American Sniper, Part I

By guest author Ross Caputi. This is the first in a series discussing the implications of the new film, American Sniper.

What American Sniper offers us — more than a heart-wrenching tale about Chris Kyle’s struggle to be a soldier, a husband, and a father; more than an action packed story about America’s most lethal sniper — is an exposure of the often hidden side of American war culture. The criminality characterizing American military engagements since the American Indian Wars, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, is hardly noticeable in this film. And that’s exactly my point.

Chris Kyle built his reputation as a sniper during one of the most criminal operations of the entire occupation of Iraq, the 2nd siege of Fallujah, yet American Sniper doesn’t even hint that Chris Kyle did anything in Iraq except kill bad guys and defend America. This speaks volumes about how little we understand the wars our country fights around the world.

Perhaps my argument seems strange — that the most significant part of this film is what is not in it. I believe the omissions reflect more than what the director decided was irrelevant to the plot. They reveal an unconscious psychological process that shields our ideas about who we are as individuals and as a nation. This process, known as “moral disengagement ,” is extremely common in militaristic societies.

What is fascinating about American Sniper is how these omissions survive in the face of overwhelming evidence of the crimes in which Chris Kyle participated during the 2nd siege of Fallujah — an operation that killed between 4,000 and 6,000 civiliansdisplaced 200,000, and may have created an epidemic of birth defects and cancers. That he can come home, be embraced as a hero, be celebrated for the number of people he killed, write a bestselling book about it, and have it made into a Hollywood film is something we need to reflect on as a society.

Ross Caputi, a regular writer for engagingpeace.com, is a former Marine who participated in the 2nd Siege of Fallujah. Today he is on the Board of Directors of the Islah Reparations Project.  He is also the Director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah  Ross holds an MA in Linguistics and he is working on an MA in English Studies at Fitchburg State University. Read his blog here.

Inconvenient memories: Veteran’s Day 2014

by Guest Author Ross Caputi

cost ofwar
Iraq war protest poster showing Lancet estimate of Iraqis killed, May 28, 2008. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: Random McRandomhead.

Most Americans believe Veterans Day is a day of remembrance; in reality, it’s generally a day of forgetting.

On Veterans Day, people applaud as veterans march in parades, wearing their medals and fancy uniforms. People who have never seen or smelt war’s rotting corpses bask in an atmosphere of pride and patriotism, suppressing inconvenient memories of hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, millions in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands in Korea, and so on throughout our nation’s short and bloody history.

On Veterans Day, we are spared all the unpleasantries that might give us pause about the value or benevolence of our wars. We listen to the bands playing, but ignore the troubles faced by returning veterans. Where is the glory in PTSD, addiction, suicide?

On Veterans Day, we make believe that support for the troops is apolitical. Just like the victims of our wars, the reasons why young Americans have been asked to go to war, and the consequences of those wars are conveniently forgotten and nobody seems to notice.

On Veterans Day, we are called upon to remember America’s wars, sanitized of the harm they brought to countless victims around the world, and abstracted from their historical and political context. We are asked to support our veterans while forgetting the reality of what they participated in. It is a pleasant fairy tale, and I wish I could partake in it. But my experience as a Marine in Iraq has forever changed the way I look at war and the way I feel about being a veteran.

Let’s change the way we celebrate Veterans Day. Let’s make it a day of learning, not forgetting. Let’s be sympathetic to the ways veterans have suffered without ignoring the suffering of civilian victims. Let’s teach and learn about the wars in which our veterans have participated without glossing over the historical and political context in which they occurred. Let’s end the reflexive support for popular mythology, the jingoism, the cheer-leading, and the forgetting. Let’s refuse to encourage the next generation to follow in the footsteps of today’s veterans.