American Sniper is the latest movie to capitalize on our insatiable hunger for stories about unstoppable commandos. Lone Survivor, the highest grossing war film of this era, portrays Navy Seals so adept at killing the Taliban that it seems their only weakness is mercy on goat-herders. In Zero Dark Thirty and Captain Phillips, Seal teams emerge only at the climax, with the long tail of logistical support from conventional aviation, infantry and intelligence units obscured by the shadow of the elite. In American Sniper, Bradley Cooper portrays Chris Kyle, famously credited as the most lethal sniper in US history. Marines and Army infantrymen, who took back Fallujah in brutal house-to-house fighting during Kyle’s deployment in 2004, are relegated to whispers and gawks when “The Legend” scores another kill from a concealed position. In one scene, Kyle sheds his gear to go help clear rooms with Marines he feels are not trained well enough for urban warfare. It’s a moment meant to underscore Kyle’s lifelong commitment to protect others, but the ultimate message is that anyone not in Special Forces is sloppy or uncommitted. “Let’s coach ’em up,” he says. These films have the potential to distort how the United States views its own history and its troops. The everyday stories of war are background noise. We rarely see intel soldiers piecing together insurgent networks, or low-ranking officers meting out local grievances in rural Afghanistan. But Hollywood has found its formula, and it is zero-sum. For every film or bestseller or PlayStation blockbuster about that tiny minority of commandos, the public misses another shot at the larger experience of soldiering in Iraq and Afghanistan. People under 40 no longer ask what war is like; they ask if it’s like Call of Duty.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 16:56:58 +0000
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