Absent from 'American Sniper': Political Context of Unnecessary War

I finally went to see Clint Eastwood's Iraq war movie, "American Sniper," after a partisan culture war broke out around it. If we had debated with this much gusto before we invaded Iraq, there might not have been a war to make a movie about.

That's what annoys me about the powerfully bracing movie that grossed more than $250 million in its first two weeks of worldwide release.

It puts us into the combat boots of soldiers on the front lines of the Iraq War. But by focusing on the fighters in that war, not the politicians who sent them there, it wins us over by avoiding questions of how or why we got into Iraq in the first place.

For that, a number of prominent commentators have accused the film of glorifying war. But, as a saying that I recall from the Vietnam era goes, you can't make an anti-war movie that shows combat without glorifying war. Projecting all of that large-scale chaos, courage, villainy and heroism up on the big screen tends to drown out subtleties, such as whether the war was necessary in the first place.

Eastwood, who directed the movie, might well have had that in mind when he revealed at the recent Producers Guild Awards nominees breakfast, according to Variety, that his movie's "biggest anti-war statement is what [war] does to the families left behind."

In delivering that message, the film succeeds. "American Sniper" is a biopic about the late Navy Seal Chris Kyle (played superbly by a bulked-up Bradley Cooper), a sniper credited with 160 confirmed kills, the most in U.S. military history.

The war takes a toll on him and his family through his repeated deployments. Yet he keeps returning through a sense of duty that is familiar to countless veterans, first to his country and increasingly to his fellow fighters. Ironically, he died in Texas in 2013, fatally shot by a fellow veteran whom he was trying to help.

In contrast to that narrative, liberal author and filmmaker Michael Moore ("Fahrenheit 911") touched off an IED of his own in a Jan. 18 tweet. Moore referred to snipers as "cowards" and recalled how one had killed his uncle during World War II.

Moore later stipulated that, as much as he opposed the Iraq war, he fully supported the troops. But that didn't stop rocker Kid Rock, a fan of Kyle, from saying he hoped Moore and others like him would "catch a fist to the face."

And a new culture war battle was on. HBO's "Real Time" host Bill Maher described the film's depiction of Kyle as "a psychopathic patriot and we love him." He also contrasted quotes from Kyle's best-selling memoir, such as "I hated the damn savages," with Dwight Eisenhower, who said "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can."

Comments like that from the left brought Sarah Palin, among others, out swinging from the right. She lashed out on Facebook at "Hollywood leftists" for "spitting on the graves of freedom fighters who allow you to do what you do" -- adding, "just realize the rest of America knows you're not fit to shine Chris Kyle's combat boots."

Yet amid all the barbs and jabs exchanged by peaceniks and warmongers, Eastwood's point should not be lost. It is not only possible but essential for us to be both antiwar and pro-troops.

As a Vietnam-era Army vet, I think the best way for us to support the troops is to avoid sending them into unnecessary wars and police actions in the first place. "Sniper" has quite properly been criticized for its quick fade-out from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to a fade-in in the Iraq War, as if the two events were connected. They were not connected. Iraq didn't attack us on 9/11. Yet from Kyle's point of view and that of countless other recruits, they were connected--a view that the Bush administration did little to discourage.

It's hard to bring a war to a satisfying end if you're not clear about why it began. "American Sniper" brilliantly shows sacrifices that our troops have made for their country in a highly questionable war. It will take more than a movie to show us how to avoid the next one.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.