Millions of Americans have flocked to movie theaters to see “American Sniper,” director Clint Eastwood’s outstanding portrayal of the story of Chris Kyle, a heroic Navy SEAL and unparalleled sharpshooter who served four combat tours in Iraq. The film has been celebrated with standing ovations from theater audiences in homage to Kyle and all American forces who’ve served and sacrificed in this war.
Acclaim and appreciation for this movie hasn’t been universal, however. Predictably, it’s been viciously and stupidly attacked by the usual suspects on the loony left, including Michael Moore. While branding Kyle’s actions as a Navy SEAL sniper cowardly, Moore at the same time praised an Iraqi sniper in the film as a “brave neighbor,” defending his home from American invaders.
That sniper wasn’t simply an Iraqi. He was a member of al-Qaeda who killed not only Americans, but also Iraqi civilians who opposed al-Qaeda. His first loyalty was to Osama bin Laden and his murderous theology. Al-Qaeda and its offshoot, the Islamic State, brutally murder Iraqi men, women and children, and behead foreign civilians and journalists they hold for ransom.
These are Moore’s heroes?
Does he also regard sharpshooter Sgt. Alvin York, awarded the Medal of Honor in World War I, as a coward? Or American snipers in the Revolutionary War? Kyle’s duty from his rooftop position was to defend American soldiers patrolling the streets of an urban war zone from al-Qaeda ambushes. In that role, he was forced to make constant, split-second, life-and-death, shoot-or-no-shoot decisions between innocent Iraqi civilians and those who constituted imminent threats to the soldiers he was protecting. A mistaken judgment could earn him a court martial or get his comrades killed. That trepidation contributed heavily to the PTSD he suffered after returning home.
Bryan Sykes, a U.S. Army Green Beret sniper, calls Moore “a mouth-breathing, Crisco-sweating waste of space not even worthy of being in the presence of a sniper.” He wrote him a letter offering a hostage scenario with Moore held at knife-point by a crazed person set on bleeding him out on Hollywood Boulevard for all the world to see. With a sniper being Moore’s only rescue, Sykes asked, “Would you want that ‘coward’ to take the shot? Because knowing how you feel about snipers such as myself and your hatred of firearms, I’d probably drop the mag, roll the bolt and go get a Jack & Coke before helping you out.”
Moore and his ilk fall into a peculiar variety of radical-leftist Americans who hate their own country. He’s an armchair revolutionary with a utopian notion of an imaginary Marxist paradise that’s never been and never will be. He obsesses on the faults of our history and ignores its overriding virtues. He hates our heroes and the traditional values of “bourgeois” America.
This hypocrite condemns capitalism and masquerades as a champion of the common man while living a lavish lifestyle that includes a 10,000-square-foot mansion in an exclusive neighborhood in Michigan and an opulent Manhattan condo. His $50 million fortune, estimated from his recent divorce, was derived ─in the same capitalist economy he condemns ─ through his production of propagandistic, schlockumentary films rife with distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies.
As George Orwell profoundly explained, “To abjure violence is a luxury which a delicate few enjoy only because others stand ready to do violence in their behalf.”
Chris Kyle was among those who made that stand while Michael Moore got fat and rich.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. on 850-KOA.
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