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You Tube Video Clip of Clint Eastwood
and Bradley Cooper on
the set of ‘American Sniper’
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I have known
extraordinary men and women in my life. They have courageously been there for family
and strangers alike when they desperately needed help. They sacrificed and unselfishly
gave of themselves during difficult times, often under precarious circumstances,
because they cared about the wellbeing of people. They did it willingly without
compensation or even recognition. They are extraordinary people. If faced with
the same circumstances they are the kind of people I would hope to emulate. They
are the kind of people I call heroes. They are the kind of people I want my
children and grandchildren to regard as heroes.
That’s the problem with
‘American Sniper.’ A new Academy Award nominated film about the life of Navy
Seal Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle. A film based on Kyle’s bestselling autobiography
of the same name. Kyle became the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history.
He scored 160 confirmed kills, and achieved 225 probable kills. Kyle may have
been a good soldier but his escapades during four combat tours in Iraq are not
the stuff of heroes. He is not the extraordinary human being he is portrayed to
be. Yet an overwhelming number of Americans believe Kyle is a hero.
Alyssa
Rosenberg of the Washington Post writes, “In the film, Chris uses the word ‘savages,’ but
‘American Sniper’ doesn’t make room to explore the depth of his contempt for
Iraqis. He drove cars at them at high speed to see them get scared: ‘Their
high-pitched screams, coupled with sprints in the opposite direction, had me
doubled over. Cheap thrills in Iraq were priceless,’ he wrote in his memoir. He
bragged about stealing from their homes against orders. He compared them to
American welfare recipients in their dependency and inability to handle freedom.
Megan Garber, a staff
writer at The Atlantic, writes,
“In Kyle’s book, he admitted,
‘I love war.’ He described killing as ‘fun.’ He noted that ‘I couldn’t give a
flying fuck about the Iraqis,’ going on to explain that ‘I hate the damn
savages.’ But are the sacrifices of war still sacrifices when you enjoy
them? Is heroism still heroism when you’re motivated by hatred?”
And a must read from
one of my favorite authors, Chris Hedges, author of “War is a Force that Gives
Us Meaning.” He writes a compelling piece, on the culture of war.
In “Killing
Ragheads for Jesus,” he writes, “The culture
of war banishes the capacity for pity. It glorifies self-sacrifice and death.
It sees pain, ritual humiliation and violence as part of an initiation into
manhood.”
The movie,
American Sniper, is not honest about war. It tells a
very different story, where “We end up talking about Chris Kyle and his
dilemmas, and not about the Rumsfelds and Cheneys and other officials up the
chain who put Kyle and his high-powered rifle on rooftops in Iraq and asked him
to shoot women and children.”
Copyright ©
2015 Horatio Green
