Errol Morris - 3 Quarks Daily

by Ashutosh Jogalekar

Once again the world faces death and destruction, and once again it asks questions. The horrific assaults by Hamas on October 7 last year and the widespread bombing by the Israeli government in Gaza raise old questions of morality, law, history and national identity. We have been here before, and if history is any sad reminder, we will undoubtedly be here again. That is all the more reason to grapple with these questions.

For me, a particularly instructive guide to doing this is Errol Morris’s brilliant 2003 film, “The Fog of War”, that focuses on former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s “eleven lessons” drawn from failures of the United States in the Vietnam War. Probably my favorite documentary of all time, I find both the film and the man fascinating and the lessons timeless. McNamara at 85 is sharp as a tack and appears haunted with the weight of history and his central role in sending 58,000 American soldiers to their deaths in a small, impoverished country far away which was being bombed back into the stone age. Throughout the film he fixes the viewer with an unblinking stare, eyes often tearing up and conviction coming across. McNamara happens to be the only senior government official from any major U.S. war who has taken responsibility for his actions and – what is much more important than offering a simple mea culpa and moving on – gone into great details into the mistakes he and his colleagues made and what future generations can learn from them (in stark contrast, Morris’s similar film about Donald Rumsfeld is infuriating because unlike McNamara, Rumsfeld appears completely self-deluded and totally incapable of introspection).

For me McNamara’s lessons which are drawn from both World War 2 and Vietnam are uncannily applicable to the Israel-Palestine conflict, not so much for any answers they provide but for the soul-searching questions which must be asked. Here are the eleven lessons, and while all are important I will focus on a select few because I believe they are particularly relevant to the present war. Read more »

by Dave Maier

A few months ago, on the New York Times Opinionator blog, filmmaker Errol Morris posted a remarkable five-part series of articles, which dealt with a wide range of fascinating topics, all in search of an understanding of a traumatic incident in his past. This is a time-honored literary exercise, and Morris is a knowledgeable and skilled writer. Yet not everyone was pleased with his efforts, and some harsh words were exchanged in the ether before all became quiet once again.

Not one to let sleeping dogs lie, but also in the hope that tempers have cooled enough for us to take a sober look at the matter, I would like today, for what it is worth (and if you find it worthless, your money will be cheerfully refunded) to throw in my own two cents.

Perhaps you remember the story. As he tells it, in 1972 Morris was a graduate student at Princeton studying with Thomas Kuhn. During a heated discussion, Kuhn, a chain-smoker, threw an ashtray at Morris, missing his target but searing an unforgettable image into the young man's soul: “I see the arc, the trajectory. As if the ashtray were its own separate solar system. With orbiting planets (butts), asteroids and interstellar gas (ash).” Below this description, Morris provides for the reader a specially reenacted photograph (photo credit: Errol Morris).

What concerns me in this fantastic apologia cum vendetta is not the terrible wrong that was done to Morris (which included not simply the threat of bodily harm, but also ejection from the graduate program), but the rather more boring issue of the philosophical corners Morris necessarily – and unnecessarily – cuts in telling his story.

Just be glad this isn't a five-part series.

Tag: Errol Morris

Israel, Gaza, and Robert McNamara’s Lessons for War and Peace

Errol Morris on Wittgenstein, or someone like him in certain respects