Chris Kyle: All-American Hero?

[Formaldehyde]

Interestingly, a surprising number of anti-Iraq War DVDs I have rented from Netflix come with serious scratches on the surface which render them unusable.

 

[Berzerker]

Eastwood said he would kill Moore if he showed up at his door. This was his response to a film that raised much-needed conversation about U.S. gun culture. Eastwood’s reaction tells us a lot about the way that some members of the GOP treat those with whom they disagree. If you don’t agree with me on guns, I’ll just kill you.

Eastwood was mad at Moore for showing up at Charlton Heston's door to badger him, Heston has alzheimers.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Oh, well. Then it's perfectly understandable that he is also a far-right kook. Because the last thing someone who is supposed to be suffering from a disease like Alzheimer's needs is to be videotaped at NRA conferences while acting as the president.

Bowling for Columbine (2002)


Link to video.

Charlton Heston

A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston eventually rejected liberalism, becoming a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003. After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he retired from both acting and being the NRA president in 2003. Heston died on April 5, 2008, aged 84, from pneumonia.[3]

 

[Goodfella]

Why do you think so many "Christians" like Chris Kyle volunteered to join the army after 9/11, even though he joined earlier in 1999? Do you think it was a coincidence when they readily admit they wanted vengeance? That this is exactly how they saw the Iraq War?

Me:

I agree with the author on every other point. Though I don't think the 9/11-Iraq link quite had the propagandizing effect the author suggests, much of the rest of the film did. This includes its depiction of saintly soldiers, fictional villains, and its persistent justification for civilian casualties as being accidental or unavoidable.

Why would the flick even mention 9/11 if that wasn't the basic premise?

Me:

Also, it would have been bizarre for a War on Terror/Iraq War period film that took place from 1998 - 2013 to not include a 9/11 scene. Eastwood probably didn't feel like delving too much into the period between the 9/11 scene and 2003 because that it wasn't as relevant to Kyle's sniper story.

Also, though Saddam Hussein obviously wasn't responsible for 9/11, the terrorists who swarmed Iraq after the invasion and served as the principle enemies in the film were. So that's another reason why. Admittedly, this does have some propaganda value.

 

[Formaldehyde]

So you aren't really responding to the questions at all, much less the article I posted and all the subsequent discussion since then. You are just repeating what you already posted.

And the "principal enemies" weren't a handful of al-Qaeda "terrorists" who were the only group that had anything at all to do with 9/11.

2. The Film Invents a Terrorist Sniper Who Works For Multiple Opposing Factions: Kyle’s primary antagonist in the film is a sniper named Mustafa. Mustafa is mentioned in a single paragraph in Kyle’s book, but the movie blows him up into an ever-present figure and Syrian Olympic medal winner who fights for both Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and the Shia Madhi army.

It is just so much concocted nonsense specifically designed to appeal to those who bought into all the lies.

 

[Goodfella]

How about this: on the topic of whether or not the film cut from 9/11 to Iraq to suggest a direct link between the two, it did not. On the topic of whether the film suggests that the terrorists/insurgents in Iraq were responsible, or at least related to, 9/11, it definitely did. That's what I meant by "Admittedly, this does have some propaganda value."

 

[Formaldehyde]

How about this? it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand whether there were other scenes between the two. After all, nobody claimed there wasn't.

 

[jackelgull]

How about this? it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand whether there were other scenes between the two. After all, nobody claimed there wasn't.

That was one of the claims in your first post- that the director cut immediately from 9/11 to Iraq thus establishing a link where there was none. Unless I misunderstood what you were claiming.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Well, that wasn't my statement. It was from the article I quoted.

1. The Film Suggests the Iraq War Was In Response To 9/11: One way to get audiences to unambiguously support Kyle’s actions in the film is to believe he’s there to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The movie cuts from Kyle watching footage of the attacks to him serving in Iraq, implying there is some link between the two.

While I can see it could be construed as meaning "immediate", does the film "suggest the Iraq War was in response To 9/11", or not? This criticism is commonly cited in numerous articles regarding this flick.

American Sniper is a dishonest whitewash of the Iraq war

American Sniper, Clint Eastwood's love letter to decorated, real-life Iraq war sniper Chris Kyle, is dominating America's box offices. But does this movie, much of which portrays intense ground combat in Iraqi cities, have anything to say about the war itself?

The film's star, Bradley Cooper, insists the film is "not a political discussion about war." But viewers of American Sniper are given a highly political re-telling of the Iraq War — and one that so wildly misrepresents the truth of the war that it is practically tantamount to whitewashing history.

American Sniper falsely suggests we invaded Iraq over 9/11

From the get-go, Chris Kyle's military career is all about responding to terrorism. Kyle joins up after al-Qaeda bombs the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. We see him and his wife Taya's stunned reactions to 9/11.

And then, bam. Kyle's at war in Iraq. The film does not contain, as best I can tell, a single reference to George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, or weapons of mass destruction. There's no Dick Cheney, no Colin Powell at the UN, no anti-war protests. The film implies that the Iraq War was a deliberate response to 9/11.

In fact, the Bush administration premised its 2003 Iraq invasion primarily on the alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice memorably put it, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The Bush administration repeatedly asserted that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons and other programs it might use against the United States. Bush and some his top advisers had come into office, before 9/11 even occurred, believing that Saddam was a threat and discussing possible ways to remove him.

The war, in other words, was not actually about 9/11. And, crucially, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were the basis of the war turned out not to exist.

It's not just that American Sniper weirdly excises all of this history; it's that the film replaces it with the implication that 9/11 gave America little choice but to invade Iraq, that the 2003 US invasion was something that happened to us, not something we chose to do. Chris Kyle repeatedly explains that he's fighting to protect his family, again suggesting that the invasion was a necessary preemptive defense against Iraqi terrorists, when no such threat actually existed.

This implication wasn't necessary for the film to work: watching Kyle and his wife react in horror to 9/11 didn't add anything to our understanding of his character. All the scene does is recast the Iraq war in a false, noble light.

American Sniper presents the war as a response to al-Qaeda. In fact, the opposite is true.

In the film's narrative, the Iraq war begins with Kyle's first mission against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Over the course of four tours, Kyle fights a number of vicious AQI operatives, including a Syrian sniper named Mustafa that serves as Kyle's foil, as well as another guy nicknamed The Butcher.

Viewers are left with the impression that the Iraq war was against al-Qaeda at the outset, and that the fighting was chiefly against them. You could be forgiven for thinking that America invaded Iraq because it had become a hotbed of al-Qaeda operations.

In fact, Iraq did become a hotbed of al-Qaeda operations, but it was not until after the invasion, and indeed the invasion and bungled American occupation were what allowed them such fertile ground.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq did not exist at the war's outset. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who would later form the group, entered Iraq specifically because he hoped the US invasion would provide the chaos and anger he needed to succeed, and he was right. The group only established its large foothold after many Iraqis had turned against the American occupation, which alienated Iraqis with its mismanagement of the country, and with terrible mistakes such as disbanding the Iraqi army, which left many thousands of military-trained Iraqis unemployed and angry.

The real story of Iraq's insurgency is not just one of monstrous al-Qaeda, and it's not just of a fight between good and evil.

American Sniper can be forgiven for not wanting to explore the sordid history of al-Qaeda's rise. Less forgivable, though, is that it portrays the American invasion as a righteous blow against the evil of al-Qaeda, when in fact that invasion was one of the best things that ever happened to al-Qaeda. The film doesn't just skip this history, but actively distorts it.

Iraqis are portrayed as "savages" and mostly evil terrorists

The narrative sets up the war as a morality play: there are evil terrorists, and Chris Kyle needs to kill them. It's as simple as that.

In an early speech that basically defines the film's politics, Chris Kyle's father declares that there are three kind of people: sheep, the wolves that prey on them, and the sheep dogs that hold them at bay. "We're not raising any sheep in this family," Kyle's father tells his son, "and I'll whup your ass if you ever become a wolf."

That means Kyle is a sheepdog. Kyle and his buddies in uniform are good guys hunting terrorists. It's hardly a surprise, then, that all of the violence in Iraq is attributed to simple evil, and that Iraq's millions of citizens are often barely distinguishable from al-Qaeda.

Kyle repeatedly refers to Iraqis as "savages," and the film makes no effort to prove him wrong. Two out of three Iraqi children the film focuses on pick up weapons (though one puts it down before firing), and the third tortured by another Iraqi. When another soldier questions whether Kyle may have shot an innocent man, Kyle simply shouts him down. The issue never comes up again.

In fact, many thousands of Iraqis died fighting al-Qaeda, and the group's defeat never would have been possible without the 2005 Anbar Awakening, in which many Iraqi communities in al-Qaeda hotspots took up arms to uproot the group.

The film also skips over one of the ugliest but most important aspects of the war: the divisions between Iraq's Sunni and its Shias, both of whom fought the US as well as one another, in what ultimately became a civil war. The words Sunni and Shia are hardly mentioned in the film, if at all. The idea that Iraqis could be much else other than terrorists, or that an Iraqi might take up arms for any reason other than to kill Americans, doesn't really factor in American Sniper's narrative.

Again, it would be understandable for a mainstream Hollywood production to not want to delve into sectarian politics. But rather than merely skirting Iraq's sectarian conflict, the film instead replaces it with a narrative that the war was all about America versus al-Qaeda, which is simply false and misleading.

The dangerous implications of American Sniper's distortions

Once the film has established the invasion as a righteous response to 9/11, which it wasn't, and the war itself as a black-and-white battle against evil al-Qaeda terrorists, when the truth is far murkier, it then carries that narrative to its logical conclusion: opposing the Iraq War, or even insufficiently endorsing its glory, is tantamount to betrayal.

When Kyle's brother, also a soldier, says " this place," Kyle channels the viewer's bafflement. When another soldier dies, and a grieving family member reads an anti-war letter at the funeral, Kyle tells his wife that "that letter" is what killed him. His wife absorbs this line quietly, seemingly accepting it as gospel.

Without exploring why the Iraqis are fighting — America's mistakes, the Sunni/Shia sectarian dynamics — the film gives us no resources for seeing beyond Kyle's "good versus evil" perspective. In American Sniper, the Iraq War is nothing but a just war against al-Qaeda, and the only real casualties are American soldiers.

Getting the Iraq War this wrong is a disservice to the Americans who fought in it

American Sniper is absolutely consumed by questions of good and evil. From the opening sheepdog monologue, right down to Kyle's final assessment of the war — that the only thing he regretted is he that he couldn't save more American soldiers — the question of the war's morality is placed front-and-center.

But the politics of the Iraq war defy the film's simple "wolves" versus "sheepdogs" moral framing. American troops were alternately invaders and protectors. They destroyed the Iraqi state and left murderous chaos in its wake, but also helped defeat the truly evil al-Qaeda in Iraq (at least, until its rebirth as ISIS). The core mission was beyond flawed, but after the unpardonable mistake of invading was already made, American soldiers had some just missions to accomplish.

In the real world, and in any even remotely honest portrayal, it is impossible to talk about ethics of fighting in Iraq without acknowledging both sides of this moral coin. But American Sniper has the morality of an especially simple superhero movie: our side good, their side bad. In order to sell us on that, it's forced to twist history into an unrecognizable pretzel.

What might be the worst part is that it's all so unnecessary. American Sniper could have told Kyle's story while still giving his comic book worldview an appropriate degree of critical distance. Such a movie would not have needed to distort the truth, and it wouldn't have needed to condescend to Americans and American troops by acting as if we could not possibly handle moral ambiguity about America's mission in Iraq. But it did, and that is a disservice not just to film's viewers, but to the millions of Americans who were affected by the war and deserve to have that story told honestly.

I haven't seen the flick. But this account of it seems to also indicate that the 9/11 shots were immediately before Chris was in Iraq. "Bam".

But then again, I really don't think it is that important if the flick did deliberately deceive the audience in regard to what Chris Kyle was actually doing: Killing Iraqi men, women, and even children from long range during a war which should have never occurred. That the war had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and terrorism, at least initially. That the subsequent al Qaeda participation was entirely due to our own actions, not those of Iraq.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Well, now I've finally seen the flick. It finally came on HBO Saturday night.

What a bunch of unmitigated nonsense.

In the very first scenes when he gets to Iraq, Kyle is shown as facing the task of having to kill a young boy with a Russian (?!?) grenade which is apparently left over and just lying around from the Soviets supplying Iraq with weapons decades before. Only his his memoir, he never claimed to kill a single child. What is apparently true though is that Kyle's first kill was an Iraqi woman he labelled as "evil" because she was an Iraqi "savage" and showed no remorse at all for killing her.

Kyle is repeatedly shown talking to his wife on a sat phone while in combat situations. Either this is an obvious distortion of what actually occurred, or he should have been immediately relieved of duty and prosecuted to the full extent of the military law for sheer incompetence that directly endangered all Marines who were nearby through gross dereliction of duty.

He also peremptorily relieves himself from the assigned duty of being a sniper to clearing houses because he is supposedly so much better of a Marine than anybody else. He even tells his spotter that he had better not even be there when he gets back because the spotter refuses to disobey direct orders as he clearly did.

Then Kyle goes on a one man mission to find and kill al-Zarqawi by even turning into a supposed expert interrogator of innocent Iraqis "who shouldn't be in combat zones" and who likely don't even speak English.

He then supposedly comes under attack by this Iraqi sniper who is ostensibly his direct adversary. But in the memoir Kyle states he never met up with him personally.

While supposedly being held down under fire by this sniper, "the Butcher" then kills a father and his son in front of the squad. This is yet another incident which never occurred in reality.

Then on his second tour of duty, Kyle is supposedly assigned the task of creating a special squad to hunt down "the Butcher". But "the Butcher" isn't even mention in Kyle's memoirs, much like most of this utter nonsense.

That is just some of the blatant inaccuracies in the first half of the movie. It just keeps getting worse and worse from there. This is no "biography". It is just another Hollywood flick which doesn't care in the least about what actually occurred, as it tries to glorify and extol rampant warmongering which was committed on the basis of intentional lies and deliberate distortions.

Not only is Chris Kyle the exact opposite of a real "hero" who is supposedly adored by all, Clint Eastwood has shown once again he is nothing but an apologist and propagandist for incessant American warmongering.

 

[abradley]

Haven't seen the movie or read the book.

But in reference to the movie, Wiki sez .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sniper
It is loosely based on the memoir American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (2012) by Chris Kyle, with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice

My Bold.

So, ain't worried about it being a near documentary.

How about it being patriotic, yah and I like that. But I would.

 

[Formaldehyde]

The only factual aspect of it seems to be that Chris Kyle was indeed a Navy SEAL who was also a sniper in Iraq.

But we also know from how much of his "memoirs" have been debunked that he was a chronic liar with no apparent morality other than what can be found in many similar Hollywood movies, much like Clint Eastwood.

But as complete works of fiction I also happen to enjoy his flicks. I just don't deceive myself that they are in any way representative of what actually occurred.

 

[Kyriakos]

Sounds like this was almost as little based on the book (of a known liar) as that movie about the black white house employee of four american presidents!

 

[Berzerker]

I dont believe Kyle called Iraqis savages and while Eastwood may have been whitewashing the context because the GOP led the charge into war, he may have simply wanted to focus on the soldier and avoid the political can of worms. While Pat Tillman signed up after 9/11 for Afghanistan (and only Afghanistan) Kyle joined before the push for adding Iraq to the list of "over there" battlefields. I dont know if he was blind to the BS the Republicans used to lie us into war but I imagine he was just honoring his commitment. Kinda tough to walk away from your fellow soldiers at that point...

 

[Formaldehyde]

Kyle called Iraqis "savages" in his book.

Warning: Bad words present in this article...

Giardian: The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?

Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and claimed to have killed more than 255 people during his six-year military career. In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as “fun”, something he “loved”; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy”. “I hate the damn savages,” ... He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina, though that was never substantiated.

As Laura Miller wrote in Salon: “In Kyle’s version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose ‘savage, despicable evil’ led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians.”

Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, “sees only shades of gray”, and American Sniper is a morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film. But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world, and the chasm between Eastwood’s intent and his audience’s reception touches on the old Chappelle’s Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelle’s rapier racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers. Is that Chappelle’s fault? Should he care?

Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniper with similarly shallow comprehension – treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself. Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself. How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle – who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people – is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?

That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew attention to Kyle’s less Oscar-worthy statements. “Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah,” wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal. “Kill every male you see,” Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an “American psycho”.

Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet....

The patriots go on, and on and on. They cannot believe what they are reading. They are rushing to the defence of not just Kyle, but their country, what their country means. They call for the rape or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise American hero Chris Kyle. Because Chris Kyle is good, and brown people are bad, and America is in danger, and Chris Kyle saved us. The attitude echoes what Miller articulated about Kyle in her Salon piece: “his steadfast imperviousness to any nuance, subtlety or ambiguity, and his lack of imagination and curiosity, seem particularly notable”.

There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial-killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control. Or that Iraqis might be fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children. Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry. Or that many truths can be true at once.

Always meet your heroes.

The movie was obviously all about the "political can of worms" from the perspective of two authoritarian conservatives. One didn't seem bright enough to even realize how racist and bigoted he was. The other should clearly know better but doesn't seem to care one bit. This commentator who also served in Iraq was far too easy on Clint Eastwood.

I haven't read Kyle's book, but the movie claims he got the inspiration to join from the 1998 bombings of US embassies.

 

[Ice_Tyrant]

Maybe it's just me living in a bubble, but it seemed like everyone was on Chris Kyle's side with the whole Jesse Ventura thing up until after the movie came out.

He probably did lie about it, which is a shame. Ventura really is a horrific human too.

Well, every bit of I guess entertainment can colour the viewer's perception of the world. And with that in mind "glorifying" the wars in the middle east can be pretty devastating.

Did the movie really glorify war? I never saw it, but I remember talking to my boss and a coworker about it, and they made it sound like the war devastated the character of Chris Kyle in the movie. They brought up one scene where he had to murder some kid. I can't imagine a context where that glorifies war. Well, maybe it could be seen as... glorifying soldiers, for what it costs them to "protect" us. (It's hard to think 4000 people died in Iraq just for ISIS to wreck it just a few years later...)

I heard it was a good movie. I may see it some day. Though I can't imagine ever thinking of the main character as being anything other than seeing a real world event through the eyes of a fictional character.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Maybe it's just me living in a bubble, but it seemed like everyone was on Chris Kyle's side with the whole Jesse Ventura thing up until after the movie came out.

He probably did lie about it, which is a shame. Ventura really is a horrific human too.

That's funny. I have exactly the opposite opinions. Jesse is extremely bright and largely misunderstood if you don't watch him in person. He was also was awarded $1.8M in damages.

Watch this video and make up your own mind which one is telling the truth:


Link to video.

Jesse Ventura on ‘American Sniper’ Chris Kyle: ‘Do You Think the Nazis Have Heroes?’

Jesse is an extremely likable guy if you actually listen to what he has to say on a plethora of different topics.

Did the movie really glorify war? I never saw it, but I remember talking to my boss and a coworker about it, and they made it sound like the war devastated the character of Chris Kyle in the movie. They brought up one scene where he had to murder some kid. I can't imagine a context where that glorifies war. Well, maybe it could be seen as... glorifying soldiers, for what it costs them to "protect" us. (It's hard to think 4000 people died in Iraq just for ISIS to wreck it just a few years later...)

That was just utter malarkey concocted by Eastwood to try to make Chris Kyle into something other than a reprehensible and incredibly one-dimensional racist and bigot. His first kill was apparently a woman, but there was no kid present as depicted in the movie.

I heard it was a good movie. I may see it some day. Though I can't imagine ever thinking of the main character as being anything other than seeing a real world event through the eyes of a fictional character.

That is good because it clearly isn't. It is pure propaganda masquerading as a "loose" biography.

 

[Berzerker]

Kyle called Iraqis "savages" in his book.

Where? The article you posted says he called the combatants he was killing savages, not Iraqis.

The movie was obviously all about the "political can of worms" from the perspective of two authoritarian conservatives.

Your gripe is how the film didn't give us a history lesson about events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, giving us that history lesson would be the political can of worms. It wasn't a political movie, it was about the soldiers.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Where? The article you posted says he called the combatants he was killing savages, not Iraqis.

Oh, well. There you go. He only saw those who fought against this illegal invasion and occupation as "savages", not the relatively small percentage who thought of the US as their saviors instead of their oppressors.

Your gripe is how the film didn't give us a history lesson about events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, giving us that history lesson would be the political can of worms. It wasn't a political movie, it was about the soldiers.

My "gripe" is how the actual "history" has been intentionally perverted by Clint Eastwood to depict the Iraq War in a clearly cartoonish manner that is still gospel to so many authoritarian conservatives.

It is not about "soldiers" at all. It is about the glorification of war, even ones which should have never occurred like this one and Grenada. It is about depicting dimwitted bigots and racists who really have no morals, such as Chris Kyle, as those who are extremely concerned and even mortified regarding what they are doing.

 

[JollyRoger]

Isn't Clint Eastwood that old dude that lost a debate with an empty chair at the GOP Convention?