Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

First, I just finished watching Fog of War, and if you haven't seen this film by Errol Morris, you must go rent it, right now.  Go ahead.  Watch it.  My blog will be here when you get back.

Now that you've seen the movie, I have to discuss the questions of ethics that Morris presents and McNamara wrestles with personally.  Specifically, Morris presents his audience an opportunity to both hear and see the "rhetoric" of JFK, LBJ, and McNamara as they each wrestle with decisions regarding foreign and military policy.  And, McNamara, as Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations really does rhetorically wrestle with these two presidents.  McNamara has to choose his words wisely while acknowledging their leadership and positions in the White House.  McNamara often relies on short responses to pointed questions from the presidents and seems to raise ethical questions regarding the Cubian Missle Crisis and the war in Vietnam in recorded telephone conversations with each men.

And, McNamara's ethical concerns regarding how to deal with Cuba and the Soviets as well as the U.S. involvement in Vietnam are similar to concerns for ethics raised by Isocrates and Quintilian.  When McNamara engages with Kennedy and Johnson, they each seem to be wrestling with how they are going to handle their respective duties.  Isocrates notes, similarly, in "Against the Sophists" and "Antidosis" that rhetoric can help to develop a moral consciousness and that the arguments we present or the questions we raise in our own thoughts are the questions we raise in public.  Throughout Fog of War, audiences see all three wrestling in private the statements and positions that they are going to make publically.  They also wrestle with how many of those private statements they are going share with the public. 

A point that leads me to Quintilian's discussion of the ideal orator as "the good man speaking well" from the Institutes of Oratory, Book II, Chapter XVI.  In Quintilian's work, he defends rhetoric and oratory as not a "pernicious art" but one that can bring abundant returns for civilization when used for excellence.   Again, McNamara, JFK, and LBJ wrestled with doing what was best for the nation and how much disclosure was needed.  The fog of war might lead us to believe that many of the choices that they made were ones they believed best for the nation.

And, if I can go a little beyond the scope of rhetoric (which Aristotle would probably allow since the scope of rhetoric is so broad), I have to comment on the issues of ethics, technology, and war raised in the movie (the whole reason I wanted to blog on this movie).  Specifically, McNamara discusses in the film the decision by U.S. leaders to drop the nuclear bombs on Japan and the ethics of those decisions, considering the fact that the Japanese people had already been all but defeated by the Fire Bombings throughout the country.   And, the ethics of war is a dilemma we face, today, in Iraq and a dilemma we faced (in the collective "we") even during the Roman Empire. 

What's fair in war?  What's immoral?  McNamara's concerns regarding the ethics of the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan reminded of the Germans' medical experiments during WWII.  The crimes committed against humanity are irrefutable, but, what about the medical advances to come from those experiements on the Jews?  Should those have been thrown out?  The German scientists learned about vaccines for malaryia and hypothermia from experiments on prisoners of war.  But, considering that the experiements were conducted on POW's, does that make it ethical to use that research? 

And, then, there's the U.S. bombing of Japan during WWII. We've learned over the past couple decades that the Japanese were going to surrender.  That we'd pretty much destroyed their country during the Fire Bombing attacks.  However, Truman was determined to use the nuclear weapons.  Weapons that weren't necessary and possibly immoral and inhumane.  In spite of hundreds of thousands of civilians killed already, Truman dropped the bombs, and the effect was catastrophic--an event that one could argue that culminated in the nuclear arms race and the Cold War.  Were the US officials war criminals?  McNamarra states that if the US lost WWII, the US leaders would've been tried and executed as war criminals (himself, included).  (The same thing done to German doctors.)  Who's right?  When does scientific techology advance war and when does it go too far?

McNamara, like Isocrates and Quintilian, doesn't have answers for these questions.  Although all three to propose the importance of understanding the contexts of the situation.  And, I would argue, if I could bring it back to rhetoric, understanding the role of the orator, whether he's president or Secretary of Defense in that process.

posted by: rgregory at 22:10 | link | comments (2) |

Comments:

#1  30 October 2006 - 01:06

 

My most vivid memory of The Fog of War was when McNamara said, as you referenced, that they'd've been tried as war criminals had the U.S. lost the war. I was taken aback and just had to mull over that one. Wow. Might makes right, I guess. Damn.

I love that film. Thanks for sharing.

Mo'nonymous

#2  01 November 2006 - 22:56

 

I just got another Morris documentary from Blockbuster.com about a woman who has Asperger's, and she designs humane slaughterhouses. Specifically, autistic and Aspie's (as they are lovingly referred to) like to be swaddled--to brings them comfort. So, she designed a chute in which the cows are led up in a spiral to a chute where they are swaddled and then put down.

I'm really excited about it, so I'll keep you posted.

Mo'nonymous

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