PhilPaine.com

I strong­ly rec­om­mend this film. It’s prob­a­bly the best of the polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries cir­cu­lat­ing today. Since news­pa­pers, radio and tele­vi­sion have stopped being of any use to any­one who wants to learn things about pol­i­tics, doc­u­men­tary films have emerged as the most effec­tive medi­um for dis­cussing pub­lic affairs.

For those who are too young to rec­og­nize the name, Robert Strange McNa­ma­ra was one of the pio­neers of strate­gic sys­tems analy­sis dur­ing WWII, and served as Sec­re­tary of Defense for Kennedy and John­son from 1961 to 1968. He then became Pres­i­dent of the World Bank until his retire­ment in 1981. What is now called “pol­i­cy analy­sis” is an ampli­fi­ca­tion of the “sys­tems analy­sis” that he intro­duced to the Pen­ta­gon. Under­stand­ing McNa­ma­ra’s back­ground, psy­chol­o­gy and motives is essen­tial for any attempt to eval­u­ate Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy dur­ing the 1960s.

This doc­u­men­tary, by vet­er­an direc­tor Erroll Mor­ris, is the exact oppo­site of the kind of slop­py, self-serv­ing crap that Michael Moore pro­duces. A rel­e­vant digres­sion: Moore has done more dam­age to the urgent and vital cause of oppos­ing Con­ser­vatism in Amer­i­ca than any­thing I can think of. Get­ting your facts wrong, fal­si­fy­ing data, stag­ing pho­ny inci­dents, and gen­er­al­ly being a loud and obnox­ious ass­hole are NOT the way to turn back the tide of Con­ser­v­a­tive evil. Just because the Con­ser­v­a­tives fill the air­waves with screech­ing, igno­rant liars like Ann Coul­ter and Robert Novak does not mean that the tac­tic should be aped by their oppo­nents. We are sup­posed to be fight­ing against evil, not cloning it. Moore’s antics mere­ly degrade and dis­cred­it the cause of lib­er­ty. It’s worth draw­ing atten­tion to the quo­ta­tion from Bas­ti­at that begins one of my “med­i­ta­tions”: “The worst thing that can hap­pen to a good cause is, not to be skill­ful­ly attacked, but to be inept­ly defended.”

Mor­ris’s doc­u­men­tary is supe­ri­or to Moore’s stuff in every way. He remains off cam­era, and appears only occa­sion­al­ly as a voice ask­ing McNa­ma­ra ques­tions that elic­it reveal­ing respons­es. There is no grand­stand­ing, no attempt to entrap or embar­rass Mac­Na­ma­ra, no attempt to make Mor­ris the “star” of his own doc­u­men­tary. There are no dirty tricks. Mac­Na­ma­ra is giv­en a fair chance to explain him­self. The result is a his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant document.

It is rarely acknowl­edged by Democ­rats today that the road to the present dom­i­na­tion of Amer­i­ca by Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans, with all its atten­dant eco­nom­ic and moral dis­as­ter, was paved by the idi­ot­ic choic­es made by Democ­rats in the 1960s. Mac­Na­ma­ra was a key fig­ure in that era. As he looks back on these events from his old age, he reveals a pecu­liar mix­ture of arro­gance, self-doubt, guilt and blind­ness. This is real stuff. Infi­nite­ly more valu­able than staged con­fronta­tions and child­ish pranks. This is how polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries should be made.