Fog of War

I'll have to do my reading list again, given how much time I've spent on planes lately. With Dara gone, she had ordered Fog of War from Netflix. She wasn't interested in it, but I had wanted to see it since it was at the theater. It's a documentary that consists of a long interview with Robert MacNamara, Secretary of Defense for Kennedy and then Johnson. The interview follows a set of "lessons learned" in the sense that MacNamara begins by saying he's 85 years old and wants to provide the benefit of his hindsight. He discusses everything from his childhood to his war experience to his career at Ford prior to becoming Secretary of Defense. The stuff about the Cuban missile crisis was fascinating and mostly new territory for me. (He says that ultimately we avoided nuclear annihilation by luck.) Of course, the whole Vietnam experience is pretty much the centerpiece. I remember reading some reviews of this documentary when it came out, which often shared a common theme that it was self-serving. Maybe. It was fascinating, though, and you'll see plenty of parallels to our current quagmire. I don't think Rumsfeld is half as smart as MacNamara was, but there sure are amazing similarities. Check it out if you get a chance. No politics, just history. Promise.