Fog of War
Errol Morris, dir.
2003


This movie consists solely of interviews with 
Robert McNamara, former Amerikan "Secretary of 
Defense" during the Vietnam war. The film's themes 
overlap considerably with McNamara's earlier book, 
Argument Without End. We called that book "very 
satisfying ... very useful" (1) and similarly 
recommend "Fog of War." McNamara admits that 
millions died in Vietnam alone, in part due to his 
"mistakes." He is honest about the scale of the 
violence used by Amerika in wars throughout the 
last century and even suggests that he should be 
considered a war criminal for his role in the 
bombings of Japanese civilians during World War 
II. Before explaining what we don't like about the 
film, we want to say something about the fog-of-
war concept in light of recent debate about the 
war in Iraq.

Bush: lost in fog or hiding in smoke screen?

The fog of war refers to the fact that in a 
battlefield situation, commanders do not have 100% 
information about the size and position of the 
enemy (or even their own troops) due to 
limitations in perception, problems in 
communication and conscious enemy deception. MIM 
has no disagreement with the fog-of-war concept. 
In fact, we believe it applicable beyond purely 
military matters. It's one reason we caution 
readers to evaluate historical leaders relative to 
their contemporaries (e.g. Galileo should be 
compared with other renaissance physicists, not 
Einstein). 

Lately, however, while discussing what 
he terms "intelligence failures" in Iraq, 
President Bush has been using this scientific 
concept in an unscientific way. Now he admits that 
his numerous assertions that Iraq possessed 
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were 
wrong, but he excuses himself with his version of 
the "fog of war." "I expected to find the weapons. 
... I based my decision on the best intelligence 
possible."(2) 

We'll skip the obvious criticism 
that "the best intelligence possible" did not 
leave "no doubt" that Iraq had stockpiles of 
biological weapons and a nuclear weapons program, 
as Bush often claimed while building support for 
the war.(3) Instead, we note that, taken together, 
the statements coming out of the Bush camp are a 
form of sophistry that grants the United $tates 
carte blanche to use military force 
whenever it damn well pleases. When critics demand 
proof that country X is about to use (or develop) 
weapons of mass destruction, "Secretary of 
Defense" Donald Rumsfeld waxes philosophic and 
cites the fog of war: "Proof? What is proof? Can 
we ever be certain we know anything? If there are 
unknown unknowns how can there be known knowns?" 

Bush and his posse are playing an incredibly 
dangerous game of Russian roulette in the name of 
averting a devastating nuclear or biological war. 
If they attack a country they claim has weapons of 
mass destruction and it turns out they were 
correct, then that country will almost certainly 
use those weapons. If they were wrong, then they 
have shed blood without achieving their stated aim 
of eliminating the threat of weapons of mass 
destruction. This game reminds us of the legendary 
Puritan witch tests: if you hold the accused under 
water and she doesn't drown, she's a witch; if she 
does drown, she wasn't a witch after all. 

Perhaps  we should have some sympathy for the devil. After 
all, the forces driving the imperialist powers 
towards war (need to control important natural 
resources, keep competing imperialist blocks in 
check, suppress Third World nationalism etc.) are 
beyond the control of any individual. Further, not 
every imperialist in a position of power is class 
conscious; some have been raised so secure and 
sheltered in their privilege that they honestly 
believe their own humbug. They couldn't explain 
the reasons for their wars even if they were 
willing--hence the recourse to irrationality and 
Top-Gun bravado.(4)

Robert McNamara's take on the 
fog of war exposes the danger and futility of 
Bush's policing approach towards weapons of mass 
destruction. In the first few minutes of this 
documentary, McNamara says that the fog of war 
makes mistakes inevitable, but the hope is that 
commanders learn their lessons and can minimize 
unnecessary casualties in the future. However, 
when the conflict involves nuclear weapons, there 
may not be anybody left to learn from the mistakes 
made. He cites the Cuban missile crisis as an 
example where the Amerikans were far closer to 
nuclear war than they realized (and at the time 
they already thought Cuba was a close call). We 
gather that plain dumb luck was the principal 
reason Amerikan leaders avoided making in Cuba the 
kinds of mistakes McNamara now says they made in 
Vietnam.

"Mistakes"

McNamara's contrast between the Cuban missile 
crisis and Vietnam gets to the heart of our 
disagreements with him. What McNamara means by 
"mistake" is that he believes the Vietnam War 
could have been prevented by its leaders. That's 
McNamara's way of saying there are no inevitable 
tides or forces in history. McNamara fails to 
grasp that not only is the information available 
for leaders to make choices subject to impersonal 
social forces, the options available to them are 
as well. The very conflicts that lead up to war 
are beyond the control of individual leaders.(5) 
We believe McNamara has a good grasp of just how 
tenuous "peace" is under imperialism--and the 
increasingly disastrous consequences of war as 
military technology "improves." That's why we 
recommend this film. But McNamara does not 
understand the economic and social forces of 
imperialism (the highest stage of capitalism) that 
make war inevitable. These forces create the 
conditions where leaders' inevitable mistakes will 
have terrible consequences for millions. McNamara 
can only shrug his shoulders and say war is part 
of humyn nature--a criminally depressing thought, 
since by his own reasoning war makes the 
escalation of violence up to and including nuclear 
war inevitable. In contrast, by understanding the 
system of imperialism and putting forward the 
alternative of socialist internationalism, we 
Maoists have a plan that will drastically reduce 
(and eventually eliminate, as humyns move towards 
communism) the threat of war.


Notes: 1. 
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/books/
asia/mcnamara.html. 2. Transcript of the interview 
with President Bush on "Meet the Press," 8 
February 2004, 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ID/4179618/. 3. We've 
been doing that ever since the Bush posse trotted 
out the ridiculous assertion that Saddam Hussein 
was linked to the 911 attacks. We should also 
point out that many of the Democrats who are now 
attacking Bush for deceiving the public (Nancy 
Pelosi, John Edwards) had access the very 
information Bush used to justify invasion. Bush is 
correct to point out that Democratic legislators 
on Congressional intelligence committees saw this 
information long before the invasion. Indeed, most 
of the material Bush used was publicly available--
and easily refutable using publicly available 
material. The Democratic Party signed the bill 
that gave the President authority to launch this 
invasion on this flimsy "evidence," and did little 
to discredit his lies and distortions beforehand. 
4. For that matter, even McNamara, who is no 
dummy, says it took him thirty years to understand 
his "mistakes" in Vietnam (and as far as we're 
concerned, he still has not, since he does not see 
the imperialistic roots of the conflict). The gang 
at the head of the Amerikan government may change 
and consequently so may strategies and tactics, 
but the essence of Amerikan imperialism remains 
unchanged. Under President Clinton military 
intervention was carried out under the cloak of 
"humanitarianism;" President Bush is, shall we 
say, somewhat less subtle. But the basic interests 
remain the same. President Clinton made the 
overthrow of the Iraqi regime official Amerikan 
policy; the intelligence quoted by President Bush 
to justify the recent war was gathered under 
Clinton; the military that fought the war was 
bequeathed to Bush by Clinton (as Democrats eager 
to lose "wimpy liberal" label incessantly remind 
us); and on and on, in just this one region. 5. On 
a related note, McNamara constantly says that 
Cold-War reasoning (seeing everything through the 
prism of the conflict between the United $tates 
and the social imperialist USSR) caused Amerikan 
leaders to make mistakes in Vietnam and elsewhere 
during the 60s. The fact that since the end of the 
Cold War the United $tates has gotten involved in 
a decade-long, large-scale war in Iraq (with 
little to show in terms of its stated war aims) 
and been humiliated in Third-World adventures like 
Somalia should suggest that there is something 
driving Amerika towards war (causing "mistakes") 
besides the Cold war.