The Fog of War, a movie based on several long interviews with former secretary of defense Robert McNamara, is now in theaters around the country, and it occurred to me that readers of this Corner might be interested in looking over the episode of Uncommon Knowledge that I taped with McNamara a couple of years ago. The former secretary and I talked about McNamara’s new book, Wilson’s Ghost, in which he argues that Americans should embrace a version of Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist vision.
I came away from the taping with two impressions. The first? That I’d just talked to one of the most vigorous octagenarians I’d ever encountered. I did a pretty good job of pushing McNamara around in that interview, I thought—yet he pushed right back, forceful, articulate, intellectually nimble. Four decades earlier he had proven one of the dominant figures in Washington—and after our interview, I could see how.
The second? That the central fact in McNamara’s life was a sense of guilt. He wanted the United States to forswear unilateral action, to reduce its nuclear arsenal quickly and sharply, and to delay or cancel any plans for missile defenses. In effect, he wanted us to behave before the rest of the world like penitents, ripping our garments and daubing our forehead with ashes—to atone for his sins.
Which of course raises the question of John Forbes Kerry. Woe be unto us if we elect a president for whom the central intellectual and emotional fact is a war that we lost three decades ago.
If you’d like to take a look at a transcript of my interview with McNamara, click here.