Marine’s Response to Critics of ‘American Sniper’ Is 1,851 Words.

Posted 2015-01-28 12:04 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

In a biting blog post on OAFNation.com, an apparent military veteran issued a definitive response to critics of “American Sniper,” the hit movie based on legendary Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle’s autobiography of the same name. Basically, the veteran asserted that those who have attacked Kyle and the film are completely missing the point.

The author, who signed the post “Grifter,” first praised “American Sniper” because it “finally depicts WHY coming home is the hardest part for most of us.” For him, portraying the reality of how coming home is “almost impossible” for combat veterans is the most significant message in the movie, and one that is being overlooked by many.

Grifter is reportedly a Marine Corps veteran and has served in the special operations community, requiring him to maintain anonymity. The post on OAFNation.com is titled, “American Sniper: The Voice of Veterans.”

Grifter also had strong words for Vox’s Amanda Taub, who accused the movie of “rewriting American history” by not getting into the politics of the Iraq War. He continued:

However, I read a piece by Amanda Taub (just google it if you care to) in which she bashes the film and accuses it of “rewriting American history.” Her point of contention was that the film was too black and white for her tastes. She calls the war in Iraq a grey area, which I agree. I also agree with her disdain at the treatment of the conventional troops in the film as cannon fodder or inferior to the SEALS in importance. However, she smashes on Eastwood’s flick by calling into question the lack of mention of G.W. Bush, WMD, or Saddam Hussein. She accuses the movie of inventing fictional characters for Kyle to fight. I’m taking this as she is mad the movie didn’t take a political stance or mention any of the media hype, hot buttons, or buzzwords normally associated with the war in Iraq.

My answer to that: Yeah, no s**t.

The film wasn’t about any of that because for US, the war wasn’t about any of that. Do you think any of us gave a f**k about Saddam Hussein, WMD, Bush, Cheney, or any of that s**t that was being ejaculated by the news? The film wasn’t about grey areas, because to us it didn’t matter. All that mattered to us was the guy to our left, and the guy to our right…and especially the guy that still had a can of Skoal. It wasn’t that we were willfully ignorant of the issues surrounding the Iraq, or that we were in denial, but when your finger is on a trigger, when you’re face is covered in your friends’ brain matter, you aren’t thinking about “good and evil” or “grey areas.” That is the entire point this civil rights attorney misses, the film was about a man on the ground and the struggle to come home with a head full of grief and regret, not the Iraq war itself.

The reason the movie doesn’t take a political stance because the film isn’t political, he said.

“Yes, it mentioned 9/11, but it didn’t tie it to Iraq. It tied it to Kyle the way it was tied to all of us. 9/11 signaled to a generation that we are not safe, that there ARE people out there that want to kill us, on our own soil,” the author added. “Yet, here is the left, all up in arms about a movie about one man’s struggle in a war. They create paper tigers to go after in order to blackball these movies into oblivion. They refuse to see the good in this film as it pertains to veterans, because they don’t care about veterans.”

The veteran then delivered a parting message to those who saw the movie as “more of a ‘pro Bush/Iraq/Right Wing/anti-Muslim’ political statement and want to bash it and our military.”

“The movie wasn’t for you,” he concluded. “It was for the guy with mud on his boots and a hole in his heart, and for the families that are left to pick up the pieces. Go back to your latte.”

Read the entire post here.