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David Walsh Correspondent
The promotion and defence of Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” is the latest means by which the political and media establishment in the US is pursuing its militaristic agenda.

Such is the ferocity of this campaign that the relatively toothless critical comments of filmmaker Michael Moore and actor-director Seth Rogen have provoked controversy and brought down upon them a torrent of abuse. The two have been denounced as “traitors,” and Moore has received death threats.

“American Sniper” is part of the effort to create a mythology around the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US military, an undertaking that has destroyed that Middle Eastern country’s infrastructure, provoked a murderous sectarian civil war and led to the deaths of one million or more Iraqis.

The motive is not simply to legitimise past crimes, but to intimidate and poison public opinion and undermine opposition to future and even greater crimes.

The hero of “American Sniper” is Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), a Navy SEAL who reportedly killed 160 or more Iraq insurgents. The film paints him as an upright, patriotic, God-fearing individual who was prompted to join the military, above all, by the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks.

The sequences set in Iraq present the American forces as engaged in a righteous campaign against an almost inconceivably savage and evil foe. “American Sniper’s” attitude toward Iraqis, and Arabs generally, is hostile and contemptuous. The US forces represent order, modernity, civilisation and sanity; the Iraqis — superstition, backwardness, treachery and violence. The American soldiers are obliged, according to the logic of the film, to exterminate great numbers of Iraqis both in self-defence and as some sort of act of public hygiene.

The work never raises a single question about the legitimacy of the Iraq war, its origins, its historical context or its larger geopolitical implications. “American Sniper” is intended to block questioning and criticism.

A determined attempt is underway in the US to revive the jingoistic spirit of “My country, right or wrong,” so discredited in the eyes of millions through the experience of the Vietnam War.

The primitivism of the film’s outlook is matched by the primitivism of the psychology and motivations depicted. The stolid Kyle is single-minded about protecting American lives; his rather whiny wife is single-minded about having him return home; the filthy Iraqis are single-minded about killing Americans, etc. Whitewashing a bloody, criminal operation in a comprehensive fashion is a time-consuming and, in its own way, demanding task; the filmmakers had little energy left over to create believable, complex human characters or dialogue.

It should be noted that Eastwood’s film considerably downplays and dilutes Kyle’s semi-fascistic views and behaviour. Cooper is a far more subdued and sorrowful individual than Kyle as the latter describes himself in his autobiography.

The son of a South-western Bell and AT&T manager, who was also a deacon and owned a small business, Kyle (whose plan was to become a ranch manager) grew up in semi-rural, north-central Texas in an atmosphere steeped in militarism, anti-communism and “family and traditional values”. It is hard to conceive of a more reactionary background.

As for Kyle’s insights into the Iraq war, his ghost-written memoir states: “Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’”

He adds: “My country sent me out there so that bullshit wouldn’t make its way back to our shores. I never once fought for the Iraqis. I could give a flying fuck about them . . . I loved what I did. I still do . . . it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.”

When he was investigated for allegedly killing an unarmed civilian, Kyle, an anti-Muslim bigot, told an army colonel: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”

Kyle also served briefly as a bodyguard for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Extreme right-wing Christian fanaticism and related fascistic notions are reportedly prevalent in elite US death squads such as the SEALs and Army Special Forces.

The liberal critics, who have either shifted far to the right themselves or are thoroughly cowed, generally responded favourably to “American Sniper”. David Denby in the New Yorker, for example, argued that the film “is both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior’s skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery.”

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott, while not quite placing the present work among Eastwood’s “great movies,” found that “its considerable power derives from the clarity and sincerity of its bedrock convictions. Less a war movie than a western . . . it is blunt and effective, though also troubling.”

Official Hollywood joined in the foul campaign to promote “American Sniper” January 15 by bestowing six Academy Award nominations on the film, including in the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay categories.

The critics, the media and the entertainment establishment were clearly going to present no problem to the pro-war counter-offensive aimed at deadening public consciousness.

The “controversy” that emerged in late January was more of a provocation than anything else. — WSWS.