In The Fog of War, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris gives audiences worldwide an inside look at the mind and conscience of Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The film is playing at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland and won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2003.

Many consider McNamara a war criminal who was a key player in weaving the U.S. government's web of lies during the Vietnam War. From 20 hours of interview footage with McNamara, Morris compiles a profile of the real story and McNamara's 11 rules of war.

The film is one hour and 47 minutes long. In this time, the audience sees only McNamara, worn and faded in a suit it looks like he's been wearing for days, spouting volumes of charismatic, passionate commentary about his life. Composer Phillip Glass's original score brilliantly supports the film's haunting gravity. Most important in this movie, however, is not what happens on screen, but the lessons the audience learns from the story.

The first of these lessons is to "empathize with your enemy." During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was a brief walk in the Russians' shoes that brought the Kennedy administration to a peaceful resolution. This rule applies everywhere. Seeing yourself through the eyes of your opponent, McNamara explains, is the key to knowing how others see you.

McNamara states his second rule as "rationality will not save us." So much of the Vietnam War was about the U.S. government justifying hundreds of thousands of casualties by insisting that it was fighting a righteous battle against the spread of Communism. This was desperate rationalization at its worst, and McNamara's story brings that aspect of history to light.

The ninth rule is "to do good, you may have to engage in evil." The former Secretary of Defense explains that in the beginning of the war, the U.S. honestly did believe it was saving the world from the spread of Communism, one country at a time. This doctrine of doing something evil for the greater good was applied when U.S. troops were first deployed in Vietnam. After the struggle came to a stalemate and the U.S. government continued to throw men into the fire, the same doctrine became more of a false justification for the war.

The final and possibly most powerful of McNamara's rules states, "you can't change human nature." After listening to the horrifying hypocrisy and deceit from the White House during Vietnam for almost two hours, the message is haunting. Basic human nature says that withdrawing and forfeiting is dishonorable, and it was mostly this that kept the U.S. in Vietnam for so long.

McNamara is living proof of two things, first that with age comes wisdom. At 85, McNamara now sees gravity in war and power that he never saw when he was younger. Second, everything is clearer and easier to comprehend in retrospect. Although he says that despite the devastating effects the war had, it was still not all bad and should still have happened, he knows now that he would have gone about it differently. The lasting effects of decisions made while he served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson still haunt him to this day, but he knows the clear answers available now were not so clear at the time they were needed.

The inspiring thing about McNamara's story is that his 11 rules apply not just to war, but to all of life. If you take away only four things from this movie, let them be these: Empathize with your opponent. Rationality will not save you from the consequences of your actions. To do good, you may have to engage in evil. And finally, you can never change human nature. (3 stars)