A timely reflection on Vietnam

The documentary focuses on former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
By MARK RAHNER
SEATTLE TIMES
A man learns some things being secretary of defense during a disastrous war, and it's worth hearing him out.
Robert McNamara, it turns out, is fascinating with the right music. The Oscar-winning documentary "The Fog of War" (Columbia TriStar, PG-13), couldn't be more timely or essential. Take McNamara's Lesson 3, for instance -- paraphrased somewhat for Today's Youth: If we can't get other nations with similar values and interests to throw down alongside us, we shouldn't bust a giant cap on an enemy.
The architect of the Vietnam War under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson looks like a Shar-Pei. He splays his fingers like an octogenarian gangsta rapper by way of comic Lewis Black. He lectures. He expiates. He recollects. He philosophizes. He chokes up. Combine it all with director Errol Morris' layering of vintage clips and effects, and a mesmerizing Philip Glass score. You get the kind of great documentary that a good but cheapo one like "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary" could have been.
The complex man admits he could have been judged a war criminal for helping plan the firebombing of Japanese cities if we hadn't won World War II. He goes through his presidencies of the Ford Motor Co. and World Bank, and latter-day confrontations with former adversaries who teach him that: (1) We were closer to oblivion than we knew in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and (2) we had no chance with the Vietnamese, who really, intensely didn't regard us as the good guys.
Any journalist knows how tough it is to cut interesting material from an interview, and the DVD has 24 extra scenes which aren't the typical directorial narcissism plaguing most discs. McNamara recalls his wife's receiving the Medal of Freedom from President Carter before she died, and of learning that some itchy Russian sub commanders didn't know for several days that the Cuban Missile Crisis was over.