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| Bradley Cooper as American sniper Chris Kyle |
The sniper clearly sees his
target. That’s what makes him such a
compelling figure. He directly sees the
impact of his actions; he knows who he kills and he knows what killing
means. The chaos of war may prevent the
grunt soldier from knowing if he ever hits anyone;
but the sniper knows. He rains down
death like a wrathful god and he sees who he smites.
So he must confront the question:
Who is an enemy and who is not? That’s the
dilemma crouching at the center of American
Sniper, the movie
by director Clint Eastwood, which presents the life and career of legendary
Iraq War sniper Chris Kyle. The
movie sees Kyle as an admirable, old-fashioned military hero: courageous, smart,
tough, willing to sacrifice for his comrades.
He protects the good guys by killing the bad guys, and it’s quite clear
to him which is which and who is who.
But from where did such
old-fashioned moral clarity spring? According
to Eastwood, from the simple teachings of Kyle’s father, a Texas Sunday-school teacher
and church deacon. In an early
scene the stern father illuminates for Chris the moral facts of life:
There are three
types of people in this world: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe that evil
doesn’t exist in the world. And if
hatred ever darkened their doorstep they wouldn’t know how to protect
themselves. These are the sheep. Then you got the predators. These people use
violence to prey on the weak. They are the wolves. Then there are those who are blessed with the
gift of aggression and an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed that live to
confront the wolf. They’re the
sheepdog. Now we’re not raising any
sheep in this family and I will whoop your fucking ass if you turn into a wolf.
Strength without goodness is evil, but goodness without strength invites evil.
The rest of movie shows Chris
living out his father’s creed, committed to being a strong and protective sheep
dog. He finds purpose after terrorist
attacks against American embassies in Africa
and, of course, after 9/11. The
determination to do good sustains him through the rigors of Navy Seal training,
through his four terrifying tours in Iraq, through bitter struggles with
a wife and family who resent his unending service, through the confusions of
returning to civilian life. He only
wavers when he doesn’t know who he’s fighting for, when he’s home and has no
sheep to protect. Finally home for good,
he tells a military doctor:
It’s the guys I
couldn’t save. Those are the faces I see. That’s my regret – that I couldn’t hold
on longer. That I couldn’t do more.
The doctor introduces him to his
last fight: helping physically and emotionally wounded soldiers come to terms
with the horrors they’ve experienced.
And like every other fight, he faces it bravely and squarely, never
doubting his intentions or his ability to help his fellows. But this is the fight that defeats him; one
particularly damaged veteran, Eddie Ray Routh, slips into psychosis and murders
Kyle.
The Chris Kyle portrayed in the
movie is a genuine hero (though the real-life Kyle was a more
ambiguous figure). There is much to
admire in someone so eager to fight the good fight, to sacrifice and risk so
much to help his comrades and his country.
But it is a sad, limited heroism, a heroism with blinders on. As a sniper he saw his victims clearly and as
an American soldier he saw good and evil clearly. But are good and evil really so clear? To Kyle anyone who fights America must be evil, since America can’t
possibly be in the wrong. It never
occurs to him that he was part of a military occupation of a foreign country
that did not want him there! Neither
Kyle nor the movie ever considers the complexity of the Iraqi situation, with
its wide array of insurgencies, peopled by Baathist ex-functionaries, Iraqi
ex-soldiers, and Islamic militants; with Sunni groups, only a fraction of which
were connected to al Qaeda; and Shiite militias aligned with Iran fighting against Sunni groups like al Qaeda. The Iraqi hell was ignited by an American
invasion against a regime that had no weapons of mass destruction and had no
connection to attacks on the U.S. Can we honor Kyle’s heroism when we face
these facts?
Some of the movie’s most
compelling moments come when Kyle is uncertain about a particular kill. In the opening scene he must decide whether
to shoot a mother and son who may be preparing to attack a vulnerable American
column. He hesitates, but when he’s sure
of their evil intent, he shoots them down, professionally and decidedly. In another scene a small Iraqi boy picks up a
grenade launcher with great difficulty and tries to aim it at approaching
American soldiers. Kyle’s heart races as
he hopes to God he won’t have to kill the boy.
But the child suddenly drops the weapon and runs away, and Kyle breaks
down and cries in relief. He’s a killer,
but he’s not heartless; he’s the good guy! But tactical doubts are as far as Kyle allows
himself to go. He may worry about
killing a child, but he never worries that there’s something wrong with a
situation which compels him to kill children.
He just stubbornly refuses to consider the reckless, brutal,
irresponsibility of preemptively invading a country that posed no threat. He simply will not let himself see the bigger
picture.
But Eastwood’s point seems to be
that Kyle could only be a hero by not seeing
it. When Kyle’s friend and fellow
Navy Seal Marc Lee is killed in action, Kyle and his family attend the funeral
stateside; Lee’s mother reads aloud a letter her son had written shortly before
his death, a letter in which he expresses his doubts about the war. On the drive home Kyle tells his wife what he
thinks about his friend’s death and that letter:
We were
operating off emotion and we walked into an ambush. But that’s not what killed him. That letter
did. That letter killed Marc Lee. He let
go and he paid the price for it.
Doubt is deadly; only rock solid
faith can sustain us. Eastwood seems to
be saying that a soldier fighting a war must believe in it for his own sake. Kyle was certain that he and his fellow
soldiers were the sheep dogs, the insurgents and terrorists were the wolves and
Americans back home were the sheep, and that’s all there was to that. It may be simple-minded and foolish, but
seeing his situation that way is what gave Kyle his strength. To Eastwood, he is strong because he is good
and he is good because he is simple.
And what applies to Kyle applies
to America
as well. Eastwood is suggesting that
this is the only way for a country to fight a war: it must believe in
itself. Since war is sometimes
necessary, and therefore sometimes justified, we must believe in that justice
if we are to triumph. Could we have
defeated Hitler if we had doubted ourselves? And is the determination to be a
sheepdog foolish in itself? There’s
nothing wrong with committing oneself to fighting the good fight, to protecting
the weak, to combating oppression.
Indeed, isn’t that the highest calling?
But Kyle’s sin, and America’s,
is believing that good intentions are enough.
It was easy to justify fighting Hitler, but it’s not so easy to justify
invading Iraq. A thoughtful sheepdog – a sheepdog who wants
to make sure he’s not a wolf – accepts the responsibility of understanding the
meaning and consequences of his actions.
But also, more fundamentally, where both Kyle and his country – our
country – go wrong is in believing that our intentions are always good. Americans really
love this movie, and we do so because it indulges our fervent wish to
reclaim the conviction that we’re inherently, inescapably good. And in that way, this movie – and every American
war movie made in the last 40 years – is really about Vietnam. Vietnam made us doubt, and we still
have not come to terms with that. Kyle’s
simple faith and heroism urge us to join him in rejecting the doubt. The farther right one goes on the political
spectrum, the more one reveres that American goodness and applauds its forceful
application. But to some degree all
Americans feel this Puritan instinct to save
the world.
