Clint Eastwood’s latest movie, American Sniper, has become the most controversial film now being considered for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars.
The Academy Awards telecast is scheduled for February 22.
The criticism is coming from the Left, and this has triggered outrage on the Right. Some of this criticism is correct and fair, but some of it isn’t.
CHARGE: The film implies that the Iraq was was in response to 9/11.
There’s a scene where Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller) are watching TV as the World Tradd Center crashes. Then the scene cuts to him serving in Iraq.
FACT: The movie is a biography of Kyle, who became the deadliest sniper in American history, not a documentary on the Iraq war. And, in fact, Kyle did his service in Iraq.
Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle in American Sniper
CHARGE: The movie depicts a terrorist sniper who becomes Kyle’s nemesis.
Named “Mustafa,” he is portrayed as a Syrian Olympics champion marksman. In a furious mano-a-mano duel with Kyle, he almost nails the SEAL sniper. But in the climax of the movie, he meets his end with a well-placed bullet from Kyle’s rifle.
FACT: Mustafa is mentioned in a single–and short–paragraph in Kyle’s autobiography. Writes Kyle: “I never saw him, but the other snipers later killed an Iraqi sniper we thought was him.”
So the climatic duel never happened. But Eastwood clearly thought he needed the duel to make a dramatic and satisfying finish for his movie. This is what’s known as “dramatic license” in moviemaking.
CHARGE: The movie portrays Chris Kyle as tormented by his rising casualty rate among Iraqis.
During his fourth tour of duty in Iraq, as depicted in the film, he agonizes over his possible need to shoot a child who’s about to pick up a rocket launcher. “Don’t pick it up,” he mutters, and when the child drops it and runs off, Kyle is visibly relieved.
FACT: Throughout his autobiography–on which the film is based–he refers to Iraqis as “savages.” He brags of telling a military investigator: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”
And having been credited with 160 confirmed kills, he writes: “I only wish I had killed more….I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives.”
CHARGE: Chris Kyle was a hate-filled killer, but the movie turns him into a hero.
FACT: It’s entirely natural for soldiers to hate their enemies. They know that they–or their comrades–can be blown away at any moment. So they fear and hate those intent on their destruction.
The toughening-up process starts in boot camp, where the restraints of individuality and pacifism are shattered. The purpose of boot camp is to turn “boys” into “fighting men,” and this must be done in a matter of weeks. So the process is shockingly brutal.
Soldiers who aren’t toughened up in boot camp are by the battlefield. As General George S. Patton famously warned: “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”
General George S. Patton
During the Indian wars, soldiers called Indians “Red niggers.” In World War II–“the Good War”–America’s servicemen fought “Japs” and “Krauts.” During the Vietnam war, Vietnamese became “gooks” and “dinks.”
Today our servicemen and women refer (unofficially) to their Islamic enemies as “ragheads” and “sand niggers.”
CHARGE: “In Kyle’s version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who were good by virtue of being Americans, and fanatic Muslims, whose ‘savage, despicable evil’ led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christian.” –Laura Miller, in Salon
FACT: British military historian B.H. Liddell Hart noted in his introduction to the memoirs of World War II German General Heinz Guderian, the creator of the Blitzkreig theory:
Heinz Guderian
“[Guderian] did not question the cause which he and his troops were serving, or the duty of fighting for their country. It was sufficient for him that she was at war and thus in danger, however it had come about.
“As a dutiful soldier, he had to assume that his country’s cause was just, and that she was defending herself against would-be conquerors.”
What proved true for Guderian proved equally true for Kyle–and for soldiers in armies throughout the world.
Moreover, every great war movie tells its story from a given viewpoint–such as American, German, Russian or British. Audiences are invited to identify with the leading character.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator is a young, idealistic German soldier who becomes disallusioned with the horrors of war. When he dies at the end of the movie, we feel saddened by his loss, even though he served in the ranks of America’s adversaries.
Similarly, when we learn, at the end of American Sniper, that Chris Kyle was killed while trying to help a fellow veteran, we feel a similar loss.
In the end, a historical or biographical movie can tell only so much. Its audience must then decide its meaning–and whether to learn more about the subjec through their own researches.
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IS THERE A HITLER IN YOUR CEO?
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 27, 2015 at 4:19 pmWould-be CEOs and Fuehrers, listen up: Character is destiny.
Case in point: The ultimate Fuehrer and CEO, Adolf Hitler.
Ever since he shot himself in his underground Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, historians have fiercely debated: Was der Fuehrer a military genius or an imbecile?
With literally thousands of titles to choose, the average reader may feel overwhelmed. But if you’re looking for an understandable, overall view of Hitler’s generalship, an excellent choice would be How Hitler Could Have Won World War II by Bevin Alexander.
Among “the fatal errors that led to Nazi defeat” (as proclaimed on the book jacket) were:
As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.
He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astounding and needless losses in German soldiers.
One such incident was immortalized in the 1962 movie, The Longest Day, about the Allied invasion of France known as D-Day.
On June 6, 1944, Rommel ordered the panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct order of theFuehrer.
As Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuehrer was asleep–and, no, he, Jodl, would not wake him. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.
Nor could he accept responsibility for the policies that were clearly leading Germany to certain defeat. Hitler blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.
Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German panzer corps–and thus responsible for its highly effective “blitzkrieg” campaign against France in 1940.
Heinz Guderian
Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks–something Germany couldn’t do during the four years of World War 1.
Erich von Manstein
Finally, on April 29, 1945–with the Russians only blocks from his underground bunker in Berlin–Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”
Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives:
“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.”
Hitler had launched the war with a lie–that Poland had attacked Germany, rather than vice versa. And he closed the war–and his life–with a final lie.
All of which brings us to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political science.
In his classic book, The Discourses, he wrote at length on the best ways to maintain liberty within a republic.
In Book Three, Chapter 31, Machiavelli declares: “Great Men and Powerful Republics Preserve an Equal Dignity and Courage in Prosperity and Adversity.”
It is a chapter that Adolf Hitler would have done well to read.
“…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
“The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess, and this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them.
“And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
“Thence it comes that princes of this character think more of flying in adversity than of defending themselves, like men who, having made a bad use of prosperity, are wholly unprepared for any defense against reverses.”
Stay alert to signs of such character flaws among your own business colleagues–and especially your superiors. They are the warning signs of a future catastrophe.
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