American Sniper and the Michael Moore Critique

Have you seen the American Sniper? Unless you have been buried in a cave or living down a well these past weeks, you would know that “American Sniper” is the biggest thing to hit the movie box office since the Titanic hit the iceberg. Why is the movie generating a firestorm?
If you watched the movie, audience exit the theater in silence: so moved by the story they’ve just witnessed. And though some artistic license sprinkled in here and there, the movie succeeds in portraying an accurate picture of the life and work of Navy Seal Chris Kyle in his four tours of Iraq. Having grown up in rural Texas, Kyle spent his life hunting and becoming a naturally good shot, and as a Navy Seal was credited with over 160 kills, more than any other sniper. The problem some people have with Chris Kyle is precisely this success and his role during the Iraqi War.

Lefty film maker Michael Moore comments that snipers are cowards who will shoot you in the back. The point that Moore conveniently misses is that Kyle’s role was not to sit on a roof and take pot shots at folks coming out of the local version of the Piggly Wiggly but to protect the lives of his fellow soldiers against threats presenting themselves: Women and children wearing bombs, gunmen hiding in windows and doorways. The job required hours watching and waiting in the heat of the desert for the slightest movement in the heat. These are not the actions of a cowards and neither is sacrificing your life back home to save a fellow soldier. American Sniper is about real life not about the hyped up life that comes from the imaginations of a Monday morning quarter back.