Let us stop for a moment to reflect that a former Vice Presidential candidate (...) and a distinguished military hero have cheekily joked at the idea of killing Moore. Why? Because the latter had the temerity to question the heroism of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. No Charlie Hebdo cartoons will be tolerated about the icons and ideals they hold dear. It is a shocking backlash given the outcry for freedom of speech of late and makes clear the standard is “your beliefs, not mine” when it comes to critique. According to the Church of Appropriate American Patriotism, the heroic image of Chris Kyle is made sacred.(...) I think it’s worth stating and understanding that where the rubber meets the road, most people hold others to standards they often fail to meet, it’s human.
I suppose the hypocrites in the Western world are no better than their dearest foreign enemies, and would have taken their place if born in their country.
Concerning Kyle; I don't know much about him, nor will this change since I am thoroughly disinterested. A very high kill count in a rather low intensity war of occupation doesn't smell right in my opinion, though.
S O
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From Matt Taibbi's piece about the movie in the Rolling Stone
ReplyDelete(The most disturbing passage in the book to me was the one where Kyle talked about being competitive with other snipers, and how when one in particular began to threaten his "legendary" number, Kyle "all of the sudden" seemed to have "every stinkin' bad guy in the city running across my scope." As in, wink wink, my luck suddenly changed when the sniper-race got close, get it? It's super-ugly stuff).
He's more emblematic of the psychopathic nature of America's wars abroad than the heroism the propaganda effort is trying to portray. The war was a chance for men like Kyle to kill with impunity and they took advantage of it.
IMO comparing the two is apples and oranges. No one in the U.S. is being killed for saying really insulting and stupid things about Chris Kyle. Chris Kyle is a hero and was a man that was not perfect. I think what bothers me so much about the morons like Michael Moore is the plain politics of it all. They hated Bush, they hated the war so they hate someone who believed in what he was doing and his country. If Chris Kyle had been a card caring member of the Democrat party and Obama supporter you would not be hearing anything bad about the man. Sure, a person has freedom of speech, but he can still be an a-hole. I read the book and liked it. I saw the movie and did not care for it. IMO the movie was cheesy and took things out of context compared to the book. I do understand why many Americans like like the movie and for those who do not want to see it then don't. Many of us believe in the red, white and blue, Star Spangled Banner, apple pie and all that stuff. The movie is for us, not you/them (I'm not talking about you Sven). What is wrong with people?
ReplyDeletegute
I'm posting again because I want to comment on your last sentence. Sure it was a low intensity occupation but it was target rich with an enemy that may have been brave at times but stupid. There is another book out there titled The Shooter by a retired Marine Corps Gunny. He killed a lot of people during the initial invasion and no one that I'm aware of has questioned the numbers. During the First Battle of Fallujah Marine Corps snipers took a heavy toll on the insurgents. Maybe its the type of combat - urban that pushes the numbers up. Many enemy in a confined space at relatively short distances. I believe both the German and Red Armies lost a lot of men to snipers in battles such as Moscow and Stalingrad. Of course those were not occupations, but it was urban combat. Just my opinion.
ReplyDeletegute
Moore's comments were very disrespectful and incendiary - there was no attempt at a civil discussion regarding honor and bravery. Moore's motivation appears to be entirely motivated by political spin. The left in American politics has a long history of this sort of nonsense going back to the Vietnam, the most outrageous example being Jane Fonda who turned over information from U.S. POWs to the North Vietnamese and resulted in these POWs being tortured. Worse still, was the general (to extreme) disrespect shown to American troops returning home from Vietnam by the American left.
ReplyDeleteMoore also has been demonstrated to be a hypocrite, who has been quite outspoken about the wealthy, while concealing the fact that he owns large estates. He is an easy target for vitrol, but no one should be subject to even mock threats.
The upshot of all this is that there has been a real chilling effect on discussions of this sort and a very ridiculous taboo here that rarely existed before. After all, the English were able to accept Nelson for his flaws, as have you Germans accepted Frederick the Great. That is not the state of American politics now.
P.S. - no one who served with Kyle has any issues with his battlefield performance, nor do they dispute his "body count", which is the heart of the argument. He did what he was supposed to do in combat, apparently treated his wife and children well when he came back, and died as a result of trying to help a fellow veteran. I do not understand the criticism.
As to the high "body count" we must consider that: 1) he was in combat for ~ 1,000 days (!) - an extraordinary amount of time; 2) "low intensity" is a misnomer as Kyle was not deployed to defend static positions, but specifically to support operations; 3) historically sniper kills have been seriously *under counted* - the more intense the combat, the less time people have to obsess about numbers after the fact.
GAB
"Moore also has been demonstrated to be a hypocrite, who has been quite outspoken about the wealthy, while concealing the fact that he owns large estates."
DeleteThat's not hypocrisy - it's intransparency at most. There is no obligation to be egoistic in regard to public policies only because one is rich.
He didn't decide to close owned factories, didn't inherit millions and is one of the few rich people who can claim to have made a fortune mostly thanks to his own productivity (as opposed to paying workers minimum wage etc.).
This perception that left-wing rich people are hypocrites is nonsense, biased, propaganda and dirty rhetoric. Just as it's wrong when leftists expect every poor man to favour income redistribution in his favour.
"no one who served with Kyle has any issues with his battlefield performance"
DeleteThis quote is false, but I'm not interested in going into details about a single dead man.
People who adore heroes tend to serve their own desires more than to have a clear idea about the realities of warfare. Everybody who calls someone "hero" drops a tell-tale sign about the own psyche in my opinion.
"no one who served with Kyle has any issues with his battlefield performance"
Delete==============================
Please provide contrary evidence.
GAB
SO "This perception that left-wing rich people are hypocrites is nonsense, biased, propaganda and dirty rhetoric."
Delete======================================
Stop - I was talking about "Michael Moore" - there are plenty of hypocrites on both ends of the political spectrum.
On Michael Moore:
1. Moore's comments were very disrespectful and incendiary. You can dance about the topic, but he made a complete ass of himself and his comments about snipers are out there to display his ignorance for eternity.
2. Moore is a hypocrite: I could care less if he is wealthy or not, but the specific comments he has made in the past do not square with the life style he actually lives.
GAB
Look it up yourself, I'm not interested enough to dig up the sources again, and you won't change mind on Kyle anyway.
DeleteThe sniper excesses in Fallujah and Ramadi while Kyle was there, the AK bait tactic by snipers publicly known since 2007 and criticism regarding the bending of tightened RoE are all dirt on Kyle's white vest.
You should also look up the definition of hypocrisy.
Moore doesn't criticize the rich for being rich, but for exploiting and impoverishing the middle class. That's not what he did or does.
And nobody should give a shit whether anybody thinks some comments were "disrespectful and incendiary". Such complaints remind me of Mohammed caricature haters.
Deep aversion against snipers is very widespread. The current sniper adoration fashion doesn't quite offer that perspective, but snipers were, are and will be more hated than loved. Their sniping is primarily a harassment activity and rarely helps their comrades, after all.
SO
DeleteUnless *YOU* can identify someone by name who served with in Kyle in combat who claims some abuse or dereliction then you are at best spreading crap.
I was part of the SOF community, and nobody has anything but praise for the man’s effectiveness on the job. He took care of his team mates. He took care of his wife and kids when he got home, and his life was cut short by somebody he was trying to help.
The guy had a mouth and was a handful, but you must have been a flower during your service - no grunt or SOF guy I have worked with waxed poetic about the enemy, or was above a lot of brash talk.
GAB
P.S. – contrary to your comments, people in the USA are not running around after seeing the movie and marveling at the people he killed, they are struck by his sacrifice, what he (and others) did in uniform, and his attempts to help others after his service.
Hypocrite: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
DeleteMichael Moore’s net worth is over $50 million, which puts him well into the 99th percentile (the upper 1%) of income bracket in the United States. You would never know that by the act he puts on though.
Here he is on CNN after weeks of pretending to be average joe decrying “dreaded 1%” in 2011 trying to tell Piers Morgan that he is not one of the “1%” when plainly he is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/michael-moore-piers-morgan_n_1032428.html
Shorter version here on CNN
http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/25/is-michael-moore-part-of-the-1-i-am-devoting-my-life-to-those-who-have-less/
GAB
P.S. he never provided his income tax forms as he told Morgan, and no one knows how much he gives to charity – if anything. What a wonderful source of truth and breath of clarity.
I just looked up the first six dictionaryies I could find on goodle about "hypocrisy" and "hypocrite", and all of them show that a rich man can criticize the behaviour ofother rich people without being a hypocrite.
DeleteMoore didn't publish a book or film in 2010, so it's reasonable to think his income was less than a million that year. The burden of proof is with his critics. The "1%" thing is usually about income, not net worth.
"Unless *YOU* can identify someone by name who served with in Kyle in combat who claims some abuse or dereliction then you are at best spreading crap."
... in your imagination. Look it up; I wrote hardly anything about Kyle here. I knew it would just provoke a useless distraction by sniper fanbois if I did.
And those allegations about RoE bending which I'm too lazy to look up again were from former comrades of his.