An American Sniper Responds to Hollywood’s “American Sniper”

Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 11.17.52 AMNo single service member has the monopoly on the war narrative. It will change depending on where you serve, when you were there, what your role was, and a few thousand other random elements.

For the past 10 days, “American Sniper” has rallied crowds and broken box office records, but if you want to understand the war, the film is like peering into a sniper scope — it offers a very limited view.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the hit movie captures the truth of the Iraq conflict. I should know. I lived it.

– Garett Reppenhagen, Cavalry Scout Sniper with the 1st Infantry Division in the US Army

I haven’t seen the Hollywood blockbuster, “American Sniper,” so I can’t really critique the movie itself. Nevertheless, from what I’ve read, I think its immense popularity reflects extremely poorly on our culture as well as our ability to face hard facts about the war in Iraq.

Rather than face the truth that our government lied us into a devastating war that forced countless naive kids to go halfway across the world and murder people that did absolutely nothing to them, we happily celebrate the story of the most lethal military member in history, who achieved this feat during what was one of the most illegitimate and pointless wars in American history. We are in effect collectively celebrating what should be seen as a tragedy, and the fact that this is lost on so many people is downright terrifying to me.

As such, it was extremely refreshing to read the following words from Garett Reppenhagen, Cavalry Scout Sniper with the 1st Infantry Division in the US Army, who served in Iraq from 2004-2005.

Here are some excerpts from his Salon article:

I spent nights in Iraq lying prone and looking through a 12-power sniper scope. You only see a limited view between the reticles. That’s why it’s necessary to keep both eyes open. This way you have some ability to track targets and establish 360 degrees of awareness. I rotated with my spotter and an additional security team member to maintain vigilance and see the whole battlefield. I scrutinized every target in my scope to determine if they were a threat. 

In a way, it’s an analogy for keeping the whole Iraq mission in perspective and fully understanding the experiences of the U.S. war fighters during Operation Iraqi Freedom. No single service member has the monopoly on the war narrative. It will change depending on where you serve, when you were there, what your role was, and a few thousand other random elements.

For the past 10 days, “American Sniper” has rallied crowds and broken box office records, but if you want to understand the war, the film is like peering into a sniper scope — it offers a very limited view.

The movie tells the story of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, said to have 160 confirmed kills, which would make him the most lethal American military member in history. He first shared his story in a memoir, which became the basis for Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation. Kyle views the occupation of Iraq as necessary to stop terrorists from coming to the mainland and attacking the U.S.; he sees the Iraqis as “savages” and attacks any critical thought about the overall mission and the military’s ability to accomplish it.

This portrayal is not unrealistic. My unit had plenty of soldiers who thought like that. When you are sacrificing so much, it’s tempting to believe so strongly in the “noble cause,” a belief that gets hardened by the fatigue of multiple tours and whatever is going on at home. But viewing the war only through his eyes gives us too narrow a frame.

During my combat tour I never saw the Iraqis as “savages.” They were a friendly culture who believed in hospitality, and were sometimes positive to a fault. The people are proud of their history, education system and national identity. I have listened to children share old-soul wisdom, and I have watched adults laugh and play with the naiveté of schoolboys. I met some incredible Iraqis during and after my deployment, and it is shameful to know that the movie has furthered ignorance that might put them in danger.

As a sniper I was not usually the victim of a traumatic event, but the perpetrator of violence and death. My actions in combat would have been more acceptable to me if I could cloak myself in the belief that the whole mission was for a greater good. Instead, I watched as the purpose of the mission slowly unraveled.

I served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. During that time, we started to realize there were no weapons of mass destruction, the 9/11 commission report determined that Iraq was not involved in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, false sovereignty was given to Iraq by Paul Bremer, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were exposed, and the Battle of Fallujah was waged.

The movie depicts compounded action scenes with very little political and regional context. It was a conscious decision by Clint Eastwood, apparently, to leave out the cause of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. It was a conscious decision, apparently, for multiple characters to describe the Iraqis as “savages” and never show any alternative. When I heard of the bigoted reaction some Americans had after watching the film, I was disgusted, but not surprised. Audience members are mistaking Chris Kyle’s view of the war as “the” story about the war. No wonder someone tweeted that the movie made them “want to go kill some ragheads.” It’s sad that such a nearsighted portrayal of Iraqis has caused more people to fear Arabs and glorify violence against them.

It would be refreshing if a big Hollywood movie would take on the task of creating a less dramatized, more nuanced version of warfare. There are some incredible documentaries on the subject. “Occupation: Dreamland” and “Restrepo” capture the life of a service member in a modern deployment without sugarcoating the hard political environment that is a backdrop to the conflicts.

If you really want to be a patriotic American, keep both eyes open and maintain 360 degrees of awareness. Don’t simply watch “American Sniper.” Read other sources, watch other films about the conflict. Talk to as many veterans as you can, get a full perspective on the war experience and the consequences. Ensure the perceived enemy in your vision is what it seems.

When reflecting upon the popularity of “American Sniper,” and the disturbing things its success says about American culture, it begs the question, who’s to blame?

Is Clint Eastwood to blame? With his high profile, he could’ve easily chosen to memorialize any number of veterans with far different and more complicated “war stories.” What about the tragic drama about the life and all too early death of veteran Tomas Young, who wrote a very powerful letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as he lay paralyzed on his deathbed.

Alternatively, is the American public to blame? While Mr. Eastwood made the movie, nobody had to see it or celebrate it. People have decided to see it, have decided to cheer it on, and have decided to let it sooth any apprehensions or doubts they may have harbored about an illegal, pointless and deadly conflict. A conflict which has since provided fertile terrain for the emergence of the latest existential terror threat du jour: ISIS.

At the end of the day, rather than attributing blame, my overall conclusion is that the making of the film and its subsequent popularity merely reflect the sickness and perversion of mainstream American culture in 2015. Rather than face the past with a critical and thoughtful mind, we prefer to paper it over. We prefer to tell ourselves stories about what happened in order to not have to ever deal with the painful reality.

At the end of the day, “American Sniper” served as an emotional bailout for the many scars splattered on the American psyche following our cultural nervous breakdown after 9/11  – and we all know how much Americans like bailouts.

For related articles, see:

Paralyzed Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young Has Died – Here’s His Final Letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq

Video of the Day: Bill Hicks on the Iraq War

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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11 thoughts on “An American Sniper Responds to Hollywood’s “American Sniper””

  1. The people on my email list who most need to read this would never understand it. With their simplistic us/them mentality coupled with their Onward Christian Soldiers conditioning, they are lost.

    Reply
  2. I agree with your analysis.

    We all need to improve our ability to think independently – for ourselves – in order to avoid becoming a tool of totalitarian world leaders.

    Reply
  3. Bless you and thank you for your service.
    I have not seen the movie or read the book and agree that the whole debate seems to have nothing to do with the reality of the war as a whole, intentional or not. Most who are reading your account on this site have a better sense of what you describe. It is hard to understand how so many still defend the rational for either of our invasions. My son currently serves with the USAF in a non-combat role, but several locals served during your time, including a friend from church who was EOD, His dad told me stories of nighmarish conditions/situations endured. The coping methods are unimaginable to those of us never in your boots.

    Reply
  4. I haven’t seen the movie. But 25 years ago, I spent a lot of time working on Clint’s house in Los Angeles. I was a fan of his work before I met him, and still a fan after I met him.

    I’ve never had any long or deep conversation with Clint about his work. so what I’m about to say is all from me and all my own view.

    One thing to keep in mind about Clint – either as an actor or as a director – is that he loves ambiguous characters. He likes characters who can be seen as either good or bad depending on the viewer’s point of view, or bias. Also stir in a pinch of, “when good people do bad things”.

    It’s subtle, but he’s a subtle kind of guy. That’s probably why he never got the Oscar for best actor, though he has been nominated twice – once for Unforgiven, which was won that year by Pacino for Scent of a Woman, and once for Million Dollar Baby, which was won that year by Jamie Foxx for Ray.

    Often, Clint’s protagonists, or “heroes” are actually nothing of the sort. Often, they are really just narrow-minded selfish assholes who tend to muddle through with sheer bloody-minded bull-headedness.

    They also frequently have a nasty habit of getting people around them killed.

    Film is art, and he’s an expert at that art.

    But of course, Hollywood is a business, mostly run by lawyers and accountants and marketing droids. So the art gets lost in the hype.

    But at least in Clint’s case – the message that is being marketed might not be (very often isn’t) the same as the actual message in the art.

    And THAT is a pretty powerful condemnation of our culture right there. Clint can make a film about a narrow-minded selfish asshole, and the public will FALL IN LOVE with that asshole.

    The same way they fell in love with Tony Montana and Walter White.

    It’s stupid, but hey, I’ve known all my life that most people ARE stupid.

    What sucks is, that stupid people never actually KNOW that they are stupid. They ALL think they are smart, and clever and witty.

    Nam sayn?

    Reply
    • War is a business….and I would add to your list that the CIA and government agencies and other groups (Zionist’s) have had a big influence on Hollywood from what I’ve read. I liked what you had to say about Clint. I think he is a very decent sort and makes great movies on either side of the camera. But he does seem to enjoy pushing people’s buttons for some quirky reason or perhaps he is a bit of a war monger. That’s not entirely unexpected for someone of his generation. There are still plenty of them around, and they’re not all over 50 either. He did in fact attempt to look at the enemy’s perceptions and emotions in the film “Letters from Iwo Jima”. Clint is not the only actor who has made plenty of bread and butter from war films. They are “actors”, we must remind ourselves…it’s what they do. Certainly it would be great if more of them refused to be involved in them, like more young people should refuse to serve in the military to at least send a clear message.

  5. “At the end of the day, “American Sniper” served as an emotional bailout for the many scars splattered on the American psyche following our cultural nervous breakdown after 9/11 – and we all know how much Americans like bailouts.”
    Well said and straight to the point, Props again Mike

    Reply
  6. Thanks for publishing that article.
    I haven’t seen the movie either. However what you are saying reminds me of my own words.
    “Yes, the heroes of WWII and veterans in general deserve all the accolades they get. However, that is not the whole story. Following WWII some of those heroes were put in ruling body positions whereby paranoia and a McCarthyism type dysfunctional paradigm developed. Mix that with a civil service culture of careerism and the executive branch attempting to police itself under the home grown iron curtain guise called the state-secrets privilege doctrine and one result is unethical experiments performed on children who were incapable of protecting their own interests.
    Today, reverence for our ruling body intelligence branches protecting freedom and democracy is as high as it was at the end of WWII. That is exactly the time we need to be diligent in keeping the checks and balances functioning so that power structures and power brokers do not get over zealous and abuse the people they are suppose to be protecting. First person stories particularly when they are novel rich in family history, showing how those ruling body officials in power traumatized families, need to be told over and over to motivate our society out of the dictatorial thinking that fostered and has protected ruling body mind control programs.”
    As many have said, “the more things change the more they stay the same.”
    Thanks again to Michael Krieger. and Garret Reppenhagen.

    Reply
  7. Garett Repenhagen, I fully understand every single word you conveyed. You come across as a very educated person, and I am not talking about formal education here. I am amazed with your capacity to see things so clearly. I have always thought that educating ourselves is the best antidote to war, racism, and just plain hatred for others. Coming from a third world country I had such limited access to information, but the information superhighway has broken the dam, and virtually no one has an excuse to be ignorant. I read an average of 5 hours a day and finish 60-75 books a year, and as a result of that I have had a 180 degree change in my way of thinking and seeing things. The biggest problem we have today is the fact that mainstream media is very controlled and the fact that most get their “news”/information from that source. I can no longer watch TV and listen to the so called reporters read their scripts. It is difficult not to react to my friends’ reaction to mainstream media. I keep wanting to tell them to read everything they can get their hands on because it is the only way one can hone one’s bullsh*t radar. Thank you for everything you have said. I hope it will open some eyes to the truth.

    Reply

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