‘It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don’t
regret it. My regrets are for the people I couldn’t save: Marines,
soldiers, buddies. I’m not naive, and I don’t romanticize war. The worst
moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before dog with
a clear conscience about doing my job’ – Chris Kyle
A great deal of controversy has arisen as a result of the release of
American Sniper,
and the behavior of Ex-Navy SEAL and sniper Chris Kyle, whose service
in Iraq is portrayed in the film. Here, Clint Eastwood portrays Kyle as a
hero in a heroic cause in a film that might come straight out of the
Faux News echo chamber.
It is certainly rousing propaganda, putting white
and black hats on the adversaries in what was, in truth, a rather murky
affair on moral grounds. For Kyle, and thus, for the audience, the
Iraqis are bad guys and the Americans are good guys. Kyle doesn’t seem
to have thought much beyond this, nor Eastwood. Inexplicably, though
Kyle killed, he bragged, some 250 Iraqis, Kyle is the victim.
It seems never to have occurred to Kyle – and
probably not to Eastwood – that Kyle was, being the invader who killed
indiscriminately, the bad guy in this particular moral tale. It has
occurred to others, however, and for wingnuts, who as a matter of
course seem to embrace that black/white dichotomy, to attack the film is
to attack the essence of America itself.
Their response can be violent. Rania Khalek
relates for Alternet
her own horror story and that of Max Blumenthal for criticizing Chris
Kyle, including some truly despicable rape and murder fantasies. Which
only serves to bolster the point that murdering people is not
particularly heroic.
It is certainly problematic that though International law forbids torture and ethnic cleansing, the bible not only condones
torture but promotes ethnic cleansing.
The worst of American behavior during the Iraq War is thus perfectly
permissible on a biblical basis but reprehensible according to
international law to which the United States is signatory. This includes
goings on at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo – and at Fallujah by men like Chris
Kyle.
Kyle wrote in his memoir, American Sniper,
Our ROEs [Rules of
Engagement] when the [Iraq War] kicked off were pretty simple: If you
see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ‘em.
Kill every male you see. That wasn’t the official language, but that
was the idea.
So Kyle was ordered, he says, to systematically
execute every male between 16 and 65. It happens, as historian Christian
Ingrao tells us in his study of intellectuals in the Waffen SS, the
German soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) also
“systematically shot” all “male adult jews between fifteen and sixty”
during the first eight weeks of Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of Russia
in 1941.
It is worthwhile noting that the reasons for these
shootings are also similar: “the conviction,” Ingrao relates, that these
men “played a role in the violence and insecurity encountered by the
groups [Germans] on their arrival in town, the execution…seen as way of
keeping order.”
The Germans were shooting potential insurgents. We read in
Philly.com for April 29, 2004, that “sniper teams…target anyone suspected of being an insurgent.”
In the last three
weeks, two sniper teams attached to the First Battalion, Fifth Marine
Regiment, have shot down 90 people who have strayed into their sights.
The two teams are part of the 100 Marine sharpshooters deployed by three
battalions around the city. One sniper secreted away in another corner
of Fallujah has “26 confirmed kills,” military officers here report.
It is certainly a disturbing thought that the
security discourse of the American occupiers should so closely resemble
that of the Nazi Gestapo and SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or SS Security
Service). Men held to be war criminals then and later.
Like some SS men whose accounts have been noted by
historians, Chris Kyle admitted to taking great joy in gunning these
people down. He said he “loved” it and, and like those SS men, he said
felt that his victims were “savages.”
If we step away from Kyle’s scope sight we find his
“dog and country” sense of morality to be less straightforward, and just
how broadly the orders he was given were being interpreted.
But the worst form of
attack was the US snipers hiding on rooftops who kill hundreds of
civilians as they tried to move about the city.
Hundreds. Of civilians.
Not combatants, though there were those too, as the
photographic (and other) testimony demonstrates. Fallujah was a battle
zone, after all. But civilians. Innocent people who were doing their
best to survive under very terrible circumstances, people seeking access
to water,
to medical care, were killed.
The US has snipers
around the city from the West into the center, in houses all around the
main streets and are picking off people on the streets, cars and
ambulances.
Needless to say, medical personnel – and enemy soldiers – are noncombatants and according to page 5 of
Your Conduct in Combat under the Law of War,
Pub. No. FM 27-2, published by Headquarters of the Department of the Army (1984),
are not to be attacked.
Iraqi’s who lived through the terror
testified that “There were so many snipers, anyone leaving their house was killed.”
The
Associated Press
reported that, “Iraqis said it seemed that just stepping outside or
looking out a window at the wrong time could draw sniper fire.”
Chris Kyle bragged about it. Kyle was in accord with Philly.com, which told readers that “There’s no shortage of targets.”
Here is the essential calculus:
Clint Eastwood made a movie about Kyle, celebrating him as both hero and victim.
We hanged the Germans who did what Kyle did. We hanged their superiors too.
And these actions are not excused by claims to have been following orders.
The fact that the
defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior
shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in
mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determine that justice so
requires.
The acts charged in
Counts I and II of the Indictment are identical in character, but the
indictment draws the distinction between acts consisting of offenses
against civilian populations including German nationals and nationals of
other countries, and the same acts committed as violations of the laws
and customs of war involving murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of
war and civilian populations of countries under the occupation of
Germany.
The Opinion and Judgment tells us that “‘Asiatic
inferiors’ was another category destined for liquidation.” Of course,
this reminds one of Chris Kyle’s reference to Iraqi civilians as
“savages” who he “loved” killing.
We are also
informed that,
“Although engaged in an ideological enterprise, supposedly undertaken
on the highest ethnic and cultural level, executants of the program were
not above the most petty and loathsome thievery.”
“To me, the home I was
in was just another part of the battlefield. The apartments and
everything in them were just things to be used to accomplish our
goal—clearing the city.” He even put a baby crib “to good use” as a
rifle platform. Then he started “rummaging through the complex to see if
I could find any cool shit—money, guns, explosives. The only thing I
found worth acquisitioning was a handheld Tiger Woods game.”
We are fighting a war on behalf of the Iraqi people
and he is stealing their “cool shit.” “Acquisitioning,” he calls it. The
law calls it stealing. So, as it happens, does the military.
When searching
dwellings in enemy towns or villages, do not take nonmilitary items.
Theft is a violation of the laws of war and US law. Stealing private
property will make civilians more likely to fight you or to support the
enemy forces. You do not want to have to fight both the enemy armed
forces and civilians.
Oh the irony…
It is important to note here that Einsatzgruppe C also proudly
reported on its accomplishments [plundering] in Korowo in September of 1941.
The
verdict of the Nuremberg tribunal is clear:
“It was plain banditry and highway robbery.”
Certainly, nobody is naïve enough to think that
things like this do not take place in every war. American soldiers
during WWII were also guilty of atrocities, including gunning down
prisoners of war, murder and rape of civilians, plundering and looting,
and so forth.
Just as importantly, that does not make it right on either a moral or a legal basis.
Bad enough that in the wake of Iraq war torture
revelations, we are afflicted with what is, in essence, a shrub-era
propaganda film by the guy who talks to empty chairs as though evidence
of his own mental instability calls President Obama’s competence into
question.
But there is sad irony in the fact that critics of
Chris Kyle are threatened with acts of unspeakable violence because they
accused Chris Kyle of acts of unspeakable violence, as though we as
American should be proud of the atrocities committed in our name.
