Fog of War and Path to War

I think both movies really try to portray their main characters (McNamara and Johnson) in ways that are contrary to what people normally see them as. In Fog of War, McNamara claims that he was just doing his job and being loyal to the president. In this light, the Vietnam War is hardly seen as "McNamara's War". In Path to War, rather than depicting Johnson as a president that led his country into an unnecessary war, the directors make him seem like a man that had his dreams of a peaceful society destroyed by a bad circumstance. In other words, LBJ is a victim of something that would inevitably happen anyways.

Something interesting about this movie was the way they showed the Gulf of Tonkin affair. This scene was briefly touched on in this movie, but it was very important in igniting a conflict between US and North Vietnam. There was a lot of confusion here; as a viewer, I couldn't really tell if they had confirmed if the North Vietnamese had actually attacked or not. Anyways, LBJ began to order bombings. There was not much to say about any lying that took place about what happened to the public. It seems like LBJ himself was misinformed about the incident. The movie also makes him look good by the way he reacted to the pilot that was shot down during one of the first bombing missions. He seemed to be so hurt by the loss of just one person (out of the eventual 55,000).