American Sniper

Last night, I watched the film American Sniper. Some of its content made me want to write an article about said content. Since initially having that idea, I have had conversations and seen Facebook posts regarding the film and the real Navy Seal about whom it is that were rather inflammatory. Some of these were political in nature, questioning the heroism of snipers and the good light in which they and other servicepeople were cast by the film. Others were about the allegedly dubious truth value of the film & the book upon which it is based. In light of these things, I seriously considered discarding the idea and writing about some other topic in today's article. You know what though? None of what has people up in arms has anything to do with the article idea I initially had and I still think the things I have to say are worth saying. This article isn't about the film itself or the man on whose life it is based. Instead, it is about a particular scene in the film and the thoughts that scene inspired in me. If you have baggage you brought to seeing or hearing about this film, check it at the door because this is my article and it is about what I say it is about regardless of your feelings.

My father, like many of the fathers of men of my generation fought in the Vietnam War. He had told me stories of shoeshine boys who were in the employ of the Vietcong. Their shoeshine kits were actually what we would now term IEDs. After playing upon the sympathies of American servicemen to sell their services, the box would explode, destroying the boy and the man. I thought of that story during a scene in the film where the main character must shoot a child and his presumed mother to prevent the destruction of about a dozen Marines. This action deeply troubles the main character, but it is important to remember that the choice to fire was not an immortal one on his part. We want to think of children as the most tragic victims of war when it kills or maims them, and that's certainly true. Our culture, however, is not one that would use children as instruments of war, and we must remember that not every culture feels this way. Vietnam didn't feel that way, certain African countries don't feel that way, and Islamic terror organizations don't feel that way. When the enemy is willing to use children to fight, the American military can either be prepared to bury child soldiers or their own men and women.

Children make good terrorists and good guerrilla soldiers. Their reasoning is not fully formed and they do not understand their own mortality the way a grown man does. They are harder to see, less likely to be considered an enemy combatant, and killing them has a profoundly powerful effect in the service of psychological warfare against American servicepeople. The only reason not to use child soldiers is a moral one. That child soldiers are very real in parts of the world and that killing them in those parts of the world is absolutely indispensable to not burying even more of our own people than we otherwise have had to is a fact that should inspire many thoughts. Ill thoughts towards the men and women who have to deal with the reality of killing children, lest they themselves be killed by them, are unhelpful and no one who has had to make that absolute terror of a decision deserves to be called a, "baby killer," or similar epithet. What is productive is to contemplate how a culture gets to the point of thinking use of children this way could ever be morally sound. Why does a sniper, or any other serviceperson, have to kill a child and why does that child have to spill blood? If you see American Sniper, do not hate the character for firing. Lament that he had to and that real servicepeople still must.

-Frank