Every movie rewrites history. What American Sniper did is much, much worse.

Vox ^ | 1/22 | Amanda Taub

[TangledUpInBlue]

merican Sniper has a problem. It's a movie about a black-and-white distinction between good and evil, but it is set almost entirely in the Iraq War, which can only be honestly portrayed in shades of gray.

Faced with a choice between altering its narrative to account for that gray versus altering the facts of history, the film chose the latter. It adopted an "honesty shmonesty" approach to the war: in its retelling, Iraq was a fight of Good Americans against Bad Terrorists, led by Chris Kyle, the Good-est American of them all.

[alloysteel]

There are no shades of grey, when it comes to the Muslims and the Islamic threat to the world. Muslims as individuals may cease and desist in their involvement with the plots of the Islamic jihadist terrorists. The may die, perhaps horribly, for refusing to comply with the demands of obviously mentally unbalanced persons, but until the world of Islam is rid of this demented view of humanity that fosters the rationalizations of the Islamic jihadist terrorists, no Muslim is safe.

[mrsmel]

OK, I admit it, that’s a new one to me:) What’s the front “J” stand for?

[2CAVTrooper]

Where is the barf alert?

[chesley]

I don’t really see where we disagree, I didn’t say liberals weren’t evil pieces of snake excrement. I just said that here was a difference in how they thought that didn’t have to reference their moral character or motives.

[JmyBryan]

Well, how about Japan?

[PapaNew]

I’m talking about unprovoked, preemptive invasion with the purpose of changing a sovereign nation’s government. THAT was what Japan was trying to do to us.

What we did with Japan was a legitimate response to Japan’s direct attack against our country, like the Taliban on 9-11. We had every right to go in and unconditionally defeat Japan and we had every right to cause them to reform a government that would not be a threat to us again.

[JmyBryan]

Alright, I’ll take it somewhat further. If someone attacks the US “without provocation”, we then can install whatever government in that country we would find acceptable?

[PapaNew]

Why not? That is 180 degrees different from what the subject here is. America is not about preemptively invading other countries to make them be what we want them to be. That is tyranny - exactly what we are against.

Defeating a nation who has attacked us in an act of war is a totally different situation requiring a totally different result because the attacked nation is acting in self defense, something an unprovoked invasion is not. Nevertheless, humanitarianism, even toward a nation we have conquered who has attempted to conquer us, is also what America, unlike most nations, is all about. That is what we did in Japan and in Germany and another example of American exceptionalism.

Any nation that chooses to attempt to conquer another nation is justifiably vulnerable to takeover and dominance by the nation they have attempted to conquer. How the attacked nation goes about dealing with the conquered attacking nation says a lot about that nation. But the nation who has suffered the attack is certainly justified in dismantling the aggressive regime and replacing it with a more peaceful one. That also is an act of self defense. To do otherwise would be stupid among other things.