This seems to be the season for absolutely brilliantly executed and timely documentaries, from Fahrenheit 9/11 to Outfoxed to Control Room. Today, Heidi and I finally saw Fog of War, a movie I have to heartily recommend everyone go see. It’s been out on DVD for some time now, so it should be available wherever you rent from. It won the Oscar for best documentary in 2003. Here’s the synopsis from Yahoo:

This documentary is built around over 20 hours of interviews that director Errol Morris conducted with Robert McNamara (1916-), which is supplemented by archival footage and supplementary interviews. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense during both the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson presidential administrations, and as such was a key figure in the Vietnam War. McNamara went on to become president of the World Bank (1968-1981) where his global influence continued. This documentary covers McNamara’s entire life, but the topic covered most in the conversations with McNamara is the Vietnam War.

The interview is a close camera, intimate interview with McNamara. The movie is powerful in large part because it intermixes a relatively candid interview with McNamara with footage from the years being discussed, tapes of discussions with LBJ and Kennedy (the two Presidents he served). He speaks openly about the circumstances that drove decisions in Vietnam and WWII, from firebombing Japan to Agent Orange.

Of greater impact to me was the eerie similarities between the path we took in Vietnam to the current situation in Iraq. I’m not really comparing the two combat operations, but the political circumstances here at home. There’s a clip of McNamara explaining how the Vietnam War was about the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. There’s another discussion of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (background at fair.org and at the Washington Times), which sounds a lot like the Joint Resolution authorizing force in Iraq. It was creepy watching this and noting those parallels to current events. I think there were others, but I’ll let Heidi chime in.

If you get a chance, check it out. This isn’t an anti-war movie by a long shot, by the way. McNamara regrets the execution of the Vietnam War but not the political calculus that drew us in. One could argue that the political machinations and theory were the problem, and he recounts a conversation Minh that was telling in this regard.

I’m now inclined to check out Hearts and Minds, a 1974 movie about the Vietnam War.

Update: OK, I take part of that back on a second reading… it is anti-Vietnam War, but not anti-war in general.