The Metastasis of Technocracy

The 2003 documentary The Fog of War, tracing the career and late-life musings of Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, has become an ever more fascinating artifact as the decades go by. At the time of its initial release, it was difficult as an undergraduate not to see the film in the context of the “Dubya” administration’s rash invasion of Iraq and blundering attempt to build a western-style democracy from the rubble. At that moment, however badly McNamara had erred decades earlier, he came across as a wise breath of fresh air detailing his mistakes so that subsequent generations could avoid them.