Unlike most other documentary interviews I've seen, I found this interesting and even satisfying to watch. However, after reading what Wikipedia has to say about the Vietnam War, and skimming the six pages of McNamara's obituary in the NY Times, I can't say I'm greatly the wiser about what McNamara's personal responsibility might have been. Why was it called McNamara's War by Senator Morse ? It seems to me, whatever McNamara's role, that the buck stopped with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. It was America's war and the Presidents' war. McNamara must have done his best to serve them, and I can't see why he should bear the blame for what must be reckoned their policies. Did he hide the futility of the war from these presidents ? I'm thinking he deserves a medal for guts and stamina, fighting against the odds until his death at 93.

Found this to be an informative look into the history of former US Secretary Of Defence, Robert McNamara. As an Australian who regards the American exercise of power to be no more sophisticated than that of Genghis Khan, the kind of admissions that McNamara makes here confirms my own views on this matter. Historical events discussed in this documentary include World War II, the Cuban missile crisis, his time in charge of the Ford Motor Company, and his role during the Vietnam war.Some of the more interesting admissions that McNamara makes in the interview are: * if the US had lost WWII, he, and many other Americans would have been tried as war criminals. This is in the context of the issue of proportionality...the US lacked this in its conflict with Japan. Over 60 Japanese cities were bombed by the US with around 50% destructive efficacy. This was even before the US used the only weapons of mass destruction worth the name...atomic bombs...killing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in two Japanese cities. McNamara admits to being a war criminal and he claims that American General LeMay also knew that he was such. Being part of a superpower means never having to say that you are sorry...well, you can say sorry, you just don't have to face justice...ever.* the supposed attacks on the US warships "Maddox" and "Turner Joy" are also discussed. You hear some tape of the principle players discussing the 'attack'...I personally read into them that history was being fabricated at that very moment, in order to achieve a certain outcome (US involvement in Asia, against Vietnam). The supposed attack led to The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which got America what it what sought...war (by any other name).* President Johnson's oversight of the Vietnam war is also discussed. Listening to tapes of the man he strikes me as a nasty piece of work...an evil little man. He declared 'war' on "tyranny and aggression" with the absolute lack of irony that Americans are renowned for. Yeah...fight tyranny and aggression with tyranny and aggression! I've got a note which is a bit vague to me...something about Johnson crossing the Rubicon as far as bombing civilians goes, I think...I might mean that Johnson sanctioned the bombing of innocent civilians in Vietnam even before the marines formally invaded Vietnam.* History repeats...McNamara's comments about the US being unable to persuade nations with comparable values across the world of the justness of its cause against Vietnam resonated with me. President George W.Bush's own war against 'terror' had the same problem...only a lap dog like Australia would join the US on its adventurism. Aptly, McNamara does not seem to regard Australia as important enough to acknowledge as an ally. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he didn't regard us as like minded or equivalent. If we're doing this to win brownie points with the US, I think we are doomed! Most importantly, McNamara acknowledges that the fact that no nations with comparable values joined the US against Vietnam indicated that the US needed to reevaluate its values! * Just a minor side note: McNamara has a Shirley McLaine moment when he derives cosmic significance from the fact that (he claims) he chose a spot for the assassinated President Kennedy to be buried which the living president Kennedy had commented on positively beforehand.Of course, McNamara's hindsight is 20/20. But I wonder how much any wisdom he may have gained would have changed things had he to be in the same situation again. My view is that he would have done it all over again, the same way...Genghis Khan knew how to make an omelette. American presidents and generals and secretaries of state have the recipe too.

This is an excellent, subdued interview with Robert Strange McNamara, who was US secretary of defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. If you have any interest in and a bit of knowledge of recent US history, then this will be a pot of gold to you. It is packaged as a series of lessons (confusingly, ten "life lessons" and eleven "political lessons), which doesn't work so well, partially because they aren't catchy enough for a movie. I particularly found McNamara's personal account of his life before his political career very interesting.You don't have to be a history buff to profit from this movie, but be advised that you need to have at least a working knowledge of the Kennedy and Johnson years.

In some ways a simple "talking head" documentary - a lot of it is Robert McNamara (U.S. Secretary of Defence in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and therefore during a good part of the Vietnam War) simply answering questions. It's also combined with some good archival footage of some of the significant events of his lifetime, however, and it isn't exactly what you might expect it to be.I expected it to be largely a justification of McNamara's policies and actions regarding Vietnam, but it's more than that. Essentially McNamara takes his many life experiences - not only as Defence Secretary, but as an army officer during World War II, a professor at Harvard, President of Ford Motor Company, and Head of the World Bank - and develops from them eleven life lessons that he shares. Vietnam is a part of that mix, of course, but isn't really dealt with at length until the last half hour or so of the documentary, and he neither justifies nor admits to guilt about anything - at least not about Vietnam. At the end of the story (in a portion subtitled "Epilogue") McNamara is essentially given the chance to offer judgment on his Vietnam policies but declines, saying simply that he knows things we don't know, and he'd prefer it to remain that way. Fair enough. My impression is that if he were to respond to the question of whether he felt any guilt, he'd say "no. I did what I thought was right at the time." The eleven life lessons are largely common sense ones, and I don't think it's necessary to list them. The film can be watched to find out about them. One that did strike me, though, was "in order to do good, sometimes you have to engage in evil." This, of course, runs counter to the thought which is probably pre-eminent in society that "two wrongs don't make a right," and instead promotes "the ends justify the means" thinking. A couple of other statements McNamara made that stuck with me were his honest admission that, if Japan had won World War II, he and Curtis LeMay would probably have been tried as war criminals for planning the fire bombing of Japanese cities (actually, he goes so far as to say that they were war criminals) and his belief that had Kennedy not been assassinated, the United States wouldn't have become as deeply involved in Vietnam as it did under Johnson.It's an interesting documentary which offers a personal look at McNamara and his thoughts rather than just an assessment of his role in Vietnam. Well worth watching. 7/10