Bill Maher ripped the lid off of the right’s martyrdom of Chris Kyle by calling Kyle a psychopathic patriot and suggesting that the film was pro-war propaganda.
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Maher said:
Somehow their Twitter war broke out and now we have to take sides whether the American sniper is a real hero or not. Now, I said last week we had Kathryn Bigelow on had made Hurt Locker, and I said it kind of goes over a lot of the same territory. Hurt Locker made seventeen million because it was a little ambiguous and thoughtful, and this one is just American hero. He’s a psychopath patriot and we love him.
You know, I read some of the quotes from the real Chris Kyle. He said, “I hate the damn savages (talking about the Iraqis) and I’ve been fighting and I always will. I love killing bad guys. Even with the pain, I loved what I was doing. Maybe war isn’t very fun, but I certainly was enjoying it.” Um, I don’t Eisenhower once said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can.”
I just don’t see this guy in the same league as Eisenhower, I’m sorry. And if you’re a Christian, I know this is a Christian country. “I hate the damn savages. I don’t give a f**k what happens to them. It doesn’t seem like a Christian thing to say.
American Sniper is a right-wing propaganda film that implies that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Chris Kyle is the perfect martyr for the right. Since he is dead, they have no worries about the real Kyle opening his mouth and destroying the pro-war mythology that they have created around him. Some on the left have happily jumped in given the right what they wanted by questioning Kyle’s heroism, but Kyle is just a symbol of a deeper deception.
The problems with American Sniper are much deeper than whether or not Kyle was a hero. The problem is that the film serves as a facts optional right-wing justification for the Iraq war. I agree with Zack Beauchamp that the film is a dishonest whitewash of the Iraq War. More people should be talking about the fact that Kyle was murdered by an Iraq war veteran who was suffering from PTSD.
The real story of the Iraq war isn’t a Clint Eastwood directed testosterone filled flag waving piece of propaganda. The true story is that veterans of the war that American Sniper glorifies are taking their own lives every day. How Chris Kyle died undermines the “killing bad guys” propaganda that he embraced in life.
Bill Maher was right. There is something psychopathic about a person who professes a love for killing, but there was something even more psychopathic about the Bush administration. It was the Bush White House who took advantage of the fears of the nation that they had a sworn oath to the lead by lying the populace into an unrelated war.
American Sniper is another attempt by the right to rewrite history and justify their failed war.
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