Any "American Sniper" Fans Here See Independent Lens on PBS Last Night?

[Smarmie Doofus]

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/PBS-to-Premiere-The-Kill-Team-on-INDEPENDENT-LENS-119-20141219

Culture of sniping ( murdering) completely innocent Afghani citizens that grew up in ... and apparently out of, i.e. beyond..... the unit. Into the general ( American) ranks.

Why? Well... listen to the accused; they're interviewed. Boredom, kicks, psychopathology, battle trophies, ( one guy made a necklace of human fingers - hacked from the bodies of innocent civilian, non-combatant, victims) anxiety, contempt for the occupied population..

There were several convictions. I think some charges are still pending. Whistleblower turned 'em in. He endured death threats, etc. from his former buds. ( What a surprise.)

Anyway... I'm NOT going to see American Sniper. I'm too friggin' old to waste my time and money watching Hollywood and the Clint Eastwoods of the world trying to tell me yet again the idea that up is down, wrong is right and good is evil. Lived thru VN, Watergate, Iran Contra, and all the rest and I know what I SAW w. my own eyes and I know how unlimited capital, TPTB and the US government and its owners made it their collective business to try ( succesfully, in the case of the ensuing generation) to revise and distort and misrepresent what contemporaries saw with their OWN EYES and *KNEW* to be true.

But what about YOU guys? "Sniper" fans.

Seriously... did you see Independent Lens last night? I'm happy ( and *proud*, actually) to say I wasn't in VN or Cambodia or Iraq OR Afghanistan; so that puts me at a kind of experiential disadvantage. But I have a pretty good sense nonetheless of smelling out bullshit and propaganda. Independent Lens has the smell ( and the RING) of truth. Clint Eastwood has neither.

Wasn't Clint busy making the Good the Bad and the Ugly during the siege of Khe Sahn, btw?

What say you?

[edhopper]

1. That's strange

I was told around here that our snipers are heroes.

[tularetom]

4. Some might be

This one sure as hell wasn't.

My impression of him is that he was a confused and vulnerable young man too hung up on his own misconceptions of what it took to be a man. He couldn't admit that he suffered from PTSD and attempted to cover it up with a fake badass persona.

The bullshit is just now coming to light, but the film has accomplished its goal of whitewashing the Iraq clusterfuck.

Once again, a senile old man in Hollywood has revised history.

[lunasun]

2. Thanks I will check it out - Indp Lens has some good stuff

I read a story quite a while ago of someone who spilled the beans on his fellow mates and the horror he saw.
It made me sick to think my tax money was being used this way and that soldiers he wrote about were so easily led by others to join in on innocent kills

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. These whistleblower narratives are disturbingly similar.

It's quite a commentary on our species that we overwhelmingly tend to behave in such predictably self-serving ways.

And the vindictiveness! Wow. It's a universal. Kill the messenger.

[Octafish]

3. My Friend, I don't like Clint's politics, but his patriotism is active duty active.

The guy was a Marine on a small military that ditched a few miles off the California coast. He survived the crash and helped the pilot make it to shore. Then testified on behalf of the pilot at a courts martial.

http://thescuttlefish.com/2012/01/clint-eastwood-actually-is-a-bad-ass-in-real-life/

As for most of his GOP chums, yeah. Chickenhawks.

[braddy]

5. Clint Eastwood was in the Army, not Marines.

[Octafish]

6. Thanks. I was going from memory.

Really good swimmer, then.

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. Fine. But I reject that notion of "patriotism".

The patriots of that era were HERE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moratorium_to_End_the_War_in_Vietnam

Doing whatever they could think of to stop that fucking war.

Talk about "active duty"! Some did plenty more besides.

[arely staircase]

9. and one of the best directors in american cinema nt