUE/junius-20 . For those who don’t know about it, the film is a long (and cold) confessional interview with McNamara interspersed with documentary footage from WW2, from his time with Ford and from the period when he was Secretary of Defense (including the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam war). The film is structured around a series of “lessons” which focus on the fallibility of leaders. There are some chilling moments, such as when McNamara contemplates the incinteration of hundreds of thousands of human beings in the firebombing of Tokyo and leaves open the question of whether he and Curtis LeMay committed war crimes. There’s a good page on an event at Berkeley with McNamara and Morris “here”:http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/02/05_fogofwar.shtml . Get to see it if you can.
{ 9 comments }
Anita Hendersen 04.18.04 at 9:25 pm
I saw it last night. It’s amazing how smart and articulate that guy is at his age. Comes off as truly a tragic figure. McNamara’s life is a lesson in how smart, scientific approaches to problems don’t necessarily yield the best results. Something technocrats and technologists need to remember, even more so today.
Enrique Gomez 04.18.04 at 9:44 pm
I saw this documentary several weeks ago, and thought it was a simply brilliant piece of filmmaking, containing some very scary history. A lot of the lessons that McNamara offers up are very relavant today. Not that W. would ever acknowledge that…he has to stay with his convictions. No room for that learning stuff.
Ralph Luker 04.18.04 at 10:11 pm
Kirk at American Amnesia has an excellent interview with Morris about McNamara and the film. Highly recommended.
Rajeev Advani 04.19.04 at 2:50 am
Of the reviews I read, Fred Kaplan’s in Slate was the most spot-on. Search for it there, I’m too lazy to link.
chuck 04.19.04 at 3:38 am
I watched and reviewed this film a few months ago (search my blog if you’re curious). At the time, I said that it was the film that Errol Morris was put on this planet to make, and I’m still convinced of that.
If I remember correctly, McNamara has been more explicitly critical of Bush’s policy in Iraq, a position he refused to take while filming and promoting “Fog.”
Peter 04.19.04 at 4:22 am
I thought it was a good flick too. For something interesting check out Alterman’s hate of this flick.
Larry M 04.19.04 at 4:31 am
Alterman kind of has a point, though I liked the film a lot. Basically, if you know something about the history, it’s an interesting character study, because of what is left unsaid as much as anything else. If one doesn’t really know the history, however, it’s a lousy starting point; Morris really lets McNamara make some pretty dubious statements without challenging him, which is Alterman’s beef. McNamara does this sort of fake candid routine, which is kind of fasinating if you know he’s doing it.
Lawrence Krubner 04.26.04 at 2:23 am
“McNamara’s life is a lesson in how smart, scientific approaches to problems don’t necessarily yield the best results.”
What does yield the best results? Has a new method of living been invented that reliably produces the best results? I didn’t hear about it, but I didn’t read the news today.
All criticism of technocratic solutions comes down to an assertion of “Everything would be better if people did stuff my way.” In my circle of friends the stated or unstated critique of technocratic solutions usually has one of these 4 beliefs:
1.) Leaders should be more spiritual.
2.) Leaders should not lead. We should all lead ourselves.
3.) Leaders should stop listening to them and start listening to us. (the identity of us and them varies depending on who I’m talking to).
4.) Technocratic solutions are, by definition, materialistic (which is a bad thing).
Of these, 1, 2 and 4 are basically matters of taste, and 3 is a universal bias that nearly all of us have, at least sometimes (that they are being listened to too much, and we are being unfairly ignored).
Personally, I think technocratic politicians are passionaless, dull, and sometimes right but usually for the wrong reasons. However, I recognize that this feeling of mine is a mere matter of taste. I also believe that well intentioned people often do catastrophic harm, that people acting in good faith can betray an ideal as completely as someone acting in bad faith (this is my dad’s take on Lyndon Johnson), and that the amount of information available to us is for all practical purposes infinite, so the best-informed among us knows the same percent of total information as the least informed among us.
Lawrence Krubner 04.26.04 at 2:28 am
“McNamara’s life is a lesson in how smart, scientific approaches to problems don’t necessarily yield the best results.”
What does yield the best results? Has a new method of living been invented that reliably produces the best results? I didn’t hear about it, but I didn’t read the news today.
All criticism of technocratic solutions comes down to an assertion of “Everything would be better if people did stuff my way.” In my circle of friends the stated or unstated critique of technocratic solutions usually has one of these 4 beliefs:
1.) Leaders should be more spiritual.
2.) Leaders should not lead. We should all lead ourselves.
3.) Leaders should stop listening to them and start listening to us. (the identity of us and them varies depending on who I’m talking to).
4.) Technocratic solutions are, by definition, materialistic (which is a bad thing).
Of these, 1, 2 and 4 are basically matters of taste, and 3 is a universal bias that nearly all of us have, at least sometimes (that they are being listened to too much, and we are being unfairly ignored).
Personally, I think technocratic politicians are passionaless, dull, and sometimes right but usually for the wrong reasons. However, I recognize that this feeling of mine is a mere matter of taste. I also believe that well intentioned people often do catastrophic harm, that people acting in good faith can betray an ideal as completely as someone acting in bad faith (this is my dad’s take on Lyndon Johnson), and that the amount of information available to us is for all practical purposes infinite, so the best-informed among us knows the same percent of total information as the least informed among us.
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