American Sniper is a 2014 high-powered American action and drama film directed by Clint Eastwood. It is based on Chris Kyle's autobiography "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History". With 255 kills in Iraq, 160 of which were officially confirmed by the Department of Defense, Kyle is the deadliest marksman in U.S. military history. He earned himself several so-called praised titles such as the "Legend" and Longest recorded sniper kills list. At the same time, a tremendous spike in racist fueled hate crimes and threats against the Muslim Arab communities has been reported in the United States.
Earning millions of dollars from the first week of limited theater release and racking up several accolades for the Best of the whatever, what does this movie mean to those who watched it and are being grossly misrepresented? We are all too familiar with the Hollywood portrayal of its US soldiers tough bad boy with a thirst for blood and revenge stemming from their sense of patriotic duty to their country yet with hearts of gold back in his hometown while he is a trigger happy killing machine in the war lands of Iraq and other Muslim countries.
Media is another form of medium to express certain views to society as a whole. Now when multi-million dollar blockbuster hits do just do this, several points are struck. Film directors who think themselves as creatively expressing their perspective on a massive war built on false grounds from the very start of the declaration of the war on Iraq and its people - rather as the government bluffed it on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The narrative is woven as a flimsy myth of the wide sweeping propaganda mouthpiece for the war dialogue...kill, kill and kill some more because everyone is a threat from the man in a suit to a woman in a black abaya and the kid going to school. The film quotes remarks from the real-life Kyle as saying "I hated the damn savages I'd been fighting ....Savage, despicable, evil - that's what we were fighting in Iraq." Unsurprisingly, this movie was flooded with an accolade of award nominations so as to confirm the validity of the film material to the general public both at home in the States and abroad. As one film critic said "it's about a real person," and "it's a human story, not a political one." How can this NOT be a political one?!
Well for starters the sheer capacity to fully incite movie audiences to unleash or "take-out the Arabs" or "need to kill some ragheads" and other worse obscenities cannot be dismissed as naively telling a human story. Where is the humanity in a massacre-styled film that incites racism and violence towards an entire ethnicity who live in the same country? Abed Ayoub is the legal director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, DC said there has a drastic rise in hate crimes and threats against the Arab community. Salon writer, Sophia A. Mcclennen, wrote, "The film draws a direct link between the events of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, forgetting completely that the war in Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Not one of the attackers that day was in any way connected to Iraq. Thus to connect 9/11 to Iraq is delusional. Not even the Bush administration made that overt a link."
So now issues to tackle: 9/11 link to the Iraq war; hate crimes against Arab Muslims or anyone who is deemed similar or some-how related to this ethnicity and the insatiable appetite for the violence and blood in American culture; politics disguised in the form of film expression; and the responsibility of censorship or lack of and the free expression model.
Well for starters, the 9/11 link is completely absurd since it has been proven that the Bush-Cheney decision to attack Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 incidents, it was in search for the alleged weapons of mass destruction in which the United States spearheaded a global campaign to invade Iraq which it is still entangled after more than a decade with devastating results of course with no show of WMDs early on. The film feeds to the general population's lack of political and general awareness almost like the sensational news absurdities that try to brand themselves as legitimate news agencies but instead spew out false and slanted news to fill a specific political aim. The war mantra, the kill mantra, the our way no way else mantra that tries to justify government foreign policy for war against terror throughout the Muslim lands using whatever means necessary to accomplish the task be they innocent or proven guilty doesn't matter to the Kyle types.
Taking us into the second point, sadly these ever-increasing Kyle types are now being pumped while sitting in movie theaters who then leave the premises to take action against anyone filling the prototype of the terrorist be it an Arab store clerk or Muslim student or mosque or Islamic school all which seen a drastic spike in harassment and abuse. This violent culture has many intellectuals outraged of how the American society that is supposed to promote human rights (or is that only a cover to get into Muslim lands?) is supposed to act. Where is the moral fiber that fosters humanity and respect - apparently it is invisible to the American eye. Hollywood movies exposes the lust for blood and violence kneaded into American culture - a regular person who sees on-screen violence gets psyched up to do more killings in a "certified valid environment" called war zones but often it flows into local schoolyards and commonplaces. Where is the compassion and thinking mind of the human race that is supposed to set apart animals from humans?
Bullying on school premises and social media, harassment in the work environment, property vandalism is the norm in western cultures, sort of a thing to be expected as they say "get over it, boys will be boys". However this just does not happen, at the heart of it is a morally depraved core which in turn has turned into a multi-billion dollar business from video games to movies.
Spilling over to the political scene because who can deny the Counterstrike videogames do not resemble the Mid-East and Afghan terrains and constant voice-over of "terrorist dead" while gunning away. So when Clint Eastwood, former cowboy actor legend, produced a movie that feeds into the war mantra of American society, of course he and his work are going to serve several aims. Politically, this movie shows to the public that violence is simply OK because in the end you get want you want.... So we have the CIA torture methods on Al-Qaida members or anyone who seems to look like them (whatever that may be), we have the Guantanamo Bay camp still operating, drone bombardments, and even on-site detention centers at overseas military bases so it is more convenient for the involved. Naom Chomsky mortified at American Sniper film critic reviews said during a Cambridge event, "Now, that [sniper] mentality helps explain why it's so easy to ignore what is most clearly the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern history, if not ever - Obama's global assassination campaign, the drone campaign, which officially is aimed at murdering people who are suspected of maybe someday planning to harm us."
Underneath this movie span, it shows wars in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are justified, that Americans are doing a duty to their country, killing anyone who holds the potential to be a threat. And so the decade plus wars are something of necessity and the recruitment and deployment of troops to fight Obama's wars leftover from the Bush era is also essential. Thus critics will tout and applaud this killing machine propaganda to imprint a longer-lasting impact on the general population. Media can be best described as the government mouthpiece - it can either perpetuate a specific situation or calm an impending storm.
But where does this leave censorship and the free expression model? Simply put - take things into context. American Sniper was shown first in independent film screenings then made its way into mainstream theaters which coincided with Europe's free speech parades with the shameful Charlie Hebdo Magazine publishing its record breaking issues depicting insults to the Prophet PBUH held and revered by more than a billion people worldwide. Now to the regular person and top government heads who stand by brazen attacks to insult and humiliate anything and anyone held sacred to others when it only comes to the other - Muslims and Islam- but for the remaining world population this becomes a red line and anyone who dares criticize anything outside of the box including government policies and other forms of governments, the world cries wolf starting from the rulers of the Muslim countries while hypocritically marching for free-expression in Paris side by side with other killing machines of the world. And thus we see floggings in Saudi Arabia, security measures in Britain, spying in US mosques, blackouts in Jordan, the list goes on. So the free expression model is basically the world's biggest myth or more accurately - a lie. If it serves the purpose of government policy or does not touch certain groups, it is completely acceptable and encouraged. However, if it grotesquely offends nearly a third of the world's population, they need to mutely submit to the engrained in the clouds notion of free expression otherwise risk abuse and being ostracized. We go to back to the use of mind and decency, how can we expect dialogue based on rational thinking and proper manners (something now of the past in western cultures) to take place? If someone is to discuss sound ideas and concepts, a person with a sound mind must exist. If massive fear mongering and taught hatred is looming everywhere from our social media networks, TV screens, and government verbiage, how can we expect sound discussion to take place?
Actually this is evidence of an intellectually defunct ideology if it no longer holds up its ideas and values on the basis of civilized discourse and manners which include rational thinking. Thereby resorting to brash and intimidation style methods to make Muslim populations forcibly submit to ways of life contradictory to their belief system. It is imperative during this ferocious time that Muslims hold on to their belief systems and ideals to stand up using the strength of Islam to reveal the lies of democracy and other false freedoms being promoted by the West and show the core values of Islam and its practicality in remedying decaying minds and souls to return ideals such as humanity and decency back to society, embracing an ideology that came to enlighten minds and spirits. Looking to the past, Islam showed the comprehensiveness to encapsulate all without denying or trampling over others but raising all of humankind to elevated statuses. And this comprehensiveness remains whole if it is to be implemented completely as a system in domestic policies and foreign policies, which all to see the true capacity of its ideology allowing for complete embracement by others without insult or ostracization.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Manal Bader
