Angered by the devastating 9/11 attacks, a Texas cowboy enlists in the armed forces to avenge his country and punish those responsible. He served four tours in Iraq as a Navy SEAL zealously killing off the worst supervillains of American history: Muslim terrorists. “American Sniper” follows the sacrifices, struggles and successes of war hero Chris Kyle, a man who never lost his fervor for the country he loves, even when those around him began to lose faith in the mission. “American Sniper” is more than just a war movie; it’s the embodiment of core American values: heroism, justice, bravery and patriotism. However, there is one significant fact the film forgot to clarify that, ultimately, transforms it into a problematic propaganda film: the war in Iraq had nothing to do with terrorist attacks or Al-Qaeda.
Here’s a brief lesson on America’s recent history. In 2001, soon after 9/11, we declared war on Afghanistan to take the Taliban out of power and find those who were responsible for the terrorist attacks. This was the true war on terror. Then, soon after our invasion in Afghanistan, former president George Bush delivered several impassioned speeches about 9/11, dripping with pathos, and seamlessly changed the subject to Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. He never formally acknowledged a connection between terrorism and Hussein, simply because there wasn’t one. Yet, according to USA Today, 70 percent of the U.S. population in 2003 believed that Hussein, not Osama bin Laden, was the mastermind behind 9/11. We then invaded Iraq in 2003 to find weapons of mass destruction, weapons that we still haven’t found and likely never existed, even though almost three-quarters of our population, Kyle included, thought we were going to fight terrorists.
If Kyle was deployed in Afghanistan, his motives and mission would have been completely justified. However, he, like a majority of the American population, was jaded by misleading rhetoric to support a war for reasons that weren’t even real. The people he killed were not the same people who plotted to kill thousands of people on that Tuesday morning. The passionate anger he felt, just like the anger we all felt, was used by the government to fulfill a purpose other than counterterrorism.
Yet, this significant distinction between the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War wasn’t brought to light in “American Sniper” because it would devalue Kyle’s accomplishments and ruin the homage to a well-respected war hero. Instead, “American Sniper” perpetuated an ignorant, inaccurate perspective of our history and validated a war that should have never happened: a war that actually led to the formation of yet another terrorist group, ISIS.
Yes, Kyle helped America overthrow a terrible, abusive, corrupt dictator. However, thousands of innocent civilians, and several members of our troops, lost their lives in process. Yes, thanks to the efforts of people like Kyle, Iraq was able to establish a democracy. However, the democracy was undemocratically forced upon a population that did not have the opportunity to select their preferred form of government. This paved the way for a corrupt party, ISIS, to come into power the second U.S. troops were sent home, similar to how the Nazis came to power after the Allied Powers forced Germany to replace its imperial government with a democracy after its loss in WWI. Instead of defeating terrorists, like “American Sniper” suggests, the real aftermath of America’s invasion of Iraq was actually the formation of even more terrorism.
I do not believe that Kyle was inherently evil. He legitimately believed that he was defending our country and our freedom as he fought in Iraq. I honor his efforts and sacrifices, as well as those of other Iraq War veterans. However, while his heart was in the right place, I believe that he, like most of our country, was misinformed and taken advantage of.
The creators of “American Sniper” are the ones who are in the wrong. They should have kept the reality of the Iraq War in mind while developing the film and should have at least tried to differentiate it from the war on terror. Instead, they created a propaganda film by glamorizing a geographically and historically inaccurate anti-terrorism war and spreading even more ignorance, misinformation and confusion about the War in Iraq.
