The Fog of War is one of the best documentaries I’ve seen, the questions of morality it raises will stay with you for a long, long time, and it’s generally a great doco , so watch it, tape it, but don’t miss it :P

The Fog Of War - 85-year-old US statesman/businessman Robert S. McNamara belies his age. He’s fit, alert, feisty and entirely on top of memories as well as statistics. He claims in 1961-68 the US came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war with the USSR three times. He mentions that, while the CIA was convinced that Cuba in October 1962 had the missiles but not the warheads, Fidel Castro personally told him 30 years later that not only were there many nuclear warheads on the island at the time, but that he recommended that Khruschev use them, knowing full well that Cuba would be wiped out as a result. The big mistake in Vietnam, he says, was the legacy carried over from the ‘50s, to think of Vietnam strictly in geopolitical Cold War terms. Directed by Errol Morris.

I agree with Luke - this is an extremely powerful and rivetting documentary.

McNamara’s longevity makes him almost unique as a surviving representative of that generation which thought it was capable of achieving anything it set its mind to, and learned the hard way that it was not.

It made me wonder whether today’s Pentagon officials might be prompted to a similar mea culpa at some future date over current US policy in Iraq.

Yes, what Alan said!

Its on tonight folks, don’t miss it :)

Thanks for tip, Luke. It was everything you said.

Very thought provoking, with much to reflect on regarding the current conflicts.

I liked some of the ‘lessons’. eg ‘empathise with your enemies’ and ‘war must be proprotional’ but ‘doing evil to achieve a greater good’???? very disturbing that this kind of consequentialist thinking endures.

Glad you liked it Jeremy!

The questions of the morality of the actions taken during war really stuck with me.

I found the pragmatics for getting data for certain things fascinating, then acting on it (with regards to driving fatalities) and in the process saving thousands of lives, or in a far different (and quite awful situation) sending more bomber pilots to their deaths for more effective bombing campaigns (if memory serves) - crazy stuff.

Mark said:

McNamara expanded on the “doing evil to do good” by talking about acting to minimising evil.

hmmm.. perhaps I missed that. ‘Doing evil to minimise evil’???
I think ‘proportionality’ will progress us much further that this kind of logic. It is tinged with the hubris of a nation that assumes that is goals are always on the side of righteousness. This might have been correct in WW2 but will not always be so. It is a very dangerous line of thinking, because in the end it assumes the evils perpetrated by our enemies will outweigh our evils in response. This is fuzzy logic. History tells us that fear of what will happen to ‘our people’ drives most conflicts on both sides.

Of course the primary background context here was the decision to launch a total war against Japan which destroyed three quarters of most of their major cities and saw the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

It was interesting that McNamara admitted he would have been tried as a war criminal if the US had lost the war. And that the ‘suicide bombings’ of the Kamikazes was part of the justification for the use of the atom bomb.

Any thoughts on how this might compare with Michael Hill’s “Retrieval Ethics”?

I can’t say I have mush to add. Hill discusses the differences between retrieval ethics and ‘the lesser of two evils’ approach in Chapter 8 of his book.

Love our enemies? In my mind proportionality shows geater concern for the enemy population in comparison to the idea that to minimise the evils perpetrated by our enemies we will unleash any and all the means at our disposal.

I do also note that Andrew Cameron who often employs Hill’s mutual love ethic reverted to just war theory when discussing the Iraq conflict.

Do you have any thoughts about retrieval ethics in the context of war?

‘Just war’ theory is an attempt to limit the ‘demons’ unleashed by war. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of ‘this is a just war’ is heard far more often than actual engagement with the criteria. (I recommend Daniel M. Bell, Jr., “Just War as Christian Discipleship” for your consideration: http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,38/)

The crucial question in addressing any of these issues, as far as I am concerned, is the ‘we’ question: who is the ‘we’ being addressed when we say, “What do we do when… [insert dilemma here]”

The answer, I think, is first, “the Christian community”. Unless we are clear that we have a specific vocation in the world which--in the light of the new age inaugurated by the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit--is out of step with ‘the present evil age’, we will never show that there are alternatives to consequentialist reasoning.

The idea of ‘just peacemaking’ is a fairly recent addition to Christian discussion. Glen Stassen and David Gushee are two advocates. More on this can be found at http://www.fuller.edu/sot/faculty/stassen/Just_Peacemaking/just_peacemaking.html

Maybe Stassen’s ‘transforming initiatives’ is in the same family as Hill’s retrieval ethics’ though a lot more focused on the way forward rather than the way back (if you get my meaning).

Grace and peace

Ian

This is on again this Tuesday (ie tomorrow) on SBS, same time (10pm). If you haven’t seen it, don’t miss it.