[larrydallas]

Robert McNamara gives a pretty amazing interview.

Before I get into a big discussion of it I'd just like to ask who here has seen it and what they thought.

I learned so many thing I had no idea were facts of the war. The most scary thing was the use of firebombs in 67 Japanese cities to burn to death 60-90% of the civilian population. These were big cities the size of NYC and Cleveland. Immagine the carnage and the evil rooted in such a mission. BTW this was prior to the atomic bombings. OMG!!!! How could the govt. call the NAZIs mass murderers while doing the same thing from the sky in Japan?

This was the one fact in the movie that troubled me the most.

Anyway, add your comments to this thread and start a discussion.

For those who have not seen it I highly recommend it.

[rowante]

"History is written by the victors." - Winston Churchill

[holmes]

i shoot the bow with Errol Morris. Smart Guy.

[big_rc]

The Fog of War is an excellent movie and I highly recommend it to everyone out there. The scary thing about that movie was that all of the "lessons" that McNamara talked about are being duly repeated by this current administration. The funniest part about the movie was when the VietCong general asked RM if he ever read a history book because then he would have known that the Vietnamese and the Chinese would never have aligned with each other. It's amazing at how wrongheaded people in power can become and I see the same mistakes happening right now.

Larry, when I saw those firebombing stats for the Japanese raids, I became sick to my stomach. I had no idea the US had killed so many people before the dropping of the bomb. You can safely assume that little bit of WWII history will never be talked about by the American public.

[larrydallas]

This was a pre-peak war in WW2. By pre-peak I mean pre-peak in the US domestic production. The suburban sprawl had not yet started so oil which powers the engines of war was readily available.

I think the 21st century will not be a cake walk like this firebombing of Japan was. Back then you had most all of the people making a big push for the war. People were all thinking of it as the right thing to do and there was very little bickering. Our nation nis now split down the middle. Never has it been more polarized.

Anyway, Mac is a complete basturd IMHO. How he sits there and arrogantly talks about mass murdering 100,000 people in a few hours (better than any NAZI record I would think) is disgusting. I thought it was corageous for him to make such an interview and risk assasination even at age 85. But, I felt he was very self serving. Maybe he thought he would save his soul and aviod hell if he came clean in this tape.

I'd say if a same type of interview could be done with Hitler, Mao, Stalin, or even Dr. Mengele and it would be just as informative to watch. Just because this guy was on our side does not make him any less guilty of these disguting acts.

[bart]

As I listened to McNamera in the movie, I thought how low the level of American leadership has sunk.

Love 'em or hate 'em, the people who built the American Empire after World War II were intelligent and thought long-term. In contrast, the present regime is just made up of clowns, destructive spoiled clowns.

I don't go along with the vilification of McNamera, because it is too easy. If the problem is just a few "bad guys", then the rest of us are absolved from having to look any further into our history, how Americans all took part in what went on, and how it is continuing today.

[MonteQuest]

You guys might be interested in my book, Madmen at the Helm. It chronicles WWI through the current Iraq fiasco and how we were lead into each war. Here is an excerpt from the Korean War:


Prosecutors at the Pyongyang International Tribunal on U.S. Crimes in Korea released an indictment on July 25, 2003, charging that the United States of America has persistently committed all sorts of criminal acts, including aggression, plunder, murder and destruction, and, thus, inflicted intolerable misfortune and suffering upon the Korean people. Here are some of incidents the indictment claimed occurred:

“In October 1946, when the South Korean people rose up in protest against the U.S. military government, the U.S. called in thousands of military personnel, policemen and terrorists, reinforced with planes, tanks and chemical weapons, to kill 25,000 protestors and other people from different walks of life in cold blood…From May 7 to the election day in 1948, the U.S. arrested, jailed and killed more than 50,000 patriotic people…When the April 3 Popular Uprising broke out against the May 10 separate election and lasted till June 1948 on Cheju Island, the U.S. military killed over 70,000 of the island’s population, which totaled about 300,000, and burned down more than 10,000 homes…From December 1949 to January 1950 the U.S. murdered over 40,000 people and wounded tens of thousands in the 5 districts, including those around Mt. Jiri, Mt. Thaebaek and Mt. Odae. The U.S. troops recklessly killed the patriots involved in the anti-U.S., anti-fascist resistance. During the five years of occupation, the U.S. troops killed more than one million patriotic people in the most barbarous ways.â€

[ShaneT34]

He also said one of the most important lessons he learned was that it [is] essential to "'Empathize with your Enemy', not sympathize but empathize, that is understand your enemy’s thinking, put yourself in his skin, his shoes, and find his motivation."

It would seem that might have some relevance today...

All in all, a compelling interview.

[larrydallas]

I think a fundamental problem which keeps us from knowing the dark side of war is the gate keeping of information that the educational system does in the USA.

I have given up on all forms of corporate owned media simply because they also own the war machine and it is more profitable for them to lie and sell hardware than tell the truth and win an award in journalism.

In school we are taught a very distorted and deliberatly edited version of the history of not only our nation but the rest of the world. I grew up during the mid 80s and 90s and all I can recall about the Vietnam war in the books was of how Agent Orange was a bad chemical and Napalm was used to burn vegtation to flush out the enemy. They completely do not tell the child that agent orange had devastating effects and that naplam was used on villages to burn people to death who were not remotely military persons.

As WWI and 2 are concerned I can't recall having read anything in public school about the cruelty inflicted on other people by our govt. In fact, the atomic bombing of Japan was glorified and the persons in the Manhattan project made to be heros to whom we should look up to and strive to be since many were young men under age 25. I learned of the fire bombings by watching this movie so I don't remotely expect for anyone to be shown that reality in a school setting....not in my lifetime at least.

BUT, the atom bomb was no secret yet there is no mention of the devastating effects it had on common people on the groud in Japan. The text brazenly says that "cities" not military targets were the places of deployment yet we learn nothing about the casualities and the moral implications of such an act.

When 911 occured I was in my senior year in college and I will never forget about this disussion we had on 9-12 of that year where we did not have class as usual but rather an open forum type discussion. Everyone was allowed to remin silent or just make a comment on the events of that day. Of course, the entire class was not aware of peak oil, myself included.

Anyway, one of my classmates of a Vietnamese ethnicity brought up this issue of "why do they hate us?". At that point in my life I knew a bit about the attrocities in Vietnam and I was just dumbfounded by her comment and her being as ignorant as the averge American who knows little about their own history let alone the world.

This was a person who came from a group of people of which over 3 million were murdered in cold blood just less than 30 years ago. This was not ancient history. Granted everyone in that room was 18-25 years old so none of us had lived Vietnam but surely she had a relative or even if not a relative she as a Vietnamese person would have a more vested interest in knowing what happned to her people.

I guess part of my hope for things in general died that day because we were in an era when being part of the majority group (as ignorant and aloof as it was) had become a priority. People just did not want to bother knowing things and facts....it was more easy to be stupid.

Of eveyone in the room less the Muslim students she would have been ina better position to understand the events that unfolded that week.

[Guest]

That girl's family was probably one of the Vietnamese "elite."

Reminds me of the guy who picked me up from car rental place the other day. He was a 19 year old black kid and about half way through the car ride he started criticizing various minority groups that make up a large portion of the neighborhood we were driving through.

Turns out he was African (not African-American) and that his family was quite well off.

[The_Virginian]

McNamara...

That man is psychotic, to say the least. everything from the m-16 to the the placing of "low IQ" individuals in the US armed forces as social exparament made veitnam as "unwinable" as it was an ugly farce even from the begining.

Please remind me to wash my hands after typing his name...