Chris Kyle was the most lethal military sniper in the history of the United States. He became highly decorated after four tours of duty in Iraq while he recorded up to one hundred and sixty confirmed kills. A very popular movie was just released out of Hollywood depicting his life story. If you listen to some of the people on the far left, you quickly realize that they have a far different perception of Chris Kyle than the person portrayed in the movie. Film director Michael Moore implied that Chris Kyle is a coward and was the invader of another sovereign nation. Actor Seth Rogan compared the movie about Chris Kyle to a fictional piece of Nazi propaganda. Many on the left argue that the people of the United States military were unwelcome invaders during the start of the Iraq War in 2003. They laugh when looking back at Vice President Dick Cheney’s speculation that the people of the United States military “would be greeted as liberators”. They perceive Chris Kyle as an unwelcome invader in an unjustified war. This is an overly simplistic view of a very complex story.
In order to understand the complicated relationship between the United States and Iraq, one really has to go all the way back to 1982. Islamic extremists had already overthrown the Shah of Iran. Saddam Hussein feared that radical Islamic ideas would start spreading rapidly through his predominantly Shi’ite population. Hussein then invaded Iran and attempted to overthrow the new radical Islamic government. Two years into the Iraq-Iran War, Saddam Hussein was clearly losing. President Ronald Reagan was growing concerned about Iran’s repeated success on the battlefield. You have to remember that this was just two years after the Iranian hostage crisis. Iran was clearly our greater potential enemy during this period. America decided that Iraq would be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The United States began to supply the Iraqi military with communication and radar equipment. Saddam Hussein started receiving billions of dollars in aid from the United States. The U.S. military provided intelligence and advice to the Iraqi military including how to arm itself via third-party weapons dealers. The citizens of Iraq could see that the United States government was clearly in Saddam Hussein’s corner.
Did you ever see that old Frankenstein movie when the crazy doctor starts yelling, “It’s alive”? Well, that is pretty much what the United States government should have yelled after we propped up the President of Iraq. The United States created this monster and then completely lost control of it. Over the next eight years, Saddam Hussein would rule over his people with a ruthless iron fist. His citizens lived in constant fear of his wrath. He kept most of his nation’s wealth for himself as his people lived in abject poverty. During the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. It has been estimated that up to 182,000 people were killed in this genocide. The United States turned a blind eye to the plight of the Iraqi people during this time because it was not in our own country’s best interest. Now, let us all check in on our Frankenstein’s monster by fast-forwarding to 1990.
War has its costs, and for Saddam Hussein the cost of his prolonged war with Iran included a 30-billion-dollar debt to the tiny adjacent oil-rich country of Kuwait. Saddam asked Kuwait to forgive this debt, which Kuwait promptly refused. Saddam deeply resented this refusal considering his perception that Kuwait had historically always been a part of Iraq. Using the weaponry and power granted to him by the United States government, Saddam Hussein suddenly invaded and quickly took over Kuwait… much to the surprise of the international community. Within the course of just a few days, Saddam Hussein suddenly flipped in his role from a trusted ally to public enemy number one. The United States started encouraging the Iraqi people to rise up against their brutal dictator.
After a few months of failed negotiations, the first Gulf War had begun. The United States military along with its allies moved in and quickly pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Within just a few days, allied tanks were blazing at full speed across southern Iraq while the so-called “elite Iraqi Republican Guard” were sent fleeing up north back to Baghdad. Many of the citizens across Iraq greeted the United States military as liberators. Citizens cheered in the streets as the allied tanks rolled past them. The Iraqi people started to do what the United States had encouraged them to do… they rose up against their brutal dictator. Trusting in the United States government would eventually prove to be a fatal error.
Iraqi military resistance was much lighter than almost anyone expected. Most of the Iraqi military would surrender almost immediately when encountered. It became obvious that Saddam Hussein would be quite easy to topple. At this point, President George Herbert Walker Bush had to make a quick choice. Would he want to push into Baghdad and remove the head from the snake? There was concern that a leadership vacuum in Iraq would quickly lead to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. The choice was suddenly made to withdraw our troops from Iraq and leave Saddam Hussein in power. The Iraqi citizens who rose up to join our fight against Saddam Hussein would later be slaughtered. The deaths of these brave Iraqi rebels would not soon be forgotten. Let us now jump ahead once again to 2003.
The World Trade Center has now fallen. Saddam Hussein has already initiated multiple failed assassination attempts on our current President’s father as an act of revenge for the previous Iraqi invasion. The United States military has already been at war for two years with terrorists in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Colin Powell sits before the United Nations Security Council giving the most famous speech of his life. He told the world that Saddam Hussein possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction that could be used for an imminent attack. In retrospect, it would seem that the evidence presented that day was likely falsified and presented to the CIA by an Iraqi citizen with a brilliantly devious plan to remove his brutal dictator from power.
Do I believe that President Bush and Secretary Powell believed everything that they were telling the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I have never been given any reason not to believe them. But I do believe that President Bush was just looking for a reason to finish the job that his father admittedly failed to do. I think that President Bush was in a very vulnerable position to “take the bait”. Just recently, some new evidence has come to light indicating that there may indeed have been some actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, given the leadership vacuum and growth of radical Islamism created in the invasion’s wake… I do suspect that most historians will eventually agree that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a tactical mistake.
It is within the context of this history that you must view the current mindset of the average Iraqi citizen. The average Iraqi citizen does not fear the American military. The Iraqi people did not greet the American military as liberators the second time around because they justifiably did not trust the American government. Saddam Hussein had two male sons who had walked around the streets of Iraq absolutely terrorizing and repeatedly torturing them. When Saddam and his evil offspring were finally put to death, military commanders felt the need to broadcast these images throughout Iraq due to the understandable distrust of the American government. As the Iraq War dragged on, most of the opposition that our troops were facing was not from the Iraqi citizens… we were fighting Islamic extremists who were crossing the borders and engaging us from other countries like Iran and Syria.
There are three factors that should be considered when any country engages in a war: the military, the government, and the citizens. The United States military has always been our strongest and most admirable variable. It is not a soldier’s job to decide if we go to war or why we go to war. It is not the soldier’s responsibility to empathize with the people who are trying to kill him. Chris Kyle was not an enemy to the Iraqi people. He was a hero to the citizens in the United States and the citizens in Iraq. Most of the people of Iraq are just like many of us. They are afraid of Islamic extremism. They are highly educated and cultured. Many of them believe in Jesus Christ and pray to him regularly. Chris Kyle volunteered to go half way across the world to protect these people along with his fellow soldiers. Meanwhile, Michael Moore and many of the rest of us stayed over here to safely judge his actions from a distance.
The second factor that should be considered when a country engages in war is its government. Our government has repeatedly let down the people of Iraq. The only thing worse than not helping a group of people is when you only half-help them. You eventually set these people up for an even greater failure than if you never even got involved in the first place. Large numbers of peaceful citizens around the globe do not hate the United States because we are rich or because we are “freedom loving”… they hate us because our government constantly screws around with their country’s infrastructure and then abruptly abandons them. Our government often props up brutal dictators because it serves our own personal interest. Just recently, our government was led by President Obama in pulling completely out of Iraq and abandoning any of our previous commitments that we made to its people. Hard fought military gains were simply handed over to our enemy. This action was executed with very little protest from the American people. This leads me to the third and most important factor when dealing with a nation’s war: its citizens.
The citizens of the United States are our country’s “weakest link”. Our enemies fear our government and they most certainly fear our military… but our enemy understands that the true weakness of the United States lies within the civilian population. They know that we don’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight. They realize that we lack the same intestinal fortitude that they do over the long haul. They know that we are intellectually lazy and easily distracted. We allow our government to run amok and we tend to mindlessly defend our political leaders. Our enemies will prolong conflicts instead of simply trying to win them because they know that American citizens will eventually lose their resolve over time. Our government attempts to mitigate this risk by not showing us the body bags or the flag draped coffins on our televisions.
The citizens of the United States do not want to constantly hear about the war overseas because it makes them feel badly in general.
We have become distracted and uninformed as a nation.
We have become hesitant in supporting the act of doing the right thing in the world simply because it is right.
We are blurring the previously distinct lines between good and evil.
We are becoming more godless as a people.
I have met the true enemy of the Iraqi people and it is not Chris Kyle nor any members of the United States military.
I have met the true enemy of the Iraqi people… and the enemy is us.
