RTAmerican Sniper is directed by Clint Eastwood, and tells the story of Chris Kyle, a US Navy Seal who served four tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper credited with 160 confirmed “kills”, and earning him the dubious honor of being lauded the most lethal sniper in US military history.
Played by Bradley Cooper, in the movie Kyle is an all-American hero, a Texas cowboy who joins the military out of a sense of patriotism and a yearning for purpose and direction in his life. Throughout the ‘uber-tough’ selection process, Kyle is a bastion of stoicism and determination, willing to bear any amount of pain and hardship for the honor of being able to serve his country as a Navy Seal – America’s equivalent of the Samurai.
The personal struggle he endures as a result of what he experiences and does in Iraq is not motivated by any regrets over the people he kills, including women and children, but on his failure to kill more and thereby save the lives of American soldiers as they go about the business of tearing the country apart, city by city, block by block, and house by house.
If American Sniper wins one Oscar, never mind the six it’s been nominated for, when this annual extravaganza of movie pomp and ceremony unfolds in Hollywood on February 22, it will not only represent an endorsement of US exceptionalism, but worse it will be an insult to the Iraqi people. In the movie they are depicted as a dehumanized mass of savages – occupying the same role as the Indians in John Wayne Western movies of old – responsible for their own suffering and the devastation of their country, which the white man is in the process of civilizing.
Anything resembling balance and perspective is sacrificed in American Sniper to the more pressing needs of US propaganda, which holds that the guys who served in Iraq were the very best of America, men who went through hell in order to protect the freedoms and way of life of their fellow countrymen at home. It is the cult of the soldier writ large, men who in the words of Kyle (Bradley Cooper) in the movie “just want to get the bad guys.”
The ”bad guys” are, as mentioned, the Iraqis. In fact if you had just arrived in the movie theatre from another planet, you would be left in no doubt from the movie’s opening scene that Iraq had invaded and occupied America rather than the other way round.
Unsurprisingly, the real Chris Kyle was not as depicted by Clint Eastwood and played by Bradley Cooper. In his autobiography, upon which the movie is supposedly based, Kyle writes, “I hate the damn savages. I couldn’t give a flying f**k about the Iraqis.”
It is clear that the movie’s director, Clint Eastwood, when faced with the choice between depicting the truth and the myth, decided to go with the myth.
But it should come as no surprise, given that the peddling of such myths is the very currency of Hollywood. Over many decades the US movie industry has proved itself one of the most potent weapons in the armory of US imperialism, helping to project a myth of an America, defined by lofty attributes of courage, freedom, and democracy.
As the myth has it, these values, and with them America itself, are continually under threat from the forces of evil and darkness that lurk outwith and often times within. The mountain of lies told in service to this myth has only been exceeded by the mountain of dead bodies on the basis of it – victims of the carnage and mayhem unleashed around the world by Washington.
Chris Kyle was not the warrior or hero portrayed in American Sniper. He was in fact a racist killer for whom the only good Iraqi was a dead Iraqi. He killed men, women, and children, just as his comrades did during the course of a brutal and barbaric war of aggression waged by the richest country in the world against one of the poorest.
They say that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. In the hands of a movie director with millions of dollars and the backing of a movie studio at its disposal, it is far more dangerous than that. It is a potent weapon deployed against its victims, denying them their right to even be considered victims, exalting in the process, when it comes to Hollywood, those who murder and massacre in the name of America.
With this in mind, it is perhaps fitting that Chris Kyle was shot and killed by a former Marine at a shooting range in Texas in 2013. “Man was born into barbarism,” Martin Luther King said, “when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence.”
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that man was a murdering bastard that truly deserved some of that “viet nam spit”
so much for my apreciation for eastwood
I’m certain of one fact. We haven’t heard the half of it!
Being a serial killer, when sanctioned by a psychopathic government , makes you a hero? This guy repeatedly volunteered to murder people. Not to protect us but because he enjoyed murdering people. The hero of the story is the vet who put Kyle down and took him off of our streets before he got a hankering to start popping Americans.
“Shooter”, starring Mark Wahlberg, is an outstanding (reality) sniper movie.
No Hoffman glasses required… 😎
Overhyped movie filled with pro-war propaganda and all my co-workers/dumb sheeple followed it hook-line-and sinker.
Besides the fact that I always make fun of the fake baby, I also mention how disgusting it is that we were occupying their cities and the US had no business being there. In addition to that, people couldn’t believe that a mother ran with a grenade to kill US troops or that she gave her kid a grenade to kill US troops as well. DUH! What else would you want them to do? THAT’S THEIR HOME!! A foreign army is invading their city! What do you expect them to do? Take it up the ass?
My Navy veteran co-worker who saw the movie told me, “man, those Muslims are such savages. I don’t know what would make someone give their kid a grenade to kill US troops. I don’t understand their mindset, other than the fact that they are just crazy.”
I looked at him and said, “Well if someone was invading your country, wouldn’t you do all you can to stop them?”
He said, “But we gave them time to clear out and the officials even said that anyone left there were there to kill us, so it’s their fault. Not ours.”
Unfrigginbelievable…….. Completely missed the point. 🙄
Completely brainwashed. And of course all this film was doing was getting everyone all geared up to want to join the SEAL team when they get older. Nothing but a Fascist military recruiting tool. Just like the shitty movie, “Battleship” was to encourage people to join the Navy.
It all absolutely disgusts me.