US Marine's take on 'American Sniper' and his response to critics

rickyb

Well-Known Member
Do you always base your opinions on the thoughts of others?

i listen to other people and i reach my own conclusions, and some people i like alot and i just quote them. and sometimes the truth is too complex for me to figure out, and i just go by what people i trust say.
 

bbsam

Moderator
Staff member
Have you had a chance to see the movie yet? This was one of his best roles and he nailed it.
I understand he's now working on "The Elephant Man". Heard him interviewed on NPR today. Sounds like a very thoughtful actor who takes his craft seriously and is very, very good at it.
 

fishtm2001

Well-Known Member
“American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression. Many Americans, especially white Americans trapped in a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional political system, yearn for the supposed moral renewal and rigid, militarized control the movie venerates.

“American Sniper,” like the big-budget feature films pumped out in Germany during the Nazi era to exalt deformed values of militarism, racial self-glorification and state violence, is a piece of propaganda, a tawdry commercial for the crimes of empire.

“The movie never asks the seminal question as to why the people of Iraq are fighting back against us in the very first place,

What little individuality these recruits have—and they don’t appear to have much—is sucked out of them until they are part of the military mass. They are unquestioningly obedient to authority, which means, of course, they are sheep.

Kyle will go to Iraq to extract vengeance. He will go to fight in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11

Kyle insisted that every person he shot deserved to die. His inability to be self-reflective allowed him to deny the fact that during the U.S. occupation many, many innocent Iraqis were killed

And in his denial of reality, something former slaveholders and former Nazis perfected to an art after overseeing their own atrocities, Kyle was able to cling to childish myth rather than examine the darkness of his own soul and his contribution to the war crimes we carried out in Iraq.

Following a day of sniping, after killing perhaps as many as six people, he would go back to his barracks to spent his time smoking Cuban Romeo y Julieta No. 3 cigars and “playing video games, watching porn and working out.” On leave, something omitted in the movie, he was frequently arrested for drunken bar fights

The real-life Kyle, as the film was in production, was shot dead at a shooting range near Dallas on Feb. 2, 2013, along with a friend, Chad Littlefield. A former Marine, Eddie Ray Routh, who had been suffering from PTSD and severe psychological episodes, allegedly killed the two men and then stole Kyle’s pickup truck

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. Brutal hazing, as Kyle noted in his book, was an integral part of becoming a Navy SEAL. New SEALs would be held down and choked by senior members of the platoon until they passed out. The culture of war idealizes only the warrior. It belittles those who do not exhibit the warrior’s “manly” virtues. It places a premium on obedience and loyalty. It punishes those who engage in independent thought and demands total conformity. It elevates cruelty and killing to a virtue. This culture, once it infects wider society, destroys all that makes the heights of human civilization and democracy possible. The capacity for empathy, the cultivation of wisdom and understanding, the tolerance and respect for difference and even love are ruthlessly crushed. The innate barbarity that war and violence breed is justified by a saccharine sentimentality about the nation, the flag and a perverted Christianity that blesses its armed crusaders. This sentimentality, as Baldwin wrote, masks a terrifying numbness. It fosters an unchecked narcissism. Facts and historical truths, when they do not fit into the mythic vision of the nation and the tribe, are discarded. Dissent becomes treason. All opponents are godless and subhuman. “American Sniper” caters to a deep sickness rippling through our society. It holds up the dangerous belief that we can recover our equilibrium and our lost glory by embracing an American fascism.

not to say it might be a good movie despite its lies and propaganda
Well stated!
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
Veteran group digs up shocking details about the man who killed Chris Kyle


Okay, time to put an end to this whole discussion that Eddie Routh suffered from PTSD. For those of you who do not know, Eddie Routh is the murderer of US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.

Eddie Routh served one tour in Iraq in 2007, at Balad Air Base (the 2nd largest U.S. installation in Iraq), with no significant events. No combat experience. Let me say that again, he NEVER SAW COMBAT or any aspect of traumatic events associated with a combat deployment (i.e. incoming mortar or rocket fire). He never left the base, EVER.

He held a non-combat arms occupation of 2111 (Small Arms Repairer/ Technician or more commonly referred to as an Armorer). Balad Air Base had a Pizza Hut, 24 hour Buger King, Subway, Popeye’s, Baskin Robbins, movie theater, and even a miniature golf course. It even had a strictly enforced 10 mile per hour speed limit! What a dangerous place…

His tour was comparable to being on a base in southern California, only with MANY more luxuries that were catered to the morale and welfare of the troops who occupied it. He was known to be a drug user and a below average performer while in the Marine Corps.


http://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/02...ls-about-the-man-who-killed-chris-kyle-178081
 
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