The Fog Of War

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The Fog of War The Fog of War is a documentary about Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, who was also president of the Ford Motor Company for a short time and eventually became president of the World Bank. In the film, McNamara discusses some of the tragedies and glories of his life as a political figure and of America as a whole. McNamara presents us with eleven lessons he has learned in his lifetime. However, these lessons are farther reaching than just McNamara’s own life as he discusses the ideas of ethics, efficiency, and reason. The lessons that McNamara teaches can be viewed all throughout the course of history and should be used as a guideline for the future. Lesson One: Empathize with your Enemy i. Columbus’ Treatment of the Native Americans: The Native American people were drastically different than the explorers of the New World. They believed that nobody owned the land; the idea of land ownership didn’t exist in their eyes. Instead of recognizing the Native American World View, Christopher Columbus and his men took advantage of the Indians by enslaving them and subduing them with violence in an effort to acquire land and riches. Clearly, Columbus should have empathized with the Native Americans by respecting their values and negotiating through fair trade rather than violence and deceit. This relates to Robert McNamara’s first lesson because Columbus failed to empathize with Native Americans and their unique values. ii. The Whisky Rebellion: In the early 1790s westerners in the United States rebelled against Alexander Hamilton’s excise tax on whisky. Westerners viewed this tax as unfair because whisky often served as a medium of exchange and because the tax would make western farmers who were forced to distill their grain into whisky for portability reasons less competitive with eastern grain
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