OPINION:
There is a beautiful reflective silence that exists on former battlegrounds from Gettysburg to Normandy. No one who knows war wants war. When our soldiers arrived in Iraq, we saw al-Qaeda move in at us. Our men battled jihadist troops who rallied after their leaders struck on September 11, 2001. Training manuals and tactics used by al-Qaeda are barbaric. They advocate killing women and children in the name of Islam. Cartoons mocking Mohammad meet with sizzling hot steel. They have no empathy for you and me, nor our troops. The choice we face is kill or be killed.
Since the release of the piercingly immersive, emotionally-charged film “American Sniper,” based on the experiences of the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, Chris Kyle, a flash from a different form of sniping came from the likes of television host Bill Maher, director Michael Moore, and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. The three men took shots respectively at Kyle’s mental health, the character of snipers, and the dark mood of the film’s audience. Their verbal firings disturbed people from Ohio to Oslo, who’ve slept well at night because of the security and safety the U.S. provides them through its armed men and women.
But imagine an elite charity event in Cannes, France attended by Maher, Moore, and actor Seth Rogen (who also took a cheap shot at the film). They sip champagne on a 130 foot yacht overlooking the glistening moonlit ocean. Suddenly, a black motorboat appears, and five jihadist killers enter with Kalashnikovs pointed right at them. They take hostage the three American newsmakers; bags wrestled over their heads as they’re tossed into the boat’s bowels as it races toward the horizon. What images would flash across each of the American captives minds? Would they continue to diss modern warriors like Kyle?
No one captured by ISIS or al-Qaeda wouldn’t want rescuing. Would Maher call Kyle a psychopath if one of Kyle’s bullets saves Maher’s head from rolling by a jihadist?
In World War II, Adolf Hitler wanted us dead, but we prevailed. “The Man In The High Castle,” a new pilot produced by Ridley Scott, centers on a 1962 Philip K. Dick novel about a world in which the Nazis and Japanese won World War II. It happens in 1962 in a defeated, occupied America divided into a “Greater Nazi Reich from the Atlantic to the Rockies, and the Japanese on the Pacific Coast”.
Today our lives are changed by rogue single cell lone wolves worldwide. ISIS is the real enemy. And our elite troops are on our front lines
Hitler tried to kill us, and we overcame that threat thanks to the heroes who served in that war. Al-Qaeda ans ISIS are the threats of our generation. They’ve threatened to “transform America into a Muslim province”, and they want every American Christian and Jew gone from this world.
Ironically, warriors like Chris Kyle fought so Moore, Rogen and Maher can exercise a license to speak freely. He protected them from oppressors who want to kill all cartoonists and hosts of political shows who speak ill of Muhammad.
Kyle voluntarily signed up to protect our country from foes…foreign and domestic. Not many people do that. He was sent on four tours of duty in Iraq and became known as The Legend. And by killing so many al-Qaeda bad guys, he saved hundreds of American lives: husbands, brothers, and sons who came home alive because of Chris Kyle. That constitutes a hero.
Chris didn’t make the decision to invade Iraq. He was told to do his job for his country. He was a pro. Yes, he may have said he liked killing, but since when do we want loving snipers? Do we really want loving “Sponge Bob “Out Of Water” types in sniper roles? If you risk your life in war, you are not a coward. The soldiers pay with their lives or with a razor blade pool of PTSD images and steel splinters left in their psyche. They do what they are ordered to do. Part of a brotherhood. Men at arms.
To some elites like Maher and Moore, Kyle is a macho archetype to be mocked and black-eyed with smartphone keys.
But every successful republic had to have a warrior class to protect itself.
Consider the 300 in Sparta or the powerful Roman army. Some may want a pacifist warrior in America. But to those who know our greatness as a nation comes from our strength, we must fight. Let’s stop the attempt by some to emasculate the American warrior and its warrior class. Let’s not denigrate our elite fighting forces.
ISIS is developing its versions of Chris Kyle, aiming for you, me, and our children. We need warriors like Kyle in this fight to defend against radical jihadists, a battle over the very survival of Judea-Christian civilization. We need to see the distinction between not glorifying war and the need to glorify protectors. For without them, we are no longer a nation. We become the sheep.
“American Sniper” ends in silence. Silence that gives you a chance to retreat, sense the inner sounds and feelings of what it means to be close to a leader who saved our men, fighting for us, to end al-Qaeda’s reign. Silence that has united most Americans to remember the importance of honoring those great American warriors who fight to keep this country strong against those who come to take our heads. We salute you.
Eric Schiffer is CEO of Digitalmarketing.com and the chairman of ReputationManagementConsultants.com.
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