Analysis Of The Documentary 'The Fog Of War'

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were calamitous airstrikes that left thousands of people perished and with brutal trauma. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the government produced mini air strikes to induce terror into the citizen’s mind allowing the government to feed off that terror. Furthermore, the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 1984 have segments of divergence and parallel structures.

The film, The Fog of War, is about a life experience of Robert McNamara who is a former Secretary of Defense, President of Ford Motor Company, and President of World Bank. McNamara reflects back on his life and shares 11 lessons he had learned as he lived and served during one of the darkest times of human history. In the film, he aims to show that although war is inevitable, goal of spreading democracy by empathizing with the enemy to understand their situation and their motive of war, re-examining own reason to declare war, and questioning the morality of rational decision to eliminate unnecessary killing is good in itself and worth the evil that the states sometimes have to engage in.

Walter Dean Myers touches on a subject that give thought to war in general in his book Sunrise Over Fallujah. Sunrise Over Fallujah focuses on the Iraq war after 9/11 and a young man’s experiences while there. The Historical significance of sunrise Over Fallujah is that the young man, Robin “Birdy” Perry, realizes shortly after arriving in Iraq that this war will not end quickly, and that he doesn’t even really understand why he is there, or why his country, for that matter is there. There is a lot from Sunrise Over Fallujah that relates to real life occurrences and thoughts in and about the war in Iraq.

Filmmaker Errol Morris lays down the story of the United States as seen through the eyes of former business executive and eighth U.S. secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara. He gives the viewers an inside look of the controversial events that occur during the Vietnam War and other incidents in the 20th century. McNamara highlights his twenty-five years of service and opens up into his eleven lessons of war. To prevent future unnecessary death and conflict.

President Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy, argued in Document 2 that Japan was ready to surrender before the “barbarous” atomic bomb was dropped. Admiral Leahy compared the act of dropping the bomb to the standards of the Dark Ages, and said wars “cannot be won by destroying women and children.” The author in Document 4 reaffirmed Admiral Leahy’s statement by saying that the use of this bomb threatened the notion of morality. He asserted that both “international law,” and the “concept of right and wrong” are meaningless if governments can so easily choose to “annihilate” such a large amount of people with “one stroke.” Document 6 gives an eyewitness account which describes the devastation and aftermath of the bombing.

Throughout history, there have been a multitude of examples of wars brought too close to home. At times, there comes a point in war where consideration of innocent lives becomes thin, and all energy is put towards war efforts, rather than any other aspect of human life. These points in history are referred to as total war. Examples of total war can be seen as far back as in the ancient civilizations of Rome and Persia, however, the paragon of total war can be found in World War Two. Based on the overall involvement of a vast multitude of civilians, economies and countries targeted and impacted throughout the war, World War Two is the strongest example of total war in American history.

Fearing that the U.S. peace movement would use the bombings to build opposition to the war to new heights, Nixon tried to keep the bombings secret. But in May, with U.S. forces taking heavy losses on “Hamburger Hill” in the A-Shau Valley, news of the bombings leaked out. It was time to change the subject. (Karnow 1983, 591, 601)

The bombing campaigns in Vietnam, Rolling Thunder, Linebacker I, and Linebacker II, still remain controversial today. The common academic threat revolves around that if Rolling Thunder saw a more destructive use of air power, as used during Linebacker I and II, it would have been successful. Mark Clodfelter wholly disagrees with this idea. Throughout his book, Clodfelter believes that Linebacker I and II saw success because they had a different political objective. In the preface, he writes that many Air Force personnel “ignore the essence of why bombing “worked” in 1972 – because it was the proper instrument to apply, given Nixon’s specific goals and the political and military situation that then existed”(p xii). This is further clarified by stating what Richard Nixon’s aim for the bombing campaigns was versus what Lyndon Johnson wanted.

Though people questioned why acts of war were committed, they found justification in rationalizing that it served the greater good. As time evolved, the world began to evolve in its thinking and view of the atomic bomb and war. In Hiroshima, John Hersey has a conversation with a survivor of the atomic bomb about the general nature of war. “She had firsthand knowledge of the cruelty of the atomic bomb, but she felt that more notice should be given to the causes than to the instruments of total war.” (Hersey, 122). In John Hersey’s book, many concepts are discussed. The most important concept for the reader to identify was how society viewed the use of the bomb. Many people, including survivors, have chosen to look past the bomb itself, into the deeper issues the bomb represents. The same should apply to us. Since WWII, we have set up many restrictions, protocols and preventions in the hope that we could spare our society from total nuclear war. The world has benefited in our perspective of the bomb because we learned, understand, and fear the use of atomic weapons.

Hiroshima is an outstanding recreation of the complete annihilation and devastation of during the aftermath and the year following the United States’ dropping of the atomic bomb. As the war in the east carried on, many thought this desolated war might last a lifetime, all the while hoping for an end and praying it not mean their own end. To end the war, Americans had to pick a target that would leave the Japanese government with nowhere to retreat, allowing for a crippling effect that would essentially cause their collapse and surrender. In his writings, John Hersey proclaims that Hiroshima was a “… inviting target - mainly because it had been one of the most important military command and communications centres in Japan …” (HERSEY, P. 107). In the minds of American strategists, this must have seemed a flawless method to force the Japanese military into a corner, not allowing withdrawal without laying down of arms. There was surely no doubt that dropping this bomb of god-like destructive power would, at a minimum, tear into the souls of Japanese, causing catastrophic devastation.

A light flashes across the sky with an ear shattering boom heard across the city of Hiroshima and within a blink of an eye, 120,000 Japanese citizens are dead and four square miles of the city are destroyed (“Harry Truman”). August 6th 1945, a day that rocked the world forever and contains one of the most controversial decisions made in history. Three days later, another bomb is heard but this time in a city in Japan called Nagasaki and just like before another 60,000 people are dead. Over 50,000 more Japanese citizens would later die from radiation sickness and injuries (“Choices: Truman, Hirohito”). What may seem like a horrific turn of events in history actually had a beneficial outcome for the United States and ended the ongoing battles

Throughout the scene it is evident that top US officials were unaware of the real situation during the Vietnam War, which made McNamara’s job as US Secretary of Defense the hardest job in the country. McNamara’s reflections and insight regarding the US’s involvement prove insightful and provide the lesson that “belief and seeing are both often wrong” (Ahlberg, J.

The Fog of War Eleven Lessons by Robert S. McNamara was in so much as a great representation of the life of Robert S. McNamara. It showed his life to be dramatic and traumatic in many different ways. The lessons he learned and shared during the documentary movie were truly astounding to me. I personally thought the movie was a tad bit on the boring side, but it was a documentary after all. The Fog of War was a very informative piece of work.

The previously accepted nature of war stemmed from the Clausewitzian trinity: war is emotional, an experience wrought with passion, violence, and enmity; uncertainty, chance, and friction pervade the medium of war; however, because war is not an end in itself, and because, as a means, it is subordinate to its political aims, war must be subject to reason (Clausewitz, 89). With the first employment of nuclear weapons, however, strategists and military theorists began to question Clausewitz’s foundational ideas (Winkler, 58). Similarly, Allan Winkler, in agreeing with Bernard Brodie’s thesis, opines that the advent of nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the nature of war. Winkler’s assertion stems from his argument that such a nuclear duel would yield a post-war environment incapable of recovery for any parties involved (62). He further describes Brodie’s realization that “[t]he atomic bomb is not just another and more destructive weapon to be added to an already long list. It is something which threatens to make the rest of the list relatively unimportant.” (62) Ultimately, Winkler abridges Brodie’s assessment in stating that “the United States was caught in the paradox of having to prepare for a war it did not plan to fight.” (63)

If the bombings accomplished one goal of the United States, it was the level of destruction rampant throughout the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. A constant variable present in both incidents was the harm inflicted upon the people, buildings, and government forces, which were all in the center of the cities. While the United States caused irreplaceable damage, it failed to aid other goals that were needed to crippling the enemy’s power. Although industries and people were eliminated, the political effect of crushing Japan failed, because the nation had more determination than Truman first thought when it came to survival and reconstruction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastating military tragedies to Japan with high physical damage, but their impact did not help the United States achieve its desired