Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Pseudo-Courage of Chris Kyle


Chris Kyle as a Navy SEAL sniper in Fallujah, Iraq.


That kind of courage, which is conspicuous in danger and enterprise, if devoid of justice, is absolutely undeserving of the name of valor. It should rather be considered as a brutal fierceness outraging every principle of humanity. – 

Cicero, The Offices, Book I Chapter XIX

 
As a sniper with the Navy SEALs in Iraq, Chris Kyle was shot twice and wounded on several other occasions. He is credited with 160 confirmed kills. He received several commendations. Of his fierceness there is no reasonable doubt. Whether his exploits display courage is an entirely separate question. 


American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, the ghost-written memoir for which Kyle claims primary authorship, offers convincing testimony that Kyle not only failed to display genuine courage in Iraq, but was incapable of recognizing it when it was exhibited by desperate patriots seeking to evict the armed foreigners who had invaded and occupied their country. 

 
The insurgents who fought the American invasion (and the few “allied” troops representing governments that had been bribed or brow-beaten into collaborating in that crime) were sub-human “savages” and “cowards,” according to Kyle.


“Savage, despicable evil,” writes Kyle. “That’s what we were fighting in Iraq…. People ask me all the time, `How many people have you killed?’... The number is not important to me. I only wish I had killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives.”


None of the American military personnel whose lives were wasted in Iraq had to die there, because none of them had any legitimate reason to be there. From Kyle’s perspective, however, only incorrigibly “evil” people would object once their country had been designated the target of one of Washington’s frequent outbursts of murderous humanitarianism. 

 
The insensate savagery of the Iraqi population was supposedly illustrated by the first kill Kyle recorded as a sniper, while covering a Marine advance near Nasiriyah in March, 2003.


“I looked through the scope,” Kyle recalls. “The only people who were moving were [a] woman and maybe a child or two nearby. I watched the troops pull up. Ten young, proud Marines in uniform got out of their vehicles and gathered for a foot patrol. As the Americans organized, the woman took something from beneath her clothes, and yanked at it. She’d set a grenade.”

 
Kyle shot the woman twice.

 
“It was my duty to shoot, and I don’t regret it,” Kyle attests. “The woman was already dead. I was just making sure she didn’t take any Marines with her. It was clear that not only did she want to kill them, but she didn’t care about anybody else nearby who would have been blown up by the grenade or killed in the firefight. Children on the street, people in the houses, maybe her child….”

 
Of course, if the Marines hadn’t invaded that woman’s neighborhood, she wouldn’t have been driven to take such desperate action – but Kyle either cannot or will not understand the motives of an Iraqi patriot.

 “She was … blinded by evil,” Kyle writes of the woman he murdered from a safe distance. “She just wanted Americans dead, no matter what. My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman’s twisted soul.”

 
Were Kyle just a touch more literate, he might recognize the term untermenschen, a German expression that encapsulates his view of the Iraqis who took up arms to repel foreign invaders. From his perspective, they were incurably inferior to their “liberators” and possessed of an inexplicable hatred toward their natural betters. 

 
For some reason many Iraqis resented the armed emissaries of the distant government that had installed Saddam in power, built up his arsenal and apparatus of domestic repression, and then conferred upon the inhabitants of that nation the unmatched blessing of several decades of wars, embargoes, airstrikes, disease, and the early, avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. 

 
“The people we were fighting in Iraq, after Saddam’s army fled or was defeated, were fanatics,” Kyle insists. “They hated us because we weren’t Muslim. They wanted to kill us, even though we’d just booted out their dictator, because we practiced a different religion than they did.”

 Actually, most of them probably wanted to kill Kyle and his comrades because they had invaded and occupied their country. They were prepared to use lethal force to protect their homes against armed intruders who had no right to be there. Ironically, Kyle’s book offers evidence that he understands that principle; he simply doesn’t believe that it applies to Iraqis.

 
In one incident described by Kyle, he and several other U.S. personnel raid an Iraqi home, in the basement of which they discover a mass grave containing the bodies of several soldiers and Marines. For several panic-stricken moments, Kyle is understandably terrified by the thought that he might find the lifeless body of his younger brother, a Marine who had also been deployed to Iraq. 

 
With obvious and vehement disgust, Kyle cites the “murdered young men whose bodies we had pulled out” of that basement grave as evidence of the bestial nature of the enemy. He exhibits no interest at all in the fact that tens of millions of Iraqis have seen friends and family meet violent, avoidable deaths as a result of the wars and sanctions imposed on their country by Washington. Untermenschen, apparently, aren’t entitled to experience grief and rage – much less the right to defend their homes and families against aggressive violence. 


 After returning from his first combat tour in Iraq, Kyle recalls, he was rudely roused from slumber one morning when the burglar alarm went off. Although this was a malfunction rather than a real emergency, Kyle’s reaction was revealing.

 
“I grabbed my pistol and went to confront the criminal,” he recalls. “No son of a bitch was breaking into my house and living to tell about it.”
 
Why was it “evil” for Iraqis to feel exactly the same way about the foreign sons of bitches who broke into their country and wrecked the place? 

Later in the book, describing a stalking exercise during his training to become a sniper, Kyle recounts how he “heard the distinct rattle of a snake nearby.”

 
“A rattler had taken a particular liking to the piece of real estate I had to cross,” Kyle recalls. “Willing it away didn’t work…. I crept slowly to the side, altering my course. Some enemies aren’t worth fighting.”

 
Exactly: The only enemies worth “fighting,” apparently, are those who aren’t capable of hurting you when you trespass on their turf. 

 
The Gadsden Flag – featuring a coiled rattlesnake and the directive “Don’t Tread On Me” – was, and remains, the best symbolic expression of authentic American patriotism. Genuine American patriots can understand why patriots of other countries would feel similar attachments, and be similarly inclined to repel foreign invaders. This is why they will never support any war that puts other Americans in the position of killing foreign patriots who are defending their own homes.  

 
A rattlesnake defending its territory earns Kyle’s respect; an Iraqi patriot fighting on his home soil with his back to his home and the face to his enemy, however, is “blinded by evil” and not truly human.

 
“They may have been cowards, but they could certainly kill people,” observes Kyle of the guerrillas. “The insurgents didn’t worry about ROEs [Rules of Engagement] or court-martials [sic]. If they had the advantage, they would kill any Westerner they could find, whether they were soldiers or not.”

 
If that charge (made on page 87 of Kyle’s book) is accurate, it might reflect the fact that the Iraqi resistance (as well as the tactics of foreign guerrillas who joined the fight) was playing according to ground rules established by the U.S. early in the war. 
 
On page 79, Kyle describes the Rules of Engagement that his unit followed when they were deployed to Shatt al-Arab, a river on the Iraq-Iran border: “Our ROEs when the war kicked off were pretty simple: If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ‘em. Kill every male you see. That wasn’t the official language, but that was the idea.” (Emphasis in the original.)


Those orders were of a piece with the studied indifference to civilian casualties that characterized the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign that began the war. In preparing that onslaught General Tommy Franks and his military planners were guided by a computer program that referred to civilian casualties as “bugsplat.” Franks had no compunction about ordering bombing missions that would result in what the computer projections described as “heavy bugsplat.” After all, aren’t the lives of American military personnel “clearly worth more” – to use Kyle’s phrase -- than those of the Iraqi civilians, who were mere insects to be annihilated?

 
In one of her occasional contributions to Kyle’s book, his wife Taya rebukes people who criticize the bloodshed wrought in Iraq by her husband and his colleagues: “As far as I can see it, anyone who has a problem with what guys do over there is incapable of empathy.” The trait she describes isn’t empathy; it’s a variation on the kind of pre-emptive self-pity described by Hannah Arendt in her study Eichmann in Jerusalem.

 
Referring to those who killed on behalf of the Third Reich, Arendt observed:

 
“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique (`a great task that occurs once in two thousand years’), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did....”

 
This was true even of those who belonged to the SS: Even those in the Reich’s killer elite were not able to suppress their conscience entirely. Thus the “trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: `What horrible things I did to people!,’ the murderers would be able to say: `What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!’"

 
Kyle’s memoir is remarkable chiefly for the complete absence of the kind of moral anguish Arendt describes among the SS. Kyle eagerly participated in a patently illegal and entirely unnecessary war of aggression against a country that never attacked, harmed, or threatened the United States. He killed scores of people, terrorized thousands more. As Kyle tells the story, he reveled in the experience, and regrets only that he wasn’t able to slaughter more of the “savages” who surrounded him. 

 
During Kyle’s last deployment to Iraq, his unit – Charlie Company of SEAL Team 3 – assigned themselves the nickname “The Punishers,” appropriating as their insignia the Death’s Head logo used by the psychotic comic book character of the same name. 

Interestingly, a group of police officers in Milwaukee had exactly the same idea. They also adopted the “Punisher” logo, which they displayed on their police vehicles and wore on knitted caps as they prowled the street in search of asses to kick. 

The most memorable exhibition of what they regarded as valor came in October 2004, when a thugscrum of “Punishers” beset a male dancer named Frank Jude, who was nearly beaten to death because he was suspected of stealing a badge. 

 
After throwing Jude to the ground, the Punishers severely beat, kicked, and choked him – then put a knife to his throat and jammed a pen into one of his ears. The victim survived the assault, but was left with permanent brain damage. The officers later claimed that this amount of violence was necessary to “subdue” Jude – who was never charged in connection with the incident. The jury in the criminal trial accepted that claim and acquitted the officers – who were later found guilty of criminal civil rights violations. 

Imperial troops raid a home in Iraq....
During his service in Iraq, Kyle occasionally functioned as a law enforcement officer of sorts. He was involved in dozens of raids against the homes of suspected “insurgents,” many of whom were arrested on the basis of uncorroborated accusations by anonymous informants. 

He allows that many of the people dragged off in shackles were entirely innocent, but maintains that he wasn't ever troubled by that fact; he was just doing his "duty."  

 Shortly before the war began, Kyle was part of a SEAL unit tasked to enforce UNsanctions against Iraq by intercepting tankers leaving the country with unlicensed oil deliveries. On one occasion, he boarded a tanker commanded by a commercial sea captain who “had some fight in him, and even though he was unarmed, he wasn’t ready to surrender.” 

 
“He made a run at me,” Kyle continues. “Pretty stupid. First of all, I’m not only bigger than him, but I was wearing full body armor. Not to mention the fact that I had a submachine gun in my hand. I took the muzzle of my gun and struck the idiot in the chest. He went right down.”
... and their domestic counterparts do the same in the U.S.
 
If Kyle had been a warrior, rather than a bully, he would have admired the authentic courage displayed by the smaller, unarmed man who fought to protect the ship and cargo entrusted to him. 

How would he act if the roles were reversed – if he were the over-matched man trying to defend private property from a group of state-licensed pirates claiming “authority” from a UN mandate? We’ll never know the answer to that question, because Kyle’s “courage” is of the sort that only manifests itself in the service of power, and in the company of those enjoying a prohibitive advantage over their victims. 

 Kyle’s “service” continues, even though he’s retired from the military. He is president of Craft International, a Homeland Security contractor involved in training domestic law enforcement agencies. It’s quite likely that Kyle’s outfit will soak up a considerable portion of the roughly $1.5 billion dollars the Obama administration seeks to hire military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to work as police, emergency personnel, and park rangers

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Dum spiro, pugno!

301 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 301 of 301
Frank said...

...Colin Powell, who was at the time one of the most respected men on the planet, went in front of the entire world and essentially swore on a stack of Bibles that there were WMD's.

He was respected by people who believed about Powell what they were told to believe about Powell. Informed people on the other hand already knew the part Powell played in covering up civilian massacres during Vietnam and found his UN presentation laughable. It wasn't long after that we were presented proof that Powell knowingly lied at the UN. Now, it's understandable that many people were misled by the government and their PR-arm (the media) but there is no excuse to be repeating this nonsense 10 years later.

Joseph Story (Ret.) said...

It's fairly sad; there's no critique of Islam or the woman with the grenade. Think about the logic of your argument. Seriously, was the woman going to blow up her own child? For what? She's insane. That's never how one fights for one's country.

The problem here is that the vitriolic rhetoric drips from your own lips when you selectively take passages from Kyle's book to cast ever so slightly the notion that he deserved it. Then a bunch of other folks eager to bathe the Bush administration in the blood of Iraqis pile on as well.

Chris Kyle did not deserve to be shot in the back. That is the whole point.

I never supported the notion of war in Iraq. It was ill conceived and unconstitutional. I am also a Ron Paul supporter but I am not a supporter of these silly comments against Chris Kyle. It is absurd to equate it with guilt.

Furthermore, those of you who quote God as being just and etc., you're right. God is just--the very same God who ordered Saul to kill the Amalekites, man--woman--and child.

PS - Cicero would have agreed.

Anonymous said...

Again, apologies if this comment appears twice.


"In what sense was Iraq guilty or indecent, apart from the fact that they had the misfortune of being ruled for decades by a loathsome dictator who was installed, funded, and propped up by Washington?"

Sorry. Saddam's weaponry was mostly Soviet in origin, and most of the rest French (some Mirage fighters, I think).



"They never attacked the U.S. or threatened us in any way. "

Technically speaking, neither did Nazi Germany.



"Their only "crime" was to be on the receiving end of an unnecessary war in 1991"

"Receiving end"? You conveniently neglected to mention the CAUSE of that war! And as for "Unnecessary", seems like several dozen nations, including Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and a bunch of others thought otherwise.



"and then endure more than a decade of cruel and punitive sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of people"

Saddam could have ended those sanctions any time he chose. Any suffering that occurred because of those sanctions was Saddam's fault, and his alone.



"In terms of any issue having to do with the country's relationship with the US, the Iraqi nation was as innocent as Iceland."

Yeah, because the Icelandic government has a history of invading other nations and using poison gas on their own people. Oh, wait, they DON'T!



"Furthermore, if Iraq was as nasty as you suggest, why were American lives spent to "liberate" that country?"

Perhaps to make it less nasty? To bring some element of freedom to a country that had none? Or are you one of those America hating cynics who assumes that every move America makes in this world is because of base and sinister motives?



"It's indigestibly rich for someone defending the illegal US invasion of Iraq to condemn the presence of "foreign" fighters in that country, is it not? "

You missed (or intentionally ducked) my point. Points, actually. One, if they were foreign fighters, then they were NOT Iraqis supposedly fighting for their own turf, as you seemed to suggest. Further, you did not address at all my point about these Al Qaida terrorists blowing up civilians as a matter of routine policy. When's the last time you heard of a genuine freedom fighting group that made a point of deliberately killing civilians? These were murderers and thugs, and if Chris Kyle killed a whole bunch of then, then a good deed was done for humanity.



"I should also point out that there is something perverse about sending Americans to kill and die in Iraq in order to impose a Sharia-compliant constitution on what had been the only secular country in the region."

Nazi Germany was secular. What's your point?



"The more sensible elements of the population understood that the WMD issue was always a pretext"

Again, you dodged my point. Which was the WMD issue AT THE TIME seemed very credible to a vast number of people, including many Democrats in the Congress. Who would have guessed that a dictator as vile as Saddam, who, as I mentioned, not only HAD WMD's earlier but who had USED them as well (another point of mine you ducked) would ever voluntarily (and secretly) just get rid of them?



"There no "smear" involved in pointing out -- accurately -- that the war was illegal, unjust, and unnecessary, and counter-productive. "

It was NOT illegal. The Congress authorized the use of force, which made it perfectly legal.

Nor was it unjust. Saddam was a junior league Hitler who deserved to be squashed like a bug, along with his sadistic, rapist sons and the rest of his loathsome regime. Hell, he even got a fair trial, and a happy ending at the end of a rope.

Finally, when I used the word "Smear", I was referring to your attacks on people's motives and character, not the war itself. And your attacks on Chris Kyle were just that - smears.




Jameel said...

I'm reading this, now that he's dead, and although your blog made me feel intense hatred for this guy and frankly a lot of military people (I am friends with a large amount of veterans and my roommate (practically a brother) is an Afghan vet, and I've heard some of this displayed by him.
I do feel kind of guilty though..hmm.

Jameel said...

Also yes we did, we knew there weren't any WMDs in 2003. We knew god damn well there weren't any. The UN never found ANYTHING. They found absolutely nothing at the time, no one did, MAYBE BECAUSE AS WE KNOW NOW, IT WAS NEVER THERE,

Herp uh F'IN derp. Don't defend the neocons and Bush.

William N. Grigg said...

Sorry. Saddam's weaponry was mostly Soviet in origin, and most of the rest French (some Mirage fighters, I think).

One would suppose, therefore, that Donald Rumsfeld was acting as a double-secret Soviet agent when he shook Saddam's hand as Regan's emissary in December 1983, correct?

Saddam, like a number of Cold War-era thugs (Hosni Mubarak, a close friend of North Korea who was trained by the Soviet air force, comes to mind) was double-dipping: He got aid from both Washington and Moscow. He bought weapons from Moscow and France, using U.S. funds directed through the USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation (and several other sources). This was one of several ways that Washington provided material support for Iraq during its war with Iran (which was instigated by Washington, as well).

George Bush the elder signed a document called National Security Directive 26 on October 2, 1989, authorizing the US government to "pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for US firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy." It also authorized joint military ventures with Saddam.

Just weeks before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft personally intervened to release a $500 millions CCC subsidy destined for Baghdad. Bush froze Iraqi assets the day after the invasion -- which left US taxpayers to cover about $2 billion of CCC guaranteed debt.

Six days later, Bush signed a federal conflict-of-interest waiver on behalf of 11 administration officials -- including Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker -- who had Iraqi investments that might be affected by the impending military conflict.

Peter Mantius, whose book "Shell Game" lays out a lot of this information, summarizes this malodorous mess:

"Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait threatened to expose the White House shell game in the Middle East. It triggered congressional investigations that dug deep into the covert U.S. tilt toward Iraq.... But President Bush, using the vast power of his office, tried to stall the probes long enough for the American companies that supplied Iraq to blend quietly into the crowd."

More to come....

William N. Grigg said...

In a January 1995 affidavit, former National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher testified as follows:

In June 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran. President Reagan decided that the United States would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. President Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive ("NSDD") to this effect in June 1982.... The NSDD, including even its identifying number, is classified.... Pursuant to the secret NSDD, the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required.

The purpose of Rumsfeld's December 1982 (not 1983, as I mistakenly said above) visit with Saddam was to open the aid pipeline pursuant to that NSDD.

So it cannot honestly be said that Saddam was a creation of the Soviets. Sure, Moscow helped a little: It provided chemical and bio-warfare expertise that was paid for by funds provided by the U.S. But even there, Washington offered more than just money: It was involved in Saddam's acquisition of bacteria that could be weaponized as anthrax.

William N. Grigg said...

I had written earlier:

"Furthermore, if Iraq was as nasty as you suggest, why were American lives spent to "liberate" that country?"

To which you replied:

Perhaps to make it less nasty?

Millions of Iraqi Christians have been chased from the country; its economy and infrastructure are ruined; at least a million people were killed in the war; and an Iranian-aligned government is now in power. So ... it would appear that this didn't break quite the way we were told to expect, did it? Doesn't this validate those of us who warned that the war would be a disaster?

To bring some element of freedom to a country that had none?

Under Saddam, Iraq had a secular government -- albeit a pretty horrible one. Post-"liberation" it is ruled by a constitution that imposes Islamic law. Is this a net improvement?

Saddam and his sons were prepared to abdicate power; a deal was being worked out through the Arab League to bring this about, but the Bushling and his handlers were determined to have their little war.

Or are you one of those America hating cynics who assumes that every move America makes in this world is because of base and sinister motives?

I'm actually one of those indomitably idealistic patriots who loves his country despite the incurable depravity of the government that rules it. I'm also a resident of the reality-based community, which means that I have the unfortunate habit of assessing Washington's policy in terms of its tragic results, rather than its professed motives.

William N. Grigg said...

... the WMD issue AT THE TIME seemed very credible to a vast number of people, including many Democrats in the Congress.
Who would have guessed that a dictator as vile as Saddam, who, as I mentioned, not only HAD WMD's earlier but who had USED them as well (another point of mine you ducked) would ever voluntarily (and secretly) just get rid of them?


Saddam allegedly used the chemical weapons he had acquired with U.S. help, at a time when he was an ally of Washington. It was AFTER that attack, as I noted above, that the first President Bush signed a national security directive calling for increased economic and military aid to Baghdad. If that action wasn't a legitimate casus belli in 1986-1988, it didn't magically become one in 1991 or 2003.

Saddam's nuclear program was dead no later than 1998. As a captured Iraqi nuclear scientist told the FBI, Saddam wasn't interested in provoking US retaliation by developing nukes, much less using them -- but he couldn't afford to acknowledge as much publicly. He was concerned about a potential attack from Iran. And it couldn't have escaped his notice that Washington was in the habit of attacking only countries without a nuclear deterrent.

As to the notion that Saddam was a "junior-grade Hitler":

In 2003, Saddam wasn't even in control of his own territory, much less an aggressive threat to his neighbors. Germany under Hitler was still one of the world's leading industrial and economic powers; Saddam's Iraq was a small and economically struggling country with a clay-pigeon air force, a fourth-rate army, no navy to speak of, and incapable of projecting power beyond its borders.

Colin Powell, in January 2001, stated for the record that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States."

As far as I can tell, a "junior-grade Hitler" is anybody Washington designates the enemy du jour.

William N. Grigg said...

[The Iraq war] was NOT illegal. The Congress authorized the use of force, which made it perfectly legal.

Congress was given an opportunity to declare war on Iraq. The resolution didn't even make it out of committee. The "authorization" was a legal nullity and a crime against the Constitution. And since the war was, by any honest reckoning, an act of aggression, it was illegal, under customary international law.

Nor was it unjust. Saddam was a junior league Hitler who deserved to be squashed like a bug, along with his sadistic, rapist sons and the rest of his loathsome regime. Hell, he even got a fair trial, and a happy ending at the end of a rope.

Do you know the crime for which Saddam was tried and executed? He was convicted of murder for ordering the execution of 102 Shi'ite men in the village of Dujail, where he was nearly assassinated in 1982 (if memory serves). He wasn't tried to waging aggressive war against Iran, or (allegedly) using chemical weapons, or even the invasion of Kuwait. He was tried and convicted for something that he did as a surrogate of Washington -- an atrocity that did not prevent the Reagan administration from building up his regime even further (as noted above). This meant that he was silenced before he could be tried for any of the crimes in which the U.S. government would have been implicated. That's a "happy ending" indeed for certain immensely corrupt people in Washington.

Finally, when I used the word "Smear", I was referring to your attacks on people's motives and character, not the war itself. And your attacks on Chris Kyle were just that - smears.

My comments about Kyle extensively quote from his own words (or, at least, those of his ghostwriter). His first kill as a sniper was not some vile al-Qaeda infiltrator or some blood-drenched functionary from Saddam's secret police; it was a native Iraqi woman who was fighting back against the foreigners who have invaded her country.This, according to Kyle, meant that she was "blinded by evil" and the possessor of a "twisted soul."

Kyle acknowledges that the "enemy" he killed were Iraqis he disdains as "fanatics" who supposedly "hated us because we weren't Muslims. They wanted to kill us, even though we'd just booted out their dictator, because we practiced a different religion than they did."

It apparently never occurred to him -- even after he dealt with someone who had broken into his own home during a furlough -- that human beings will use lethal force to protect their homes against invaders. Or perhaps it did occur to him, and he simply considered Iraqis to be something less than fully human. I had no access to his unspoken thoughts, and never pretended to. I know of him only what he did, and what he wrote -- and neither reflects well on him. My assessment might be debatable, but it doesn't constitute a "smear" in any sense an honest person would recognize.

Anonymous said...

Sad. You are all sad individuals. Once again you are all very tough behind your keyboards in your mom's basement. You spout off about a "coward" a "murderer" yet you do not personally know Kyle or many like him. Yet you redily condem him. I am sorry you the last picked for the kickball team. I doubt anyone who was serving with Mr. Kyle would call such names of the man who helped bring them home to their families. It is people like Kyle who do the things you shit your pants about and allow you to spew your your "knowledge" about things you do not understand and on many levels dont want to know about. It is because of these men doin what they do that you can make such comments while hiding behind your computer screens. Shame on you all.

Anonymous said...

You are a sad and little man. Yes, people get killed by snipers. I'm sure you sleep like baby because we don't have savages here like Iraq does.
Something tells me you never served, that's ok, but you don't realize how many people have sacrificed so you can critiize them.
Chris Kyle did his part, what are you doing?

SamHII said...

@traitor2tyranny: Luke 3:14 more accurately says, "14 And soldiers also asked him, saying, And we, what must we do? And he said unto them, Extort from no man by violence, neither accuse any one wrongfully; and be content with your wages.", (ASV)as explained here: http://www.studylight.org/com/vnt/view.cgi?bk=41&ch=3 The KJV you quote is in the minority of the modern translations' better understanding of the original text.

Anonymous said...

"My comments about Kyle extensively quote from his own words (or, at least, those of his ghostwriter). His first kill as a sniper was not some vile al-Qaeda infiltrator or some blood-drenched functionary from Saddam's secret police; it was a native Iraqi woman who was fighting back against the foreigners who have invaded her country."


The woman was about to throw a grenade at a group of Marines WHO POSED ABSOLUTELY NO THREAT TO HER! They were simply on patrol, looking for bad guys. Kyle literally had no choice - it was either the Marines or the woman. He chose correctly.

Anonymous said...

"I'm actually one of those indomitably idealistic patriots who loves his country despite the incurable depravity of the government that rules it."


I don't see how you can call yourself idealistic when you write something so utterly cynical.

You seem to write well, so you know that words mean things, and thus if you choose a specific word, you don't do so lightly. "Depravity" is a word that would apply to only the very worst governments - Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, North Korea today. And the word "Incurably" just reinforces it, meaning not only is it depraved, but there is no hope of ever fixing it.

Given that, I must ask the obvious question - if you truly believe what you wrote above, why are you still even living here? Move to Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Unless you think they are more depraved yet, in which case, your cynicism has reached a level of total perfection.

I don't know what your politics are, exactly, but I'm guessing you're from the anarcho-libertarian far right wing of the spectrum. Which, of late, is sounding a lot like the pacifist/blame America First far left wing. When guys like you and Ron Paul start to sound a lot like Noam Chomsky, you know something screwy is going on!

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh you guys are the biggest group of pansies I have ever seen comment on a blog. Really you are calling Kyle a "bully" a "thug"? Why because he did his job? Because he believes in our country? Because he saved American lives? Your original point was that we shouldnt have been there... That is irrelevent when it comes to Kyle. He was there protecting Americans. Plaine and simple. Don't think for a second that any of those "savages" would take a second thought to blowing your brains out and urinating on your corpse. Dont villify a hero just to make yourself feel better!! And to the guy who said he hopes Kyle is standing in front of a man un armed... God be with that man because Chris Kyle would anyhlate him in two seconds flat!! Stupid Liberals

mynameisjoecortins@wordpress.com said...

Will - a voice from the very past past - when I was a writer for the New American. Great article on war criminal troglodyte serial murderer redneck bully racist biggot sadist and all round piece of human shit Chris Kyle.

I've know his ilk my whole life. I wouldn't have tolerated him in my commend for one day. Just a look at his face and the hatred in his eyes and his pointed sloped tiny brain box is enough to tell you sometyhing is wrong upstairs.

I pesonally trained over one thousand young warriors and was the youngest company commander at the USATC in the early sixties.

As a special ops paratroop commander I have trained and worked with US Marine paras - Soviet Spetsnas, Salvadoran rangers Salvadorn Marines and Salvadorn Atlacatl special Forces and have not seen a more despikable Godless sadistic arrogant stupid remorseless animal than Kyle.

GOOD RIDDANCE! When I heard he had been capped I broke out a bottle of chanpagne to celebrate. That POS is the reason we have become the most hated despised largest institutionalized terrorist group on earth!.

The job of the military is to D-E-F-E-N-D ournation - NOT To be an agressors and terrorist thugs.

I see rancid potty mouth scum like that 'Anonymous' punk all the time. His moniker says all you need to know about his insecurity. You are too intelligent wise and experienced to allow uneducated immature trash like that to domiate your site.

Your assessment of Kyle's sick twisted sociopathic personality is spot on. He was a disgrace to the service to this nation and to God.

ANYONE who would support his evil wickedness is the same kind of reprobate scum he is and is a libility to the honor of the uniform I and so many others wore with honor 53 years ago when we had REAL enemies - not ones created in IsraHELL.

If you ever get time to spend some 'insider' time there - as I did with the CIA - you will understand the FULL meaning of John -8-44. Stay in touch. I stillremember the old crowd - Mike Waller- Pete LaBarbara - Jim Tyson -Tom Spencer - Tim Ashby - Dolf Droge and more!

And Yes - I do have my own site.

JC

William N. Grigg said...

"Depravity" is a word that would apply to only the very worst governments - Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, North Korea today. And the word "Incurably" just reinforces it, meaning not only is it depraved, but there is no hope of ever fixing it.

When viewed from the perspective of those against whom its power is deployed, the regime in Washington should be considered the "very worst government" in the world today -- at least in terms of its ability to inflict misery in geographic terms.

In terms of concentrated viciousness, North Korea is obviously worse -- but its evil is contained. That regime isn't able to kill people half-way around the world by remote control, for example, nor does it have the means to occupy so much of an acre beyond its borders.

Bearing in mind the scope of the evil we're discussing, let's turn to your next question:

Given that, I must ask the obvious question - if you truly believe what you wrote above, why are you still even living here? Move to Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Unless you think they are more depraved yet, in which case, your cynicism has reached a level of total perfection.

Why would you see such a choice as a reflection of the "cynicism" of the expatriate, rather than a demonstration of the failure -- indeed, the evil -- of the government that has driven him to leave the country he loves? There are thousands of Americans who are being driven to leave this country every week, most of them because they can no longer stand having their honestly earned wealth plundered by Obama and his comrades.

Expatriation is of limited practical value when you're confronted with a regime that claims the world as its natural jurisdiction. I'm reminded of an observation from Edward Gibbon's history of the only previous imperial power to which the Regime in Washington can be compared:

"The empire of the Romans filled the world.... The world became a safe and dreary prison for its enemies.... To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly....`Wherever you are,' said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, `remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror.'"

Incidentally, "cynicism" originally referred to the view that human actions reflected individual selfishness -- or what James Madison called a "defect of better motives" on the part of people in public office. Our original constitutional system, therefore, was itself an artifact of educated and principled cynicism, was it not?

The post-constitutional government that impudently rules us must -- and will -- collapse. It is irremediably vile and entirely unsustainable. In the meantime, however, I have no intention of allowing the criminals who are running it to drive me out of the country that I love, or to allow them to commit atrocities -- supposedly in my name -- without condemning what they do.

To digest the matter into the language of a meme: Why should Ileave, when they're the ones who are screwing things up?

When guys like you and Ron Paul start to sound a lot like Noam Chomsky, you know something screwy is going on!

Here's another possibility: Guys like us are sufficiently wise to eschew the sophomoric fallacy that the truth of an idea is dependent on the identity of he person who expresses it. To the extent that Chomsky supports the non-aggression principle, defends individual liberty, and examines official policy accordingly, he is to be commended.

Operating briefly within your own premises, I'd suggest the following experiment:

Translate my positions, and yours, into German, and consider how they would sound if they had been offered in, say, 1941. My views would survive that transposition quite well. Yours would not.

"But that government was uniquely evil!" you will protest with the dubious advantage of hindsight, and from the perspective of someone who is not the immediate target of its criminality, thereby missing the point entirely.

Anonymous said...

"When viewed from the perspective of those against whom its power is deployed, the regime in Washington should be considered the "very worst government" in the world today -- at least in terms of its ability to inflict misery in geographic terms. "


This is what I mean by cynicism (and, yes, there's a difference between skepticism [good] vs cynicism [bad]). Where I see errors in judgment, you see actual malice. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing what is now a reasonably peaceful and at least somewhat democratic country in its place, whatever mistakes we made along the way, were GOOD things. Ditto getting rid of the Taliban, never mind that, if things go wrong there, they may come back. Perhaps the Afghans aren't ready to enter the 21st century (or even the 12th), but that does NOT make our efforts their either malicious or evil.

Did you support trying to help the Somalis in 1992/93? Our efforts there ultimately failed (Black Hawk Down) but at least we did do SOME good in the brief time we were there. And we might have saved about a million people in Rwanda had we made even the slightest effort to do so. Should we have tried, or just said "screw you, if it doesn't directly affect our own national sovereignty, we don't care!"

As for Chomsky, he is the classic combination of a pompous blowhard and a moral coward. He writes the most vile things about our country, posing as some sort of "Speaking truth to power" knowing full well he takes not even the slightest risk, his position perfectly secure, hiding behind his tenure in a country that bends over backwards to protect his freedom to say these things.

You finished by referencing some kind of hypothetical role reversal taking place in Germany in 1941. The big difference is, if you were living there and saying the stuff about their regime that you say about America, you would be DEAD, my friend.

Think about it.

William N. Grigg said...

Where I see errors in judgment, you see actual malice.

Isabel Patterson once pointed out that most of the real harm committed in the world is done by generally decent people who insist that their motives are benevolent.

Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing what is now a reasonably peaceful and at least somewhat democratic country in its place, whatever mistakes we made along the way, were GOOD things.

I heartily invite you to pitch that line to the millions of people who have fled post-Saddam Iraq, including the Christians whose ancestors had lived in that country since Apostolic times. Sure, this seems like a "bargain" -- to those who are selling it, rather than those who are paying the price and can't get a refund.

Did you support trying to help the Somalis in 1992/93? Our efforts there ultimately failed (Black Hawk Down) but at least we did do SOME good in the brief time we were there.

No good was done by the UN-mandated "humanitarian" invasion of Somalia. By the time the Marines hit the shore in December 1992, the famine had broken and food was getting through. Within a few months, the US was trying to impose a UN-approved central government on a tribe and clan-based society that didn't want one -- and trying to disarm people who resisted. Nobody needs that kind of "help," or should be expected to put up with it.

It wasn't until after the UN mission ended that Somalia's civil society began to flourish. Peter Maass wrote a very good piece for The Atlantic about this back in 2001 -- http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/05/ayn-rand-comes-to-somalia/302209/

And we might have saved about a million people in Rwanda had we made even the slightest effort to do so. Should we have tried, or just said "screw you, if it doesn't directly affect our own national sovereignty, we don't care!"

Rwanda is another example -- perhaps the most poignant one -- of the lethal consequences of armed humanitarianism. The UN's "peacekeeping" mission in that country left the targeted victims disarmed and helpless.

Rwanda illustrates that the so-called "responsibility to protect" doctrine is a snare and a delusion.

You finished by referencing some kind of hypothetical role reversal taking place in Germany in 1941. The big difference is, if you were living there and saying the stuff about their regime that you say about America, you would be DEAD, my friend.

So am I correct in assuming that you would be a living collaborator, rather than an endangered, imprisoned, or martyred dissident?

Are we supposed to suppress our criticism until things get deadly?

Already, dissenters and whistle-blowers can and frequently do face severe consequences for confronting the evil of the Regime that rules us. Just ask, inter alia, John Kiriakaou.

In the past few days we've seen the Obama regime confirm something that has long been known, but little discussed: The President claims the authority to order the summary execution of dissidents and their children. Obama isn't yet as promiscuous a murderer as Stalin, but there is nothing in the powers he has claimed that would prevent him from making a run at the record.

You may recall Madison's admonition that "The Freemen of America didn't wait until usurped power had strengthened itself in exercise, and entangled the matter in precedents; they saw all of the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle."

I call this Madison's Precautionary Principle. It is foolish -- and even un-American -- to wait until the government ruling us is unambiguously as bad as Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia. We are to recognize and weed out institutional evils when they are young and tender. Unfortunately, our country has been covered with that variety of nationalistic B.S. in which totalitarianism takes root and flourishes.

Anonymous said...

"Ex-Navy,
Sometimes you 'blind devotion patriots' are a total pain in the a**. I was invited to be a S.E.A.L. by the S.E.A.L.'s while in the Navy. Direct insertion into a Coronado based team. Bypassing all the weed out bullsh*t of BUD's. I had all the qualities and the technical expertise in my field they were looking for. If you know anything about the S.E.A.L. organization, they do not offer invites to join. You go begging & pleading to join them.
I turned them down. Why??...Because most of them were brainwashed semi-psychopathic brutes. I had more talent, skills and humanity than to become that."


And I call Total Bulls**t on this, too. You were invited to become a SEAL without having to go through BUDs? Without having to go through Hell Week? What a crock! That's about as likely as the Air Force signing up Stevie Wonder to be a fighter pilot.

You're a poseur and a joke. Plain and simple.

Unknown said...

I served 2 tours in the US Army. I've come across men like Kyle many times. To be able to do what he did and relish about it requires the mind of a sociopath. A normal human being would at least hesitate before firing on civilians. Obviously, Kyle loved it. His book revealed this startling fact. Most descent men who have returned from combat duty do not talk about it. It's a horrible thing to take another man's life. Even in war. It's an ever haunting realization to have to live with the never ending guilt that goes with combat. That is a normal human reaction to taking another's life. It doesn't matter what the circumstance. Even in defense of ones own life. Many policeman will confirm what I am saying. Killing someone should never be something a civilized culture should brag about.
It is amazing how well the State has conditioned the American people into thinking we are some kind of barbaric Viking culture and killing other people that don't look like us or believe as we do is an acceptable thing. Kyle called the Iraqi's "savages". It's odd, because the Nazi's called the Jews and Gypsies savages as well. In the Bible Belt of South Carolina, Ron Paul gets booed for referencing the Golden Rule. This nation is hopelessly sliding into the annals of an historic bad idea. America has become a menace to rest of the world. I know, I lived it. The rest of world only knows Americans as men in body armor, driving Bradley's, toting M4's and never leaving their countries. The Founding Fathers are very disappointed in what this nation has become.

Anonymous said...

"I served 2 tours in the US Army. I've come across men like Kyle many times. To be able to do what he did and relish about it requires the mind of a sociopath. A normal human being would at least hesitate before firing on civilians. Obviously, Kyle loved it. His book revealed this startling fact. Most descent men who have returned from combat duty do not talk about it."


Oh? Then why do so many military men, from the lowest enlisted to the top generals, and from the days of Alexander and Caesar to today, write about their experiences? I've read numerous books by ex Navy SEAL's, I've read Chuck Yeager's book, books by fighter pilots in Vietnam, and many others. Were the authors of those books all "Sociopaths" just because they talked about their deeds in public?

As for Kyle "Enjoying" war and fighting, the simple fact is that war IS exciting. It's an adrenaline rush, why else do we have all these violent movies and video games such that civilians, even children, can get that same thrill, if only vicariously? Politically incorrect as it is to say, war is, on some primal level, FUN. There is the surge of energy, the pitting of one's mental and physical skills against another, the excitement of encountering danger, and so forth. War is pretty much a universal constant in human history, it probably would not have become so were it not, at least on some level, enjoyable.

Even Robert E Lee, a man few would call a sadist or a sociopath, once remarked (possibly to Grant) "It's a good thing war is so awful, lest we take too much pleasure in it".

Anonymous said...

"So am I correct in assuming that you would be a living collaborator, rather than an endangered, imprisoned, or martyred dissident? "


Except you are none of these three, and the odds of you becoming any of them any time soon are vanishingly small.

I mean, really! The Obama regime isn't even seriously trying to shut up Rush Limbaugh, what makes you think they will come after you?

As for collaboration, you are, by the mere act of living here and paying taxes (however unwillingly), supporting the regime as well. As I said earlier, why not move? You could blog from Australia as easily as from here. Or else go Galt and live off the land and owe the government nothing.

In terms of perceived US government oppression, you act as if you were a Jew, the year 1938, and the country Germany. In which case the obvious choice would be to scram, and pronto! But the truth is you are not in any danger at all. You're as safe as a baby in a Pro-Life mother's womb. Nobody is coming after you, and nobody is going to. Indeed, it looks like Obama's gun control schemes are already starting to fall apart. Obama may THINK he's a Caesar, but more and more Americans are starting to see him for the incompetent clown that he really is.

William N. Grigg said...

I had written:

"So am I correct in assuming that you would be a living collaborator, rather than an endangered, imprisoned, or martyred dissident? "

To which you replied:

Except you are none of these three, and the odds of you becoming any of them any time soon are vanishingly small.

And I have that on the word of someone who supports illegal and unnecessary wars justified by the incalculably small "threat" posed by non-existent WMDs. Your assurances about the benevolence of the government ruling us would be a touch more plausible if you didn't defend its crimes so zealously. :-)

Anonymous said...

"And I have that on the word of someone who supports illegal and unnecessary wars justified by the incalculably small "threat" posed by non-existent WMDs. Your assurances about the benevolence of the government ruling us would be a touch more plausible if you didn't defend its crimes so zealously. :-) "


Right, but you talk about "crimes" without providing any context. You almost seem to act as if 9/11 had never happened at all. To talk about the buildup to the Iraq War without mentioning 9/11 would be like talking about the Civil War and never mentioning slavery.

It is easy, from the perspective of 2013, to say that, in hindsight, Saddam Hussein was never really a threat. However, the unfortunate history of Western democracies has been to UNDERestimate dictators, not OVERestimate them. And of course we must remember the national mood of paranioa that existed in late 2001, 2002, and early 2003. Actually, calling it "Paranioa" is unfair. Paranioa implies the fear of imaginary enemies, but the enemies who killed 3,000 people were very real. And very real was the fear that, if they could kill so many with mere box cutters, what could they do with WMDs? And if there was an even ten percent chance Al Qaida could get WMDs from Saddam, well, that was ten percent too much. To NOT take action would have been a derelection of duty at the highest level.

William N. Grigg said...

you talk about "crimes" without providing any context. You almost seem to act as if 9/11 had never happened at all. To talk about the buildup to the Iraq War without mentioning 9/11 would be like talking about the Civil War and never mentioning slavery.

That analogy works, ironically, because it undermines the case you're trying to make: Slavery was a post-facto pretext for Lincoln's war against the South (he made it clear that he was willing to make slavery permanent in order to "preserve" the Union) ; 9/11 offered a similarly contrived rationale for a war that the people who fed Bush his lines and wiped the drool from his face had been planning for several years.

On the matter of "context" --I did provide the context above: Colin Powell's definitive statement in January 2001 that Saddam's regime did not threaten the United States. I also noted that in July of 2002, the Bush Regime and that of his British lapdog were looking for ways to provoke Saddam into providing a rationale for war.

Saddam, loathsome as he was, did nothing to precipitate the war in 2003. He went out of his way to accommodate the escalating demands being made of him. In fact, as I noted earlier, the Arab League was working on a deal in which he and his equally depraved sons would abdicate as a way of preventing war. By any rational measure, it was the Bush administration that was the aggressor here, and aggressive war is the "supreme crime," under customary international law. QED.

It is easy, from the perspective of 2013, to say that, in hindsight, Saddam Hussein was never really a threat.

Actually, it was easy to see that in January 2001; vide the Colin Powell statement mentioned above.

he unfortunate history of Western democracies has been to UNDERestimate dictators, not OVERestimate them.

Yes, it's always 1938, the scene of every foreign quarrel in which we are to intervene is always the Sudetenland, every petty thug targeted by Washington is a proto-Hitler, and everybody who expresses skepticism is Neville Chamberlain. And our patriotic duty is always to obsess about the evils, real or exaggerated, of distant and relatively powerless thugs, while ignoring the evil deeds done by the government that rules us.

And of course we must remember the national mood of paranioa that existed in late 2001, 2002, and early 2003. Actually, calling it "Paranioa" is unfair. Paranioa implies the fear of imaginary enemies, but the enemies who killed 3,000 people were very real

-- and as more sober observers pointed out at the time, Saddam's regime had nothing at all to do with that atrocity.

I agree with you that "paranoia" isn't a suitable word to describe the mindset in question. It's better described as full-blown psychosis.

And if there was an even ten percent chance Al Qaida could get WMDs from Saddam, well, that was ten percent too much. To NOT take action would have been a derelection of duty at the highest level.

Yes, aggressive war is always the safest and most responsible course of action, correct?



Anonymous said...

To whoever said "Nobody who joined the military since 1945, the last time this nation was attacked by a foreign army, is a hero.

If you fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, etc. etc. YOU ARE NOT A HERO."

This message if for you.

YOU ARE A FUCKING COMMUNIST ISLAMOLIBERAL FAGGOT PIECE OF SHIT WHO NEEDS TO BE PUT ON THE NEXT TRAIN TO AUSCHWITZ!!!!!!

CHRIS KYLE AND EVERY VETERAN OF KOREA, VIETNAM, GRENADA, PANAMA, IRAQ, AND AFGHANISTAN IS A HERO WHO FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM AND YOU ARE A DICKSUCKING LIBERAL CUNT WHO NEEDS TO BE PUT AGAINST A WALL AND SHOT!!!

VICTORY TO THE WAR ON TERROR!!!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!
GLORY TO THE ARYAN MASTER RACE!!!

Anonymous said...

"On the matter of "context" --I did provide the context above: Colin Powell's definitive statement in January 2001 that Saddam's regime did not threaten the United States."

Yes, but I'm sure a statement in January 1941 that Japan did not present a threat to the United States would have sounded equally reasonable. Of course, things had changed quite a bit in both January 1942 and January 2002.



"By any rational measure, it was the Bush administration that was the aggressor here, and aggressive war is the "supreme crime," under customary international law. QED. "

Actually, genocide would be the "Supreme Crime".

But, that aside, international law as defined by whom, exactly? The United Nations? You don't seem the type who would defer to the UN on anything, nor allow US sovereignty to be trumped by the so-called "Authority" of any international body.



"I agree with you that "paranoia" isn't a suitable word to describe the mindset in question. It's better described as full-blown psychosis. "

Please elaborate. 3,000 Americans were killed by a group that had shown no compunction about committing mass murder before, and the response of Americans should have been what? Indifference?



ME: And if there was an even ten percent chance Al Qaida could get WMDs from Saddam, well, that was ten percent too much. To NOT take action would have been a derelection of duty at the highest level.

YOU: Yes, aggressive war is always the safest and most responsible course of action, correct?

In the context of my statement immediately above (and you ALWAYS ignore context), then, yes. Or, had our worst fears come true, and WMDs were later used on the American people, and 50,000 had died instead of a "mere" 3,000, and you were the president, you would have said to the American people, what, exactly? "No, I didn't go to war to save your lives because it would have offended the pacifist sensibilities of the French? The United Nations? "


William N. Grigg said...

I'm sure a statement in January 1941 that Japan did not present a threat to the United States would have sounded equally reasonable.

Japan in January 1941 had spent about a decade rampaging through China, and several years expanding its military influence through the Pacific. Iraq in January 2001 had spent more than a decade suffocating beneath sanctions after a war that had destroyed most of its army. It was subject to two no-fly zones that deprived Saddam of sovereignty over his own national territory. It was subject to invasive international arms inspections. Saddam's regime had neither the means nor the proven desire to engage in aggressive action.

Apart from that, I suppose, your analogy makes perfect sense.

Please elaborate. 3,000 Americans were killed by a group that had shown no compunction about committing mass murder before, and the response of Americans should have been what? Indifference?

Here's a much better course of action:

It should have been to identify the enemy responsible for the atrocity, demand redress, and take necessary and legal action to obtain it. If the Taliban junta was implicated in the attack -- something asserted, but never proven, by the Bush administration -- the ultimatum should have been followed up by responding to their reasonable request for evidence that bin Laden had perpetrated the crime, coupled with a demand for extradition. Had this been granted, bin Laden should have been taken into custody, interrogated, and tried. If not, Bush should have gone to Congress and requested a declaration of war against the Taliban government, and prosecuted it until the limited aims described above had been accomplished.

What we should not have done is ... exactly what we allowed to happen: Providing an ambitious and war-fixated president and the degenerate clique surrounding him with a National Socialist-style Enabling Act permitting the government to carry out an open-ended war against anybody they dislike, including -- as we're seeing -- U.S. citizens.

Actually, genocide would be the "Supreme Crime".

Genocide is a sub-set of aggressive war.

But, that aside, international law as defined by whom, exactly? You don't seem the type who would defer to the UN on anything

I'm not -- which is another reason why enforcing UN Security Council resolutions against Iraq was a horrible idea.

nor allow US sovereignty to be trumped by the so-called "Authority" of any international body.

I vividly recall the Bush-bots in 2003, Sean Hannity among them, piously insisting that we had to validate the UN's authority by punishing Saddam Hussein.

My reference was to "customary" international law, which the Constitution calls the "law of nations." I'm alluding to the post-Westphalian understanding that international aggression is impermissible. See, among other things, AJP Veale's study "Advance to Barbarism," or Vattel's "Law of Nations" for a good discussion of this subject.

Regarding aggressive war as the best option:

In the context of my statement immediately above (and you ALWAYS ignore context), then, yes.

Delusions don't offer a reliable context, and what you're describing is a deliberately cultivated mass delusion, as some of us correctly pointed out at the time.

What you're describing is the Lloyd Christmas Standard from "Dumb and Dumber" -- you know, when he was told there was a one in a million chance that Mary could love him.

"So... you're telling me there is a chance...?" he replied. That makes for winsome comedy, but it's not well-suited to geopolitics.

Anonymous said...

Chris Kyle was foremost a patriot. He gave a huge part of his life to service of his country, protecting countless of other service men and women. It exacted a huge toll on himself and his family. You people set at your computers, and criticise this great man for living a life you couldn't begin to understand. You call the radical muslim fanatics "freedom fighters", while accusing Chris of murder. Chris neverhid behind women and children. He never strapped a bomb to himself with the intent of murdering innocents in the name of his cause. He spent his career trying to protect his comrades, and eliminate the kind of people that commit those kinds of atrocities, and worse. You people are misguided.

Anonymous said...

For those of you who defend Chris Kyle's actions in Iraq, understand that he wouldn't hesitate for a second if he was ordered to turn his rifle against US citizens. He was a highly skilled professional killer who was trained to follow orders. There was nothing "patriotic" about his military service and the nationality, religion, or even the motives of those who found themselves in his crosshairs had nothing to do with pulling the trigger. He was simply doing what he was told to do by his handlers. True patriots who cherish the Bill of Rights and embrace libertarian principles should be very afraid that the US government has men like Chris Kyle who will blindly follow orders to kill regardless of whom the victims are.

Anonymous said...

"Japan in January 1941 had spent about a decade rampaging through China, and several years expanding its military influence through the Pacific."

My point was that Japan in 1941 was no direct threat to the American homeland. The best they could no was hit a naval base far out in the Pacific, and that only worked because it was a total surprise. According to your logic, we should have ceased hostilities with them after the Battle of Midway, at which point their Navy was no longer a threat to us (their army and air force, of course, never were).

Al Qaida, OTOH, demonstrated they could kill more people on our own soil than that died at Pearl Harbor with nothing more than frigging BOX Cutters! What do you suppose they would have done with WMDs had they been able to get any? Your fetish with so-called "International law" (whatever that is) seems to trump all concern for actual American civilian lives.

I hate to sound this harsh, but you sound like one of these guys who lives in the world of Pure Theory. A world where perfect intelligence exists and where perfect options are always available. Well, sometimes your options boil down to BAD and WORSE, and where NOT making a decision isn't an option at all. Sometimes you have to run over the baby if it means getting desperately needed supplies to your troops on time. Sometimes you have to drop an atom bomb on two cities to end an otherwise ugly and brutal war. Or do you want to dig up the corpse of Harry Truman and charge him with war crimes, too?

Anonymous said...

"Here's a much better course of action:

It should have been to identify the enemy responsible for the atrocity, demand redress, and take necessary and legal action to obtain it. If the Taliban junta was implicated in the attack -- something asserted, but never proven, by the Bush administration -- the ultimatum should have been followed up by responding to their reasonable request for evidence that bin Laden had perpetrated the crime, coupled with a demand for extradition. Had this been granted, bin Laden should have been taken into custody, interrogated, and tried. If not, Bush should have gone to Congress and requested a declaration of war against the Taliban government, and prosecuted it until the limited aims described above had been accomplished. "

And what if your chief bad guy escapes, in part, because we did all that crap (except for the formal 'Declaration of War') and gave him WAY too much advance notice we were coming?

You really DON'T get this, do you? Bin Laden declared WAR on this country, and you don't just arrest him like a pickpocket in Central Park. This was an entirely NEW kind of war, one where the enemy had no capital city we could bomb or territory we could capture. They could hide anywhere, and with modern transportation, take their attacks anywhere. It was one thing to ignore terrorists when they were blowing up buses or shooting individual hostages, but 9/11 brought the threat to an entirely new kind of level. Indeed, you could call 9/11 an act of genocide, given the huge numbers of civilians killed, and you don't stop genocidal maniacs with a fucking police warrant and an attitude of "Mother, may I?"

Anonymous said...

"Delusions don't offer a reliable context, and what you're describing is a deliberately cultivated mass delusion, as some of us correctly pointed out at the time."

Yeah, because it was a "Delusion" to think 9/11 occurred. A "Delusion" to think Al Qaida was a serious threat. A "Delusion" to think Al Qaida with WMDs would be a total nightmare, one that NO president, regardless of Party, could allow to happen. Yes, delusions all.





"What you're describing is the Lloyd Christmas Standard from "Dumb and Dumber" -- you know, when he was told there was a one in a million chance that Mary could love him.

"So... you're telling me there is a chance...?" he replied. That makes for winsome comedy, but it's not well-suited to geopolitics. "


Actually, it's more like this:

ME: If you quit smoking, you'll reduce the chance of getting cancer.

YOU: Are you saying I WILL get cancer if I keep smoking?

ME: No, but you will reduce the odds quite a bit.

YOU: If you can't say for SURE I'll get cancer, then I'll keep on smoking.

Analogy to the topic under discussion: If we can't say FOR SURE that terrorists will get WMD, then we should do nothing.

William N. Grigg said...

Yeah, because it was a "Delusion" to think 9/11 occurred.

It is, was, and always will be delusional to think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 -- assuming that the person who propounds that misrepresentation is not deliberately lying about it. This was well-understood eleven years ago. Are you honest enough to admit that those of us who pointed this out at the time were right, or are you incapable of making even that rudimentary concession to reality, as adults understand it?

A "Delusion" to think Al Qaida was a serious threat. A "Delusion" to think Al Qaida with WMDs would be a total nightmare, one that NO president, regardless of Party, could allow to happen.

Yes, and an al-Qaeda equipped with multi-phasic, inter-dimensional time-travel capability would be a nightmare beyond all previous human understandings -- and only a touch more implausible than the scenario you describe.

I don't mean to over-tax your obviously limited attention span, but it would be wise of you to re-read my suggested course of action post-9/11, and explain to me how this would have been an inadequate response to the attack.

Granted, my approach wouldn't have involved a disastrous, trillion-dollar war of aggression against a country that had nothing to do with that attack, the installation of a Sharia-compliant regime therein, the loss of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, a lost decade of useless war in Afghanistan, the creation of a metastasizing Homeland Security State, open-ended conflict with the Muslim world... Wait a minute, I forgot what the downside of my approach, in contrast to yours, would have been....

Actually, it's more like this:

ME: If you quit smoking, you'll reduce the chance of getting cancer.

YOU: Are you saying I WILL get cancer if I keep smoking?

ME: No, but you will reduce the odds quite a bit.

YOU: If you can't say for SURE I'll get cancer, then I'll keep on smoking.


For the cancer analogy to work, you would have to describe its etiology correctly, and prescribe a reasonable remedy if the disease has already begun to spread.

During the Bush administration, you probably don't recall, the CIA admitted that the Iraq war had exacerbated the problem of terrorism, rather than reducing it. Fighting terrorism by attacking Iraq makes as much sense as treating cancer by increasing your cigarette intake.

William N. Grigg said...

A quick addendum: Owing to the fact that your responses were posted out of order, I didn't see the reply regarding a prescribed post-9/11 agenda. I'll offer some comments about that below.

William N. Grigg said...

You really DON'T get this, do you? Bin Laden declared WAR on this country, and you don't just arrest him like a pickpocket in Central Park.

Nor do you find him by attacking an entirely different country that had nothing to do with his crimes, do you?

Assuming that bin Laden declared "war" on the United States, why were people of your ilk so indecently eager to help him achieve his most important war aims? He wanted to foment a civilizational war between Islam and the West. He wanted to provoke a reaction on the part of the U.S. government that would gravely damage our economy and undermine our free institutions:

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed.The U.S. government will lead the American people, and the West in general, into an unbearable hell and a choking life."

Bin Laden wanted to propagate Sharia law. U.S. troops killed and died to impose a Sharia-compliant constitution on Iraq, and a very similar national constitution on Afghanistan. Was that a defeat for bin Laden, or a victory?

...you could call 9/11 an act of genocide, given the huge numbers of civilians killed....

Only if you're studiously dishonest. It was certainly an act of mass murder. At what point does indiscriminate killing of civilians by the U.S. government qualify as "genocide"? Madeleine Albright admitted in 1995 that the sanctions against Iraq had led to the death of hundreds of thousands of children. That was before the war against a prostrate Iraq began anew in 2003. By what standard is that anything other than genocide -- or are we to assume either that Iraqis aren't fully human, or that Americans are something more?

and you don't stop genocidal maniacs with a fucking police warrant and an attitude of "Mother, may I?"

Nor do we stop them by waging aggressive wars against countries not implicated in their crimes -- especially when those wars are carried out by people whose actions are reasonably perceived as at least quasi-genocidal by people in the Muslim world.

On the matter of decorum: I am an indulgent host and moderator, but you will refrain from using adolescent vulgarity from this point on. It doesn't help your case -- nothing could, really -- and I won't abide any more of it from you.

William N. Grigg said...

Here's another out-of-sequence reply:

I had pointed out:

"Japan in January 1941 had spent about a decade rampaging through China, and several years expanding its military influence through the Pacific."

To which you replied:

My point was that Japan in 1941 was no direct threat to the American homeland. Al Qaida, OTOH, demonstrated they could kill more people on our own soil than that died at Pearl Harbor with nothing more than frigging BOX Cutters!

Try to focus up: We are discussing the attack on Iraq, which had nothing at all to do with dealing effectively with al-Qaeda.

Your fetish with so-called "International law" (whatever that is) seems to trump all concern for actual American civilian lives.

You mean like the thousands of American lives that were wasted in Iraq -- the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, against the wrong enemy, by any rational estimate? As I noted above, it was proponents of the war who invoked UN-centered "international law"; my concern with with the fact that the Constitution prescribes a process that is supposed to make it difficult to go to war, especially one implicated in the four "wrongs" above. The war in Iraq was an anti-constitutional obscenity that was also a violation of the customary law of nations as the Framers would have understood the concept.

I hate to sound this harsh, but you sound like one of these guys who lives in the world of Pure Theory.... Sometimes you have to drop an atom bomb on two cities to end an otherwise ugly and brutal war. Or do you want to dig up the corpse of Harry Truman and charge him with war crimes, too?

Patton considered the atomic bombing to be a crime. So did MacArthur. So did Eisenhower. So did Admirals Leahy, Nimitz, and Strauss.... Pish, all of 'em resided in the world of Pure Theory, didn't they?



Anonymous said...

"Patton considered the atomic bombing to be a crime. So did MacArthur. So did Eisenhower. So did Admirals Leahy, Nimitz, and Strauss.... Pish, all of 'em resided in the world of Pure Theory, didn't they? "


Oh SURE they did! That's why they spoke, both at the time and later (like when Eisenhower was president, and, BTW, was presiding over the greatest buildup of our nuclear forces in history), they spoke loudly and with one clear voice that Truman was a war criminal and that, as a matter of honor, they would refuse to serve under such a war criminal and all resigned their commissions in protest. Yeah, that's what happened. No, wait, it DIDN'T!

Seriously, if they had any objections at all to the atomic bombings, they must have been of a very tepid and weak nature. And apparently they had no objections at all to the firebombing campaign which took place earlier, accomplishing essentially the same results (levelling entire cities and killing vast numbers of civilians) only using different means.

Anonymous said...

"Yes, and an al-Qaeda equipped with multi-phasic, inter-dimensional time-travel capability would be a nightmare beyond all previous human understandings -- and only a touch more implausible than the scenario you describe. "


Well, let's see:


Scenario # 1: Al Qaida gets access to weapons technology seen only in science fiction movies, technology which has never existed on Earth and which may be quite literally physically impossible to create, and even if it is possible, probably won't exist here on Earth for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Scenario # 2. Al Qaida gets access to weapons technology that has been around since World War 1, which is not that difficult to make given a halfway modern industrial economy, and simultaneously there is a country which in the recent past had possessed a large stockpile of such weapons, had shown no compunction about USING those weapons, both on an enemy (Iran) and on its own people, and, while Al Qaida and the leader of this country were never formal allies, they shared a similar general outlook (hatred of the US and a motive for revenge for past humiliations caused by the US) which made a potential future alliance involving those aforementioned weapons a threat which had to be taken seriously by anyone with a brain who had even the slightest amount of concern for the safety of the American people.

Yeah, because those scenarios are, like, so similar, you know.

Anonymous said...

"On the matter of decorum: I am an indulgent host and moderator, but you will refrain from using adolescent vulgarity from this point on. It doesn't help your case -- nothing could, really -- and I won't abide any more of it from you. "


Back in Air Force ROTC we had a young instructor who addressed our class after we had performed particularly badly on a test. "Gentlemen", he said, "If you must use strong language, use it sparingly, so this way it will have an impact". And he then proceded to use some strong language to describe our test performance and it DID have an impact.

Point being, I used a strong word to describe what I thought was a particularly foolish approach to the business of dealing with the threat posed by bin Laden. If stong language offends you, well, fine. It's your site and you can run it as you like.

All the same, you seem a LOT more offended by my one-time use of the "F-Bomb" than you do by some of the other commenters here, who are openly pissing on the memory of Chris Kyle. I will grant that your own response to his death was reasonably restrained, but not so many of your posters. Yet you let their comments stand, and haven't even had the decency to rebuke any of them, giving the not entirely unreasonable impression that you share their sentiments.

Seriously, if you want to clean up the filth around here, you could start by getting rid of the trash, the toy soldiers bragging how they were so much better than Kyle, and stop reading the Riot Act to someone for merely using a rude word.

William N. Grigg said...


All the same, you seem a LOT more offended by my one-time use of the "F-Bomb" than you do by some of the other commenters here, who are openly pissing on the memory of Chris Kyle.

It's the difference between ignoring someone who is swearing at the periphery -- such as a foul-mouthed bar patron -- and someone who is swearing AT you in the middle of a conversation. I find the former offensive in general, and the latter an unwarranted particularized offense.

I will grant that your own response to his death was reasonably restrained, but not so many of your posters. Yet you let their comments stand, and haven't even had the decency to rebuke any of them, giving the not entirely unreasonable impression that you share their sentiments.

I'm responsible only for what I say and write.

Seriously, if you want to clean up the filth around here, you could start by getting rid of the trash, the toy soldiers bragging how they were so much better than Kyle, and stop reading the Riot Act to someone for merely using a rude word.

Has it escaped your notice that I have indulged a great of vulgar, abusive, and even racist abuse that was directed at me, as well?

Dealing with people who spit, snarl, and leave is part of the overhead of maintaining a forum of this kind. I had entertained the hope that someone with whom I was engaged in an actual conversation could comport himself like an adult.

Anonymous said...

YOU: "I'm responsible only for what I say and write. "

And, later: "Dealing with people who spit, snarl, and leave is part of the overhead of maintaining a forum of this kind."



It has not escaped my notice that several of my posts have just disappeared into the ether (maybe this one will, too), meaning you exercise TOTAL CONTROL over what gets posted here and what does not.

So, yes, you ARE responsible for what gets posted here. Nothing appears here unless you CHOOSE for it to. And you're also responsible for the responses (or lack thereof) that you give in reply to such posts. You could respond to the whackjobs cheering Kyle's death, but you have chosen not to. Instead, you would rather chastise me for a rude word than others for expressing vile sentiments.

That said, I suspect this conversation is drawing to a close. There really isn't much left to say. Your view of our enemies is pure Mary Poppins (Al Qaida isn't really much of a threat, poor Saddam was in no way to blame for those nasty sanctions, there was no need to worry about WMDs, indeed, you can barely bring yourself to mention that 9/11 ever even happened at all) and yet your view of anything America does is pure cynicism, as if every single thing our government does is in the pursuit of malicious ends brought about by brutal and barbaric means. You weep crocodile tears for the terrorists we kill, wail with faux indignation that their wives and kids are sometimes killed, too, ignoring the obvious FACT that if the man weren't a terrorist in the first place, we would have no reason to attack them.

Anyway, I will end with this. As noted before, you write well. And you sometimes say things worth saying. Nonetheless, much as you think you are advancing the cause of liberty, you are in reality turning that cause into a laughingstock. Just because you have a few fans here who are willing to offer Megadittoes to everything you say doesn't mean that maybe 90% of the rest of the population doesn't see you guys as a pack of loons desperately in need of tinfoil hats.


William N. Grigg said...

It has not escaped my notice that several of my posts have just disappeared into the ether (maybe this one will, too)

You can't "notice" something that hasn't happened. I've posted everything you've sent, including at least two duplicate posts precisely because I'm determined to give equal space and time to people who disagree with me. This is because I'm interested in dialogue, not "Dittoes."

You weep crocodile tears for the terrorists we kill, wail with faux indignation that their wives and kids are sometimes killed, too, ignoring the obvious FACT that if the man weren't a terrorist in the first place, we would have no reason to attack them.

For you the term "Terrorist" is defined as "Anybody who is killed on the orders of the United States Government," or "Anybody who displays the temerity to defend his home against American military personnel who have invaded his country."

All Americans who were alive and sentient at the time recall in our marrow what it was like on the morning of 9/11. For at least some of us this made vivid what it must have felt like to be an Iraqi or even a Serb on the receiving end of a suffocating embargo or a criminal onslaught mounted by a distant and prohibitively stronger foreign power. (Oh, you don't remember how Washington bombed Belgrade for 78 days back in '99 to install a group of Islamo-Marxist gangsters in Kosovo? Shame.)

In our extended conversation I have exclusively borne the burden of sourcing what I have said. You have responded by regurgitating a slurry of pre-digested soundbites.

Hannitization is curable, my friend -- but the victim has to want to change.

William N. Grigg said...

By way of a coda to our conversation:

I brought up the fact that many high-ranking military leaders opposed the atomic bombing of Japan. To which you replied:

Oh SURE they did! That's why they spoke, both at the time and later ... they spoke loudly and with one clear voice that Truman was a war criminal and that, as a matter of honor, they would refuse to serve under such a war criminal and all resigned their commissions in protest.

Such a protest would have been commendable and appropriate. Alas, as you note, it didn't happen.

As to their sentiments -- here's a small sampling:

When Secretary Stimson told General Eisenhower about the plan to nuke Japan, “expecting a vigorous assent,” Eisenhower stunned him by voicing “grave misgivings,” saying that “Japan was already defeated” and that dropping the bomb would be “unnecessary” and an act of barbarism. Stimson was “perturbed” by Eisenhower’s attitude.
MacArthur’s private pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, recalled that the General was “appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster.” He was one of several confidantes to whom MacArthur condemned the bombing.
Admiral Leahy condemned “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki “and said it “was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.”

Admiral Nimitz: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.”

Admiral Halsey: “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” (I blame the politicians more than the scientists.)

In “War as I Knew It,” Patton categorically condemned the “barbaric bombardment of the centers of cities" – that was a condemnation of what was called “strategic bombing” when the Allies did it, and “terror bombing” when carried out by the Axis.

thebronze said...

You're a despicable piece of excrement and you don't rate to carry Chris Kyle's jock-strap.

And yet you denigrate an American Hero, yet you were too much of a coward to ever serve.

Scumbag.

Anonymous said...

My analogy to the war against Japan is as follows:

Imagine you have a large, dangerous animal that needs to be killed. You've thrown spears at it, shot arrows into it, and still the beast survives. Finally, a hunter shows up with a double barrel rifle and shoots two bullets into its head, killing it instantly. The beast no longer suffers, and it is no longer a threat.

The analogy is - the spears and arrows were our conventional weapons. They harmed the beast greatly, caused it a lot of pain, but didn't bring it down. The atom bombs were the bullets.

William N. Grigg said...

.. and the analogy fails, because Japan was no a rampaging animal by the time the Atom Bombs were dropped. This was why Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz, et. al. opposed the bombing: Japan had been suing for peace for nearly a year, and -- as it happens -- the post-bombing terms were not materially different from what Japan had been asking for months prior to Hiroshima.

A better metaphor would be the film "Weekend at Bernie's." The FDR and Truman administrations were perversely determined to use the atom bomb against Japan, and kept the war going needlessly in order to have an excuse. Tens of thousands of American, Allied, and Japanese troops died in the months leading up to August 1945, when the war could have been ended much earlier on all but identical terms.

I grant that you are dismissive of the lives of Japanese civilians (including the Christian population at Nagasaki, who had been severely been persecuted by the militarists before being vaporized by the U.S.). I would hope that you would find cause for indignation in the fact that FDR and Truman squandered American lives in order to buy the time necessary to unleash their WMDs against an already defeated Japan.

edp said...

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one; and some don't smell all that good. I read and basically dismiss articles such as this one because they are opinion, and not based credibly on fact. I suppose the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam? Personally speaking, I think they were a bunch of pussies who didn't have the balls to overthrow the man and earn their freedom. Instead, the ratted one another out and helped the abuse and torture continue. I would have just let them continue to suffer and die until they developed the courage to free themselves. Where were the author's vaunted "freedom" fighters then? The author also fails to call out that the "freedom" fighters in Iraq today are not themselves Iraqi. Nor are they fighting for a free Iraq. I could go on enumerating the many logic gaps here, but it would all be wasted time. People will believe what they choose to believe, and espouse what they choose to espouse.

William N. Grigg said...

Opinions are like assholes --

-- and it's been my experience that people who peddle that malodorous cliche are wallowing in their own olfactory essence.

I suppose the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam?

The unique genius of the American government -- which installed that despicable thug and propped him up for decades -- is displayed by the fact that it found a way to make things even worse for the Iraqis by "liberating" them from the reign of Washington's subcontractor. Saddam was vile; the post-"liberation" government is just as bad, but the country itself has been left ravaged and overrun with violence.

It's worth remembering that Iraq's Christian population evacuated the country after "liberation." That exodus suggests that bad as Saddam was, the current state of affairs is even worse.

Personally speaking, I think they were a bunch of pussies who didn't have the balls to overthrow the man and earn their freedom.

If they're as detestable as you describe, why should the U.S. have bothered to "liberate" them?

I would have just let them continue to suffer and die until they developed the courage to free themselves. Where were the author's vaunted "freedom" fighters then?

Most of them were being wiped out with Washington's assistance. The U.S. actually helped Saddam wipe out the Kurdish and Shi'ite resistance to Saddam in the early 1990s -- and then clamped down an embargo that made it impossible for effective resistance to coalesce.

The author also fails to call out that the "freedom" fighters in Iraq today are not themselves Iraqi.

Kyle's first kill was an Iraqi woman trying to kill foreign invaders. That's a freedom fighter by any honest definition. The same was true of most of the people he killed, at least those who bore arms: By Kyle's own admission, his ROEs authorized indiscriminate killing of Iraqi males.

Nor are they fighting for a free Iraq.

Neither did the foreign invaders from the U.S. who killed and died so that Iraq could be ruled by a Sharia-compliant constitution.

Anonymous said...

"Japan had been suing for peace for nearly a year, and -- as it happens -- the post-bombing terms were not materially different from what Japan had been asking for months prior to Hiroshima."

Except that Japan had shown no signs of wanting peace at all. They fought to the last man on Iwo Jima, ditto on Okinawa, they remained defiant in the face of massive firebombing campaigns on their cities, they unleashed waves of suicide planes against our naval vessels. How does any of that indicate a sincere desire for peace? Or, more to the point, surrender?

Remember, all we had to go by was previous experience. The Japanese Bushido code of "Fight to the Death" and "Never Surrender" had been quite evident all throughout the Pacific campaign. Japanese units were quite willing to take casualty rates well in excess of 90% (unthinkable for a Western army) and we rarely took POWs.

Fact is, had the Japanese been sincere about being willing to surrender, they would have sued for peace right after the Tokyo bombing. We had just proven that we could wipe out entire cities in a single raid, and they had to know damned well we were going to keep right on doing it. To surrender then would have been the rational thing to do, but the Japanese showed no signs of rationality and every sign of blind fanaticism.

But no. You've clearly bought into the Howard Zinn "A Proctologist's View of the United States" POV. You know - America Always Wrong, and everyone else in the world an Innocent Victim of American Imperialism.



"The FDR and Truman administrations were perversely determined to use the atom bomb against Japan, and kept the war going needlessly in order to have an excuse. "

It's impressive that you can read minds this way. More impressive still that you can read the minds of dead people!"



"I grant that you are dismissive of the lives of Japanese civilians"

Ah, the old left wing trick of phony kompassion. "I CARE, you DON"T!!" seems to be their principal mantra.

Are you a left winger?

Anonymous said...

"For you the term "Terrorist" is defined as "Anybody who is killed on the orders of the United States Government," or "Anybody who displays the temerity to defend his home against American military personnel who have invaded his country."


The first job of the American government is to protect the rights of Americans. And first of those rights is the right to LIFE. All the other rights mean nothing if you're not alive to enjoy them. And if any force, whether foreign or domestic, is attacking this most central of our rights, then it is the first job of government to stop them.

In that light, the principal FACT that stands out is this:

There have been no significant terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11. NOT ONE! *

That means the government is doing its job, and doing it well. And if that means that terrorists, friends of terrorists, families of terrorists, American "Citizens" who turn traitor and ally themselves with terrorists, and, in general, anyone stupid enough to be in the direct vicinity of terrorists ends up getting killed, well, too bad, so sad, sucks to be you, pal! Americans are SAFE, and that's the principal fact that matters.

*Whether the Fort Hood massacre constitutes a genuine Islamic terrorist attack or is just another mass shooting by a lone madman remains to be seen.

William N. Grigg said...

Are you a left winger?

No, but that question demonstrates that your are a Leninist, after a fashion: His approach was to assign people to a political "class" and then assume that everything they did or said could be evaluated on the basis of that designation.

If I were a "left-winger," this wouldn't be relevant to an assessment of the soundness of my arguments. I'm a Christian Individualist who understands and cherishes the distinctly American insight that government power is the most lethal agency known to man.

We had just proven that we could wipe out entire cities in a single raid, and they had to know damned well we were going to keep right on doing it. To surrender then would have been the rational thing to do, but the Japanese showed no signs of rationality and every sign of blind fanaticism.

That wasn't the assessment of the military leaders I cited above -- whose views of the matter you studiously ignore.

What supposed expertise on the matter do you possess that was not part of the skill-set of Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz, et. al.? They knew that Japanese resistance would continue to harden as the Allies approached the home islands. They understandably had little enthusiasm for invading and occupying the home islands through conventional means.

They were equally opposed to the incineration of civilian populations because they retained at least a residue of human decency. They knew that the terms imposed on Japan in August were essentially identical to those Japan had been asking for months.

It's impressive that you can read minds this way. More impressive still that you can read the minds of dead people!

No more impressive than the supposed geo-strategic genius you display in dismissing the contemporaneous conclusions of the commanders who opposed the bombing. My conclusions are a reasonable inference based on the statement by Admiral Halsey that the bombing, although unnecessary, was carried out because the people who developed it simply had to try it out. That meant creating the "necessity" to use it -- which, in turn, meant keeping the war going until it was ready. Res ipsa loquitir.

Where "fanaticism" is concerned: It was well understood immediately after the war that the "unconditional surrender" policy was a huge strategic mistake. Is it "fanaticism" to continue fighting a foreign power that had "just proven we could wipe out entire cities in a single raid" -- and demands that you place yourself entirely at their mercy? Would you accept surrender terms of that kind, or continue to fight as long and as hard as humanly possible?

William N. Grigg said...

The first job of the American government is to protect the rights of Americans.

And the government presuming to rule us is, at all times and in all circumstances, the single biggest threat to both the lives and liberties of all Americans.


In that light, the principal FACT that stands out is this:

There have been no significant terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11. NOT ONE!*
--

-- because, I suspect, none has been necessary in order to accomplish the advertised designs of bin Laden et. al. -- drawing the U.S. into a "civilizational war" with the Muslim world while undermining our economy and what remains of our freedom.

It's a familiar strategic axiom: If your enemy is destroying himself, get out of his way. Assuming al-Qaeda had the means and intention of staging additional attacks, they didn't need to, if their intent was to propagate Sharia law at gunpoint and get Americans killed. To reiterate once again a point you refuse to address, this is what U.S. policy has been in Iraq and elsewhere.

If prolonged exposure to Fox News has left you in such a condition that you're willing to consider that a victory, your self-inflicted ignorance is most likely incurable.

*Since 9/11, most -- if not all -- "terrorist plots" have been orchestrated by the FBI. Once again, why should al-Qaeda trouble itself?

SemperFi said...

Iraq didnt attack us but we did? And why did we?.......really man ok first off why in the first place do you think you have freedom of speech??? before you run your mouth off you need to understand things from both sides and find the real reasoning to why we " attacked" iraq.....and if you can't put your self in the other persons shoes or have an understanding then you have no place to talk about the matter and when people like your self say things they dont know what the hell their talking about or has never been in a situation to be able to give advice to prevent something from happening or to just being able to know what to do or how you would react with the stressors and being under pressure...well that just makes things worse and depending on your job or your billet and duty it could potentialy get ppl killed or a lil less dramatic do more harm than good....in other words dont argue unless you know your 100% positive its true yet factual especialy when it involves taking away a heroes honor asshole.....

Anonymous said...

"They knew that the terms imposed on Japan in August were essentially identical to those Japan had been asking for months. "


If so, why didn't they surrender THEN instead of waiting until AFTER Nagasaki?

William N. Grigg said...

If so, why didn't they surrender THEN instead of waiting until AFTER Nagasaki?

They were trying to surrender; the only sticking point was the condition that the Emperor not be tried as a war criminal. Washington insisted on following the policy of unconditional surrender, which had been reasonably opposed by most U.S. military leaders who understood that this would increase the butcher's bill dramatically. See -- http://lewrockwell.com/rep3/fdr-demands-unconditional-surrender.html

Anonymous said...

ME: There have been no significant terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11. NOT ONE!* --

YOU: because, I suspect, none has been necessary in order to accomplish the advertised designs of bin Laden et. al. -- drawing the U.S. into a "civilizational war" with the Muslim world while undermining our economy and what remains of our freedom.


You know, amongst all this jabberwocky and self-serving sophistry, it would be awfully nice to see even an OUNCE of friggin' GRATITUDE!! Gratitude to the men and women keeping your life safe, and the lives of your loved ones safe, often by risking their own in foreign hell holes fighting the scum of the Earth.

Oh, I know I'm just wasting my time. You will reply with the usual moral inversion in which it is OUR side which is the scum and their who are the innocent victims. That's why I asked if you are a left winger, since your moral arguments are identical to theirs.

William N. Grigg said...

You know, amongst all this jabberwocky and self-serving sophistry, it would be awfully nice to see even an OUNCE of friggin' GRATITUDE!! Gratitude to the men and women keeping your life safe, and the lives of your loved ones safe, often by risking their own in foreign hell holes fighting the scum of the Earth.

Jingoism: The first and last refuge of the fact-aversive.

Nothing they have done has conduced to my safety, the safety of my family, or the liberties that we exercise.Perhaps I should also be bent double beneath the weight of gratitude for chair-moistening joystick jockeys who dispatch drones from the comfort of air-conditioned redoubts in the United States, killing strangers (including women and children) before going home to their own families. Yes, noble and stalwart heroes, all.

Killing people in distant lands who have done nothing to harm or threaten us cultivates terrorism. And while it's true that sometimes they fight the scum of the earth overseas, they invariably do the bidding of the scum of the earth here at home, as well -- and it is the homeland-dwelling scum that poses the far more immediate danger.


Anonymous said...

"And the government presuming to rule us is, at all times and in all circumstances, the single biggest threat to both the lives and liberties of all Americans."


Which is why your blog has been shut down and you hauled off by the Secret Police, sans warrant, off to some dungeon where you will be tortured repeatedly and then, without benefit of trial, judge, or jury, be unceremoniously shot.

Sorry, but your pseudo-claims of "Victimhood" fall on deaf ears. If the government were even 1/100th the threat you claim, you would NOT be allowed to attack it in the most graphic of terms, in a public forum on the Internet, posting under what is (I presume) your full legal name.

Your fear of the government is largely a self-generated fiction. There is no demonstrable threat to your life or livelihood and there likely never will be.

William N. Grigg said...

Your fear of the government is largely a self-generated fiction. There is no demonstrable threat to your life or livelihood and there likely never will be.

Everything government does is backed by the implicit -- and increasingly overt -- threat of lethal force. No foreign regime or terrorist group has the power to impose any material harm upon me. By way of contrast, the IRS plunders my earnings and threatens to imprison or annihilate me if I don't comply. That's a tangible reality, unlike phantom WMDs and Johnny Quest-caliber fantasies of omnipotent troglodytes laying waste to American cities.

In 2004, John Mueller, head of National Security Studies at The Ohio State University, pointed out that the number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks was about the same as those who died from allergic reactions to peanuts, collisions with deer, and lightning strikes. He also pointed out that Americans are eight times likelier to be killed by a police officer than by a (non-government-employed) terrorist.

Fear of government isn't victimhood; it's what James Madison called "prudent jealousy" for individual liberties, and rational "alarm" over the threats posed by those who presume to govern us. That's Americanism 101.

Anonymous said...

"They were trying to surrender"


Well, I guess they weren't trying real hard, then.

FACT: Prior to Hiroshima, the Japanese took everything we could throw at them and fought back with everything at their disposal. You can speculate all you want about what they might have intended to do, but the FACT is they DID surrender almost immediately after Nagasaki.

The Bomb worked. Truman was right. End of story.

Anonymous said...

"Killing people in distant lands who have done nothing to harm or threaten us cultivates terrorism."

Ah yes, classic left wing moral relativism. It's OUR fault the terrorists hate us!

Anonymous said...

repoerters always were a lowlife.. but that bitch beat all the records.

Anonymous said...

"No foreign regime or terrorist group has the power to impose any material harm upon me."

Tell that to the families of the 3,000 victims of 9/11. Tell them "No, Sir (or Ma'am), your husband/father/wife/son/etc. wasn't killed by real enemies of the United States, but rather by enemies that were entirely imaginary."




"By way of contrast, the IRS plunders my earnings and threatens to imprison or annihilate me if I don't comply. That's a tangible reality"

Oh boo hoo! You have to pay taxes! You poor baby, my heart just BLEEDS!

Anonymous said...

Chris Kyle was a coward piece of shit.
If I ever would have had the opportunity at a run-in with his stupid ass, I probably would have shot him in the face and then asked him how it feels.

Anonymous said...

The fact that you are even able to say shit like that about chris kyle is because of people like chris kyle. Its the people that kill the enemys of our country and protect you that you are insulting. Do you not remember 911. Well it was the people that wanted that to happen that our soldiers kill

Anonymous said...

I will give you credit for one thing. You are fairly well spoken. That is a nice change. Unfortunately, I disagree with everything you've posted. Chris Kyle was a hero. He did not march into a country free from terrorists and free from those imposing their will onto others. Just ask the women of those countries how they feel about being oppressed and used. As far as our military goes, it does protect you without you even having to ask. You are welcome. Show some respect. You say you were raised in a cult..well now you know how many people feel that live in certain countries our military was attempting to "liberate." We cannot sit idly by and let terrorists, dictators and oppressive religion smother the people who can't stand for themselves. I'm sorry you see things differently. As far as free speech is concerned, I agree. Everyone is entitled to it. But if you were to ever spout your negativity about a hero like Kyle in my presence, we would have a problem that I would be willing to do more than talk about. Would you?

William N. Grigg said...

[Kyle] did not march into a country free from terrorists and free from those imposing their will onto others. Just ask the women of those countries how they feel about being oppressed and used.

Nor did Kyle march into a country that harmed or threatened us in any way. He was part of an illegal war of aggression that resulted in the imposition of a Sharia-compliant constitution on what had been a secular country. One entirely predictable result was that most of Iraq's Christian population -- which hadn't been molested before Iraq's "liberation" -- was driven into exile.

Killing people from a comfortable distance in pursuit of that policy isn't heroism by any rational definition.

As far as our military goes, it does protect you without you even having to ask.

I have never been threatened by any government but the one that employs the military. This conceivably could change as a result of the enmity being cultivated overseas by the wars of aggression in which the military is involved. So by any logical reckoning, the military has had a net negative impact on my family's security -- which means that they owe me an apology, rather than being owed "respect."

But if you were to ever spout your negativity about a hero like Kyle in my presence, we would have a problem that I would be willing to do more than talk about. Would you?

I could take your adolescent bravado just a bit more seriously if you weren't sniping at me from the reassuring shadow of anonymity. I'm not in the habit of threatening violence against people on the basis of their opinions, nor am I impressed by those who do.

Anonymous said...

your an idiot

Anonymous said...

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov

I could include my detailed opinion on this subject, but Asimov sums it up. Great article, glad to see so many people skeptical of the "greatness" of Chris Kyle.

Unknown said...

Unlike your heroes, who eat their dead enemy's hearts...

Unknown said...

Amen, GP!

Anonymous said...

You all are complete liberal idiots. We'll see how we all do when we don't have patriots like Chris Kyle, Marcus Luttrell, and all other service men and woman to do the things 99% of Americans could never do on a daily basis.

William N. Grigg said...

We'll see how we all do when we don't have patriots like Chris Kyle, Marcus Luttrell, and all other service men and woman to do the things 99% of Americans could never do on a daily basis.

I take a measure of solace in the assumption that 99% of the American population aren't sociopaths or morally neutered mercenaries who kill distant strangers for no defensible reason. And I eagerly anticipate the day when the detestable clique that rules our country can no longer depend on the services of people who meet that description.

Patrick said...

I came across this article and its comment section by accident and all I can say is Wow! sure a lot of heat and not much light!

I do agree with Mr. Grigg's viewpoint as far as it goes. I am amazed and fascinated how so many drink the military Kool Aid about fighting to protect our freedoms even as their employers, aka the US gummint are stripping them away.

But there's a broader geopolitical perspective here. The US is systematically destabilizing the whole mid-East so that it can exercise hegemony in an energy-rich region. It is not even secret as the agenda has been published by PNAC since 2000.

It is the real "domino theory" as Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran (probably) fall and are torn apart. The intent is to render them ineffectual as sovereign states thus allowing the US to control them without having to occupy them.

Iraq, Syria, and Libya have or had something else in common: they were ruled by dictators but were basically secular states with well-educated and healthy populations with a high degree of social services (true of Iran as well).

Now these features have been destroyed and the countries are riven with religious violence and despair. These are not unintended outcomes of misguided foreign policy but fully-intended consequences of imperial power wielded by the USA using a whole range of weapons including misguided, misanthropic, soulless fools like Chris Kyle.

Don't bother with any of your idiot responses I won't be reading them. That obviously not aimed at Will Grigg or the intelligent commentors here.

Anonymous said...

Go Screw Yourselves Hippies. You will all get your shit handed to you in the end. You got people that want to see you dead because you are not on Mo's team. Liberal or not you are at war yourself. There is a war between the West and the Jihadists that will not end until every one of them are dead. Get used to the violence. It will never stop. Even if you are successful at preventing the US from invading other countries. Obama is invading other countries. He is just using Drones. Yemen for example. How about that for being illegal. Oh it is only illegal when you Godless F's have a Republican in office. I spit on hippies.

William N. Grigg said...

Obama is invading other countries. He is just using Drones. Yemen for example. How about that for being illegal. Oh it is only illegal when you Godless F's have a Republican in office. I spit on hippies.

You're a little late to the party, my spittle-flecked, slogan-spewing, synapse-challenged friend: I've been condemning Obama's drone war campaign for as long as he's defiled the office, beginning with this piece from 2009 --

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-and-predator-left.html

Here are a few others in the same vein:

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-stalinist-in-white-house.html

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2012/12/sandy-hook-massacre-sympathy-from-devil.html

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/01/torture-state-endures.html

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/12/send-in-drones-predator-state-goes.html

Here's one condemning Obama's illegal war in Libya:

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/03/war-machine-on-east-river.html

Do yourself a favor and read the foregoing essays -- or, more likely, have them read to you by a competent adult. You might learn something in spite of yourself.

Anonymous said...

I think you should consider what this world would be like if we didn't have heroes like Mr. Kyle defending our freedom. He was a good man who did a tough job and did it darn well. He died serving our country and your disrespect is both unwarranted and unjustified.

By the way, the proceeds of his book were donated to veterans groups, not kept as personal profit.

Anonymous said...

Allah is the true God.

ʾIblīs said...

*sigh*

This is a tough one to respond to because even though I am often accused of being an anti-American conspirator who excuses the crimes of Saddam when I get into this topic (just so you don't think I'm slanted towards the neoconservative cancer on America's 'humanitarian' foreign policy legacy); I believe the Iraq war was a tragic mistake constructed on flawed premises from a Pentagon-centered perspective that dehumanized the people. But you suffer from impositing your views too much onto this conflict.

First, you have to understand dedicated veterans like the late Mr. Kyle. In his view, as most military combatants deployed on various objectives in numerous hellholes none of them ever thought they'd be in when they enlisted, his job was primarily to make sure his colleagues made it home. Thats what gets them through all these fights, they are not motivated necessarily for the benefit of the host nation. Certainly not to the extent of watching out for the man (and in Iraq combat units were singularly male and female firefights were incidental fuck ups on the part of high command deploying support in unsecured areas w/the exception of air power in heli-transport) next to them. Doesn't make it right or wrong but my experience is that is the single largest motivator for anyone deployed in a combat theater and you have to recognize it.

Second, your implication as so many others that Saddam's regime is spotless also is naive. Sanctions were imposed but as so many insane tyrannical despots do the Hussein family manipulated those to serve their benefits and justify the oppression of their subjects to a greater extent possible. You cannot claim that every human being in that country was a victim of American genocide anymore than every young black male murdered by gang violence in Detroit is a direct victim of the American public purchasing foreign imported automobiles in the 1970s.

Third, having known a number of veterans, and done a significant amount of research, whether you want to get into some kind of bogus Fanonist argument about Montaigne type 'noble savagery' and call a number of religious lunatics "patriots"* as they engaged in ethnic psychotic irrational behavior because you don't like Kyle's descriptions of unaffiliated militias definitely not held accountable to the rules of war and RoE of any nation state you are just being ridiculous for the sake of provocation. People in Iraq WERE the victims of brutal savagery, much of it the result of foreign influence from Wahhabists or Iranian Shia elements like the Badr factions deliberately trained during the sanctions to shred Iraqi society by civil bloodshed.

Entire Sunni neighborhoods were wiped out, people had black and decker drills used to remove their brains, IEDs were strategically placed to disrupt passive civilian moments to maximize terror at places such as markets, weddings, family gatherings. Christians were often the victims of mass shootings and suicide detonations while in service.

If you were to witness the equivalent in the United States I certainly doubt you would call it "patriotism." Oh wait, it HAS* occurred in the US. Do you think religious NUTS like the Branch Davidian were patriots, or ostensible loons armed to the teeth being provocative with incompetent federal agents? Do you think when McVeigh drove a truck full of fertilizer into the Ralph P. Murrah building to spark a national revolt against the ZOG fiction of his and other racist fundamentalists minds he was exhibiting patriotism?

ʾIblīs said...

Sometimes the violence in Iraq was nothing more than a ridiculous justification based on century old tribal rites or hereditary feudal grudges and were intended for nothing more than sensational extrajudicial retribution. Other times it was just losers from outside states such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Syria wandering in to seize the opportunity of kafiris setting up tent on a hajj route to make a name sparking some chaos - and thats not an exagerration, a number of them were there because they'd been rejected by a love interest and felt since they could not serve Allah bearing children they'd do it by jihad. This is documented, I'm not making this up. Its a sign of delusion. Was Cho a patriot for shooting up Virginia Tech? Was Lanza a patriot for gunning down children? Such events happened in Iraq all too often for many of the same demented reasons of failing in a patriarchal society to impress the opposite sex or fit in with anyone besides equally desperate malcontents.

So I'm sorry but I know exactly who Kyle was talking about when he described the "savages." And it wasn't the rank and file wearing face masks for the safety of their family to work alongside US military forces translating citizens to get out of the way at checkpoints or searching women in burq'as entering the city to ensure they weren't smuggling in more IED components or handguns to provide to cells in the city.

Yes the US is morally culpable for not understanding the region and its factions, or placing too much emphasis that they were a threat solely to entitled American citizens instead of to one another. I don't get the impression Kyle is particularly special considering the advantages American forces enjoyed as opposed to Soviet snipers who scored over 400 kills against Nazis in a literal life or death fight for survival with over 10:1 kill ratio against their side in the worst theater of combat in human history. Nor am I naive that Rumsfeld's bombs weren't "smart" enough not to land on men, women, and children who had committed no crime other than to be born within the borders of a regime the US government had deemed unworthy of mutual existence on the same continent as Israel.

But Al Qaeda, or the Insurgency of Levant as they call themselves now in Syria and Al-Anbar province, the Mahdi Army (just an Iraqi counterpart to the insane Ayatollah hordes turning Iran into a liberal's idea of hell for women and homosexuals the last 30 years), the countless militants engaged in domestic violence indistinguishable from the lynch mobs of the Jim Crow era I'm certain you deplore and hold every caucasian born South of the Mason-Dixon line accountable for to this day... they WERE savages. Unequivocably.

ʾIblīs said...

Maybe the women who was going to engage in self immolation was a victim of circumstances; Kyle didn't have time for geopolitics, it was his fellow Americans or her. This is the decision numerous police, hostage negotiators, crisis management psychiatrists face every day in the US and other Western "liberal democracies" with unstable or desperate elements. Sometimes remedies are available... sometimes inaction at the crosshairs results in deaths that could have been prevented by one shot.

I'll boil it down to the fact you have the right to debunk Kyle as the archetypal glorious warrior, but rather than lionize his opposition as infallible it would have been best to say he was a fairly effective braggart just doing his job in a shithole and if he hadn't been there other members of the military were capable of doing the same, with just a lower body count. And I commend you for objecting to portraying collateral murder as the kind of celebration as a Heismann trophy victory.s warrior, but rather than lionize his opposition as infallible it would have been best to say he was a fairly effective braggart just doing his job in a shithole and if he hadn't been there other members of the military were capable of doing the same, with just a lower body count. And I commend you for objecting to portraying collateral murder as the kind of celebration as a Heismann trophy victory.

Russell Barber said...

I am pretty late to this party!

I am a very open minded person, and I can gather how the opinion in this article could point you in the direction that you have gone. There is a minor issue that I have with this. The majority of the people that I served along side in the military joined for employment, and the betterment of their future, yet you fail to see that the majority of the people come from poor communities, generally of lower education level, and lesser means. I can tell from your writing that you have a wonderful grasp on the English language, history,etc. I wonder what school you attended, and how your family covered those costs.

A few points that kind of hit home.

1. There is a major difference, between military personnel being sedated, and receiving anti antidepressants, and a man doing methamphetamine with the express purpose of gaining courage to die for a religious Jihad.

2. You claim that your questioning of authority, and rejection of its policies, and practices is "patriotic" and that you are somehow any better of a man or more honorable than the military personnel that you speak of. I have trouble justifying that, because while these young (maybe that is part of the reason that the buy into the agenda so easily) stand and fight and risk death for the betterment of their situation, even if that means dying on foreign soil. They stand for their beliefs, regardless of your take on said beliefs. Your self and many others such as yourself that post here, speak of war crimes, civilian casualties, and the risk to yourselves. You speak of defending your home to the death, but have never fired a shot nor taken a single life for your belief. On the other side of that, they, your enemy, are clearly accessible, yet you do nothing except question it, and complain about it.

Since the folks here like their historic quotes as well.

"The Tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots, and tyrants"

So I ask you in most humble fashion, instead of speaking on the cowardice of people who may of may not put them selves in striking range of an enemy either armed or unarmed.
WHEN WILL YOU STAND FOR YOUR BELIEF, AND RISK YOUR BLOOD BEING SPILLED INSTEAD OF SITTING AND TALKING ABOUT IT?

Wonderful blog, and a well thought out piece, but i do not believe that patriotism, not courage come from posting words on the computer, so when will you put your life, and liberty on the line?

My humble guess sir is that you won't. You have nay the courage, nor the heart to do so. If you so fear a police state, I am sure that your blog will stop the overtaking force, and protect your family when the wolf you describe is at your door. Good luck, and thanks for the pseudo intellectual rants that you make. Congrats on your followers, and maybe you can start a militia, and be more than "patriots by use of the written word"

William N. Grigg said...

The majority of the people that I served along side in the military joined for employment, and the betterment of their future, yet you fail to see that the majority of the people come from poor communities, generally of lower education level, and lesser means....[T]hese young (maybe that is part of the reason that the buy into the agenda so easily) stand and fight and risk death for the betterment of their situation, even if that means dying on foreign soil. They stand for their beliefs, regardless of your take on said beliefs.

Exactly the same thing can be said of people who seek "opportunity" by joining a criminal gang of the conventional kind -- something Cicero, among others, pointed out millennia ago.

You speak of defending your home to the death, but have never fired a shot nor taken a single life for your belief.

Killing is always a dubious means of displaying one's courage, particularly when done from a comfortable distance for reasons that won't withstand moral scrutiny. Looking at what has become of Iraq in recent days, it's clear that nothing "accomplished" in the war and occupation of that country was worth the death of a single American or Iraqi.

i do not believe that patriotism, not courage come from posting words on the computer

-- but you do appear to believe that those virtues are displayed by killing distant and largely helpless people who have done our country no harm.

Anonymous said...

I hope that the one extremist Chris Kyle did not shoot, crosses the border from Mexico, and suicide blasts Will's ass.

William N. Grigg said...

...because that's the kind of thing that could actually happen, correct?

I grant that since the actions Chris Kyle and his comrades did a great deal to exacerbate the problem of anti-American animosity, the danger you describe is marginally greater now than it was before the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Anonymous said...

Movies coming out, the political situation has changed, and with all that has occurred in the waning days of Obama presidency, I must wonder if the "libertarian" far right is still so cock sure in shitting on its nation and those who defend it? You are the uber patriots after all.

William N. Grigg said...

The political situation hasn't changed all that dramatically; Obama has differed little from his Republican predecessor where foreign policy is concerned. He has continued to attack Muslim countries without constitutional authorization, just as Bush did.

After following Bush's timetable to leave Iraq, the US government is now at war with ISIS, the group that was brought to power with the indispensable help of supposed heroes like Chris Kyle. The same people who told us that Saddam was an existential threat to the US now insist that ISIS is a far greater menace than Saddam ever was. This would mean, of course, that the Iraq war was (at best) a horrible strategic error, not that such people would ever admit as much.

With respect to the upcoming agitprop film, here's my take on the teaser trailer: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/chris-kyle-clint-eastwood-and-a-film-trailer-heinrich-himmler-would-admire/

Anonymous said...

Joshua Chicoine said...

Movies coming out, the political situation has changed, and with all that has occurred in the waning days of Obama presidency, I must wonder if the "libertarian" far right is still so cock sure in shitting on its nation and those who defend it? You are the uber patriots after all.

To which "nation" are you referring, Joshua? Because if it's the United States of America, I have bad news for you: that nation doesn't exist anymore. It died with the abandonment of its founding principles and the Constitution that codified them. This process didn't happen overnight -- it took many decades -- but the final nail in the coffin was arguably the NDAA, which dispenses with the due process guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Libertarians are trying to resurrect America. We want to see the Bill of Rights restored, freedom respected, and justice upheld (not only for Americans, but for EVERYONE). America has never truly lived up to its ideals, but in recent years it has strayed from them at an alarming rate.

As for "those who defend this nation," Will has already explained repeatedly why the military is NOT defending America by attacking foreigners who pose zero military threat to the US. "But what about 9/11?" some will ask. That could have happened just as easily if the US military had already been occupying every Muslim country on earth. What the military does on the other side of the planet has no effect on what someone already residing within the US might do -- unless those military actions provoke someone within the US to carry out a terrorist act.

In fact, we have already seen that happen. Did the "War on Terror" prevent the 7/7 attacks in England? Did it stop the Boston Marathon bombers? How about the other attempted attacks, like the underwear bomber a few years back? No. Our foreign aggression incited those attacks.

Anonymous said...

Reading over the comments on this thread, it's truly sad to see just how brainwashed so many people are. Will has shown admirable patience in attempting to get these Beavis and Butthead types to think for once in their lives, but I fear that he may not be able to win this battle. How do you reason with those who are incapable of reason?

The Hannitized, lobotomized, two-digit-IQ brigade are incapable of comprehending politics except in the most simplistic terms. It's entirely about "conservatives versus liberals" -- "conservative" being defined, of course, by the neocon Republican establishment. Anyone who disagrees with their agenda is -- what else? -- a "liberal."

Notice how the non-thinkers here continue to parrot the propaganda about how the military is "defending our freedom" by attacking foreigners, yet not one of them has been able to explain

(1) how those foreigners could possibly threaten our freedom when they could never in a million years manage to occupy a country as vast and well-armed as the US, even if we didn't have a push-button ICBM deterrent against foreign militaries;

and

(2) how Americans can be claim to be "free" when living under a government that recognizes no absolute limits on its power; that imprisons millions for victimless crimes; that spies on its population to an extent that the KGB and Stasi couldn't have dreamed of; that allows the police to brutalize the public with almost perfect impunity; that corrals protesters into "free speech zones"; that allows police to confiscate valuable assets from citizens without arrest, trial, or conviction, but merely a statement of suspicion that the assets were obtained in conjunction with the drug trade; and that otherwise shows contempt for its own Constitution in just about every way possible.

No matter how many times it's carefully explained to some folks, they just can't get their minds around the fact that the "American" government is actually anti-American. It is opposed to all of the great principles the Founders believed in. The military is there to serve that government and the special interests who bribe that government, NOT the people of the country.

As for this movie about the psychopath Chris Kyle, of course it's a Pentagon propaganda effort. The Pentagon, and the US government in general, is known to be in cahoots with Hollywood. (They probably had the idea to eventually make a propaganda movie out of the Jessica Lynch "heroism under fire" tale, though to her credit she was too honest to play along.)

Anonymous said...

You stupid uneducated misinformed fuck, please...learn about the subjects before you play with fire.

Anonymous said...

Looks like Mr.Sniper Karma (ed) - out. Funny, as a Vet, I feel nothing but Disdain for this man.

Former Marine STA Ptl. 3/6

Anonymous said...

The American boobousie just loves them some psychopaths!

Anonymous said...

chris kyle was not a hero- a hero is not someone who invades another country illegally and murders their civilians. chris kyle was a war criminal. he shot unarmed women and children from a distance, likely in the back. a real hero sniper, simo hayha, shot 505 russians attempting to invade HIS country in one winter- that's right, he shot real invaders and killed twice as many as chris kyle CLAIMS he did in 10 years. as to the veracity of chris kyle's claims, i note that he was proven in court to have lied his ass off about fighting jesse ventura- it never happened. and from that we can determine that much of what chris kyle claimed also likely never happened.

Anonymous said...

oh- i forgot to mention- chris kyle did not write his own book- he hired a ghost writer. i would hate to see the text if they allowed him to write the words...

Anonymous said...

Why is it that every one of the posts that disagree with this very intelligent article have some sort of punctuation or spelling error. Stupid is as stupid writes, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Goodness, I have read some of the most hateful comments ever. I understand not being in agreement about these issues, but many of the haters are worse than what you accuse this man to be.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Anonymous, you're the type of idiot who blindly believes that ridiculous claim Chris made. When there is no evidence verifying it.

Guy said...

An obscene comment written by an anonymous coward to praise the writing of a man whose thinking represents all that is wrong with America today.

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