Human Nature

The Vietnam War brought about many different feelings across America. Some were adamant supporters of American involvement while others strongly opposed any intervention in another country's affairs. In The Fog of War, Robert McNamara outlines 11 lessons he learned throughout his life and his career as Secretary of Defense. A majority of his points pertain to the problem of natural human tendencies. Humans tend to prefer logically thinking things through to predict outcomes of events, knowing exactly what is going to happen and how to counteract that. Yet McNamara states in lesson 2 that rationality will not save a country in war. He explains that the "rational" choices that President Kennedy made in regards to the Cuban missile crisis nearly caused an nuclear war that was only narrowly avoided.

Lesson 7 states that belief and seeing are both often wrong. The interviewer interjects with the statement that we see what we believe even if it may not be true. What human doesn't want their own personal beliefs to be true and for others to share that belief? McNamara's very last lesson is that you can't change human nature. As much as someone would like to believe that another war like one that occurred in the past won't happen again, there is always something that sparks a strong hatred in one country for another. President Eisenhower told the American public that WWI was the war to end all wars, yet since that time, many wars have already been fought and we're even in one right now. Hostility can't be completely eliminated from the range of human emotions.

This hatred that fuels these many wars that have existed for thousands of years, however, cannot actually be helped according to McNamara. I really like his explanation of the title of the film, The Fog of War--that there are much too many complications for humans to comprehend the all the intricacies of war itself. McNamara doesn't pinpoint the War on any specific individual or group of individuals. Our human judgment and understanding are inadequate to actually deal with it all, which leads to kill one another out of our lack of comprehension of the concept of war.