News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
"American Sniper" has become a surprise box office smash, breaking records for a mid-winter release. Less surprisingly, it has become a flashpoint in the culture wars.
For many folks, it's a depiction of the skill, dedication and sacrifice of American warfighters as represented by one of the elite: Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. For others, the movie is a glorification of war and killing that evades taking responsibility for a bad war.
Clint Eastwood says his movie is an "anti-war statement," because it shows the vast civilian population that had no personal skin in the game "what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back to into civilian life like Chris Kyle did."
Chris Kyle was one of a long line of country-boy sharpshooters who made their mark on American military history. Some exalt that heritage and his burly Texas cowboy persona; others find it hard to take. Some see him as a hero, others as a remorseless killer who dehumanized the people in his crosshairs, calling them "savages."
Some scoff at Kyle's insistence that his job was about saving lives - but that's what sniper overwatch does. Snipers protect soldiers or Marines as they go about the dangerous work of patrol or raid in an urban environment. That said, if you've read Kyle's memoir, upon which the movie was based, it's clear that he relished his work and his skill with a rifle. He felt competitive with other snipers and he did, indeed, regard those in his crosshairs as savages.
Why that should shock anyone is a perplexing question. No matter how it's sanitized for public consumption, no matter how antiseptic it is rendered by the distance afforded by missile strike or drone, war is still about killing enemies. And the brutality of the insurgents and outright terrorists Kyle and his comrades fought in Iraq certainly earned the designation "savage."
One can oppose the Iraq war for any number of valid reasons and yet acknowledge that the hostile elements our troops fought there were deadly enemies. In fact, that seems to be exactly where Eastwood is coming from.
The movie elides some aspects of Chris Kyle's character that would have made for a more complete picture. He seems to have made up some whoppers after returning from war. He claimed to have killed two men who tried to carjack him in Texas, deploying some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card from the Department of Defense to deter law enforcement heat. And he allegedly told stories about traveling in secret to New Orleans during Katrina and shooting looters.
None of that is verifiable, and knowledgeable folks are pretty certain nothing like these incidents ever happened. After Kyle's death, Jesse Ventura won a defamation suit against his estate over a claim that Kyle decked Ventura in a Coronado bar after Ventura allegedly disparaged the war and Navy SEALs. Ventura said it never happened, and a jury sided with him.
Why Kyle felt the need to tell tall tales when he had a verified record of exceptional combat prowess and fortitude is an open question. The answer may be psychologically complicated - some need to hold onto to a sense of identity ("The Legend") - or maybe not. He sure ain't the first Texas cowboy to tell a stretcher or two in a barroom.
Kyle's larger-than-life persona surely had its portion of bravado, but he was also a generous and compassionate man. The irony of his death is bitter: slain by a troubled veteran he had reached out to and was trying to help.
Whether you see Chris Kyle as a hero or not depends mostly on the lens you are looking through. But certainly he was a man whose story was worth the telling, and Eastwood told it well.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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