Anarcho-Jarhead [flash fiction]

Flash fiction. noun. Fiction that is extremely brief, typically only a few hundred words or fewer in its entirety.

Chunks of mud brick rained down on Carter as he kissed the ground to dodge the bullets tearing through the compound wall.  Shit!  The tangos had a heavy MG.  With one hand he adjusted his Kevlar helmet, shifted out of whack in the dive.

He grabbed his M4 rifle, his knee pushed up and he dashed around the corner with his battle buddy on his heels.  They joined two others behind a Bradley fighting vehicle steadily making its way up the street as bullets clanged off the armor.  The tank’s side turret, mounted with a .50 caliber chain gun, returned fire at the al-Qaeda position as the tracks kept rolling and semi-crouched ground pounders trotted to keep up with their shield.

He huffed with deep heaves, pushing aside his nut-shriveling fear at the painful sound of the tango’s heavy MG shots ringing off the tank, lapping at his ear drums like jackhammers.  A tango, face covered in a red checkered shumoch, popped his head and rifle out of a window from an angle where the Marines were exposed.  Carter popped off two rounds from his M4 without missing a beat and the tango fell dead back into the house.

His sailor battle buddy pointed to their periphery.  Carter peeked in time to see the mortar crew mad-dashing toward an alley with access to an open yard.  They crossed the street, reeking of blood and shit, at a run past the bodies of two tangos with AK-47s still in hand and ruby caverns where their faces used to be.

The Marines were in this alone today.  Where the fuck were the security forces?

 “Corpsman!” someone desperately shouted, and his sailor battle buddy smack-patted his shoulder, saying ‘Come on!’  And they took off.  This was the eleventh day of the offensive and they still had three quarters of Ramadi to clear.  The cops they’d trained and heavily armed over the last two months were nowhere to be seen.

After the last tangos died or took off, their company lost three Marines killed and five wounded that day.  Carter had an epiphany on the ride back to the FOB.  If fighting for this country wasn’t worth it to the locals, then he sure as hell wasn’t getting blown up for this shit.

But he still had to finish his tour…

* * *

“You’re in for a treat, dude,” Raccoon said (so named because his favorite hat had ears). Six guys were crammed into an old VW van that reeked of weed and peyote.  Carter had never been to ‘Billy Madison College,’ as they called the warehouse where Raccoon’s friends put on underground punk shows.  He was now a resident of Hemingway House, a collective that grew legal weed, let people crash on their couches, and generally helped each other out.

The paint-cracked, dented VW van pulled up to the warehouse where a crowd had already gathered.  Guys and girls sipped beers and Four-Locos in paper bags, smoked cigarettes and an assortment of retro pipes, and Carter even caught a whiff of a pot cloud hovering over the crowd.  These lovers of the DIY punk scene were milling around, socializing while the bands unloaded their gear around the back.

People in the crowd shouted to greet friends that they recognized.  A 6’5 punk with a Pabst Blue Ribbon ball cap and a full beard on his smiling cheeks appeared from the crowd to greet Raccoon with a lumberjack’s hug.  He even wore a green and black flannel shirt adorned with the buttons and patches of different underground punk bands no one’s ever heard of.

Raccoon freed himself from the lumberjack punk’s embrace and pointed to Carter.  “Carter, meet Party Marty.”  Party Marty beamed at him and offered his hands with a ‘What’s up, man.  Anybody who’s cool with Raccoon is cool with me.’  Marty took them inside the warehouse to give Carter the noob’s tour.  They stepped into a small office lobby converted into a box office.  Posters of bands that had performed here on sleeping-bag-and-shoestring-budget tours covered the walls.

Carter’s attention was focused on the fallen angel eyeing him playfully from behind the counter.

Long, raven hair worn in the trademark Bettie Page style accented her olive-tan complexion.  Subtle red lip stick clashed with her curious green eyes.  A black Misfits t-shirt met the tattered denim skirt hugging her hourglass curves, and her slender legs sported black leather Doc Marten boots.  He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to compare his vinyl records with hers or eat her face.

“Five bucks,” she said. She held the stamp and ink pad expectantly.  Carter fumbled in his pocket and pulled out wadded Ones.

“Aw, damn,” he said disappointedly, “I’ve only got three…”

She shrugged.  “It’s cool.  Just donate what you have.” And he did.

Party Marty and Raccoon led him into the main warehouse, magnificently adorned with punk murals of guitars, skulls, flowers, band logos, the giant circled jagged A that was the anarchy symbol.  Christmas lights lined the walls and people were kicking it, drinking their booze inside and passing a peace pipe just outside the loading bay.  It was incredible.

Carter looked back to the box office to notice that beautiful punk queen sneaking a peek at him.  She blushed and smiled.

When the bands began to play, over a hundred people crowded into that warehouse.  They jumped, danced, fist pumped, moshed, and the music vibrations from the loud stage speakers flowed through them like ripples in water.  Carter was dancing with the Hispanic Bettie Page who’d been eyeing him, and before long they were making out.  She was intoxicating to look at and to touch.

That’s when it hit him.  The fucked up war, Hemingway House, this network of people literally entertaining themselves, the donations, and the beautiful chaos of the music.  It finally occurred to him.  No need for government.  No need for authority…

Carter was months out of the Corps, but he was finally home.

END

* * *

Marines photo courtesy of Eternal Spectator. VLHS photo courtesy of OC Weekly.

A new Libertarian position on ISIS

We're now walking a fine line between the non-aggression principle and playing witness to murder.  While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria hasn't attacked the United States homeland, neither were they ever libertarian-style freedom fighters simply trying to liberate Iraq from an occupying army.  They themselves were a conquering and occupying army trying to form a new state!

While ISIS may not be an existential threat to the United States--they don't have the power to destroy America--they certainly are an imminent threat.  They just keep growing and conquering and planting new cells in countries around the world.  Worse yet, they efficiently murder civilians at an industrial capacity not seen since the Yugoslav Wars.

I believe in blowback.  I believe that the U.S. government's actions abroad directly fanned the flames of Islamic terrorism worldwide.  However, while not intervening in future conflicts will prevent future blowback, nonintervention does nothing to dissipate the blowback that already exists.  So while the ISIS terrorist quasi-state may not an existential threat, they are an imminent threat and will one day directly attack Americans (and not in the Middle East).

I've seen what they do.  I've read the numbers of the literally tens of thousands of civilians they've murdered, including women and children.  I read the statistics of their murders and racketeering they boast about in their corporate-style Annual Report.  One doesn't need to buy into false flag propaganda to objectively match words with action, history with current events, to deduce that this terror group is here to stay until totally destroyed from the outside.

Libertarians too often hide behind the concept of nonintervention.  Well, here's the deal: no country or population ever hated the U.S. for saving people from being massacred.  They hated the U.S. for sticking around after liberation and then dictating to the people how they would live, what type of government they'd have, and what corporations they'd do business with.

This is but one reason why the U.S. government should no longer intervene in the war in Iraq and Syria.  Unfortunately, little good ever came from U.S. military intervention in the 21st century.  But intervention by individual volunteers is a different story.

Many may say that the war against ISIS, now encompassing Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya, is not a war any libertarian should support.  But here's my question to them: are you against a just cause and a just war, or are you specifically against the State intervening in foreign affairs?  When I say "individual volunteers" I mean that government should be left behind and individual free people should do what they know to be right, not taking anyone's tax dollars to do so.  There's a difference.

Many will say that ISIS was covertly founded, funded, and armed by the CIA.  Others say they're the Mossad's baby.  Most people accept that ISIS is the Al Qaeda splinter group--formerly Al Qaeda in Iraq--who broke away from Bin Laden's organization to wage sectarian war on Shia Muslims and establish a global Sunni state.

Frankly, it doesn't matter which government or entity is responsible for incubating this terrorist quasi-state.  These butchers need to be stopped.  As much as I loathe making this distinction, there's a huge difference between collateral damage in an airstrike that specifically targets a combatant, and deliberately beheading children for refusing to renounce Jesus.  There's a huge difference between civilians being caught in the crossfire and for the enemy to routinely march 300 civilians at a time into an open field and mow them down.

Evil exists in this world and it must be stopped by We the People, especially if our own government is at fault.

The best people to stop the butchers are: 1) the armies of the countries ISIS invaded; 2) the various guerrilla groups and citizen militias in the invaded countries; 3) international volunteer combatants, and volunteer aid workers; and 4) private security contractors hiring themselves to guard populations or assets in the combat zones.

The international volunteers fighting ISIS are heroes to me, reminiscent of the American guerrillas who individually took it upon themselves to fight the British Army from Concord to Boston.  The aid workers in this war also have a special place in my heart, reminding me of the missionaries in World War II who made it their mission to protect Chinese children from Japanese soldiers.

Keep the government out of Iraq and Syria.  Let volunteers and the private sector change the war effort from an imperial proxy war to a libertarian people's war of international liberation.  And when the day comes that ISIS is extinguished, let the international volunteers get the hell out of there and leave "nation building" to the actual nations!

Libertarian vets weigh in on Chris Kyle, Iraq War

By Zach Foster, Chris Padilla, Adam Clossman

Originally published by Young Americans for Liberty

The cornerstone of libertarian philosophy is the non-aggression principle: you won’t harm anyone if they won’t harm you either. This principle guides our conduct in peace and in war. We’re libertarians who served in the Global War on Terrorism; a soldier, a sailor, and a marine.

One of us is a constitutional conservative and two of us are dues-paying Libertarian Party members. We think our government should never have started the Iraq War. Intervention was wrong because it opened Pandora’s box of medieval rivalries and medieval brutality. We also don’t regret our decision to serve. We found out how the non-aggression principle becomes less and less black-and-white when shrouded in the fog of war.  In the middle of a terrible war we don’t agree with, Chris Kyle made the best of a bad situation.

All the controversy surrounding Kyle’s legacy truly baffles us. For starters, most of the people throwing fits over his hit count and calling insurgents “savages” have never even read his autobiography, American Sniper. They’re just reciting quotes from the book, often taken out of context then hastily-written in online editorials.  Talking about things while completely uninformed is called being ignorant. We say to our readers: if you haven’t read American Sniper cover to cover, you don’t have an informed opinion on Chris Kyle. Full stop.

Furthermore, the histrionically inclined are calling Kyle a liar and sociopath based on anecdotal citations. This narrative is pushed harshly in order to attack Kyle’s character. The infamous Jesse Ventura story is one of them. The only people who truly know the extent of truth in that story are Kyle, Ventura, and others in the bar that night. The same people pointing to the jury’s decision to award Ventura the royalty money and claiming that it’s iron clad proof Kyle may have lied, are the exact same people who turn around and decry the system we have in place when white police officers aren’t indicted.

And to clear something up, there’s a huge difference between a lie and an exaggeration. An exaggeration to a civilian is typically called a “fish story” or a “tall tale.” In Kyle’s Navy, they’re called “Sea Stories.” Sailors (along with all service-members) have a long, proud tradition of telling Sea Stories, going back at least six hundred years. Choppy seas? No. Rogue waves from every direction crashing down onto the flight deck of the carrier, almost capsizing her? Definitely!

It’s a completely cultural phenomenon, folks. Just as Democrats do not understand “gun culture” and Republicans don’t understand any culture, most civilians don’t understand military culture. Sea Stories are not something to get worked up about, and they are certainly not the smoking gun of poor character. Perhaps Kyle and Ventura simply exchanged words. Maybe they exchanged numbers. Or maybe Kyle knocked out Ventura for bad-mouthing the troops. The bottom line is that it simply doesn’t matter at this point. One of the most important pieces of military equipment is a “finely calibrated bullshit detector,” but anti-Kyle critics don’t understand "carpe diem."

As far as those defending him, most of them are completely down-playing the messed up skeletons in his closet which he casually wrote about. They’re hiding his skeletons and re-branding him as a modern-day John Basilone or Audie Murphy. It’s mostly because, after two long and bitter wars, they badly needed a hero for our time.

Despite our evolved political views, nothing will EVER change the fact that Kyle kept a lot of good, perhaps misguided young men alive—men like us. We all did our time in the service, and that time in uniform showed us how things weren’t the way we were led to believe in the past. We became intimate with war and warfare. We’re no different than the many other soldiers, sailors, and marines for whom Kyle provided watch.

Most Americans—even most people in the military—will never know what it’s like to live under the protection of sniper fire. We’re glad that Chris Kyle was a sniper and we agree that every shot he ever took in the war was justified. Now give us a moment to flash our Ron Paul lapel pins before you write us off as imperialists and burn us at the stake for deviating from libertarian orthodoxy.

Chris Kyle said some messed up things about killing, but he never called Iraqis savages as a whole, nor any like names. These comments weren’t extended to include the indigenous interpreters, the patriotic Iraqi soldiers and police trying to rebuild their country, or the civilians who set a positive example and treated Americans with friendship and respect. It was the insurgency to whom Kyle referred constantly as savages.

And the insurgents, their ranks saturated with jihadist terrorists and organized crime groups, really were savages. They were monsters. The things they did were absolutely unspeakable. We're talking about mass executions, daily beheadings, suicide bombings in civilian crowds, punitive amputations on civilians, and especially exploitation of children as cannon fodder. While Kyle had issues, the people he was killing—according to strict Rules of Engagement—were nothing less than savages.

Many in the liberty movement claim that the Iraqi insurgents had the moral high ground in the war. This theory looks good on paper, until one takes a closer look at who the insurgents were and what they did. The picture most anti-war activists have is one of noble patriots fighting to liberate their country from the foreign aggressors. Lest we prove to the world abroad that Americans truly have a short-term memory problem, the Islamic State terror-army currently committing horrible crimes against humanity in Iraq and Syria emerged under a different name in 2004: AQI, or Al Qaida in Iraq.

AQI was the predominant enemy we engaged and they are no friend even to nation-states who detest the United States. The U.S. being a mutual enemy, "The Great Satan,” has not given any common ground to ISIS and terror-sponsoring states like the Islamic Republic of Iran. The “Iraqi freedom fighter” delusion might have held substance back in 2003. Maybe. But 2004 and onward was a VERY different story.

By 2005 most Iraqi patriots had chosen a side and were either in the new government army, the police, or the local militia. They joined because they wanted to actually rebuild their country, or at the very least keep their neighborhoods safe from the psychopath insurgents. Whereas the Iraqi patriots were on our side in the war—they resented the hell out of America for invading, but they fought on our side. The insurgency was quite literally either: 1) organized crime groups bolstered by AK-47s and Republican Guard veterans, or 2) foreign, non-Iraqi jihadists who had no more of a right to be there than Chris Kyle did, only the jihadists didn’t give a damn about rules of engagement.

The reason the insurgency gained more power than the government security forces is that the insurgents—gangsters and jihadists alike—were able to hack off limbs, chop off heads, murder entire families of interpreters and informants, kidnap hostages, assassinate local leaders and elders, and a slew of other techniques of “guerrilla war” not open to government soldiers and police. But hey, they were freedom fighters, right?

The Iraqi (and foreign-born) warlords of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Shia Mahdi Army, and the various regional and neighborhood gangs who became overnight “insurgent groups” were, and are, a far cry from the Rothbardian militia volunteers at Concord in 1775. At no point did any American guerrillas kidnap Lord Cornwallis’ wife and children and float their bullet-riddled bodies down the Rappahannock. At no time did American guerrillas bomb or burn down churches with civilian Loyalists still inside. The American guerrillas always engaged the Redcoats away from their homes rather than use civilians as human shields and make propaganda out of their corpses.

Quite simply, there exist human beings who choose to be something other than human. Gang members who peel faces off, terrorists who decapitate hostages and murder civilians en mass, rapists, child molesters, etc.; they aren't human. They're monsters and the epitome of evil. To be considered a human being, one must behave like one, not like a demon.  But as libertarians, we have no choice but to treat all lives with equal value until given a legitimate reason to do otherwise.

As libertarians, we don’t believe in preemptive strikes as the default strategy—especially not when cooked up by a bunch of rich-kid draft-dodgers whose military prowess is surpassed by any ten-year-old playing Call of Duty. However, we do believe in self-defense and in ambushing or apprehending would-be murderers in transit to commit an evil deed, with evidence in hand. All lives are equal until an individual embarks on a course of action to take other lives without just cause.

It’s at that point when it becomes necessary for good men to stand on a line between the weak and those who would exploit their weakness. Between the wolves of the world and the men, women, and children who want peace and to live free from the oppression of the beast. The recognition of this reality is how we as Constitutionalists and Libertarians can operate with a clear conscience. We stand ready to vehemently fight just conflicts and meet the enemy on his home soil so our countrymen can live in peace and freedom here at home.

This is not to say that we want to drag our country into endless wars via government action. By no means! We simply were, and are, prepared as individuals to stand and volunteer for what we think is a just cause, if not always a just war.

The majority of Iraqi insurgents blatantly disregarded the non-aggression principle and butchered civilians in their quest to harm Americans, whereas we the foreign invaders had absurdly restrictive rules of engagement. We’re sorry about the drone strikes and the horrifying collateral damage, but UAVs have nothing to do with Chris Kyle or the boots on the ground. End of story.

Again, let us remind our readers that we’re not apologists for the Iraq War. The public has Fox News for that kind of crap. As veterans, we support our brothers and sisters who volunteered to serve and those who have suffered the burden of deployment. As libertarians, we choose to view participants in the war as individuals—this includes American troops; private military contractors; allied nations soldiers; DoD and State Department civilians; Iraqi troops; Iraqi police; Sons of Iraq (militia); Iraqi civilian interpreters; Peshmerga guerrillas; Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, Chaldean, Assyrian, and secular street gangs; Ba’ath Party loyalists; Fedayeen squads; Iranian Revolutionary Guard veterans; foreign-born Pan-Arab nationalists and Mujahedeen (jihadists); nomadic highway gangs; and a range of Syrian, Saudi, Jordanian, Yemeni, Egyptian, and Iraqi lone wolves.

When we view participants as individuals, we weigh their actions as individuals. As an individual, Chris Kyle did the right thing the entire time he was in-country. It does bother us a bit that he seemed to take pleasure in killing. However, people’s minds and morals tend to get twisted when they’re in the business of death and destruction. Despite that, Chris Kyle was exactly what we needed him to be, and he did exactly what needed to be done, when it was needed. And there is no doubt that many American families are together today because of his actions. A child has a father safe at home, and a mother was able to hug her children again. Sons, daughters, friends, spouses, moms and dads; these are the countless invisible faces blatantly and hurtfully disregarded by all sides in this debate. On the other hand, the oft-praised insurgents by and large were monsters. This story does not begin and end with Kyle alone.

Chris Kyle and the other men of SEAL Team Three not only turned the tide to defeat those psychopaths in "God’s blind spot," Al Anbar province, but also enabled the beginning of the Sunni Awakening. The only reason the Sons of Iraq, Sunni neighborhood militias, were able to “awaken” was because the insurgency had received enough of an ass-kicking that the untrained, poorly equipped volunteers could finally patrol their own neighborhoods and fight the insurgents on a more level playing field. Again, Kyle made the best of a bad situation.

Someday, when the state becomes obsolete and unregulated libertarian “anarchy” begins to take off, there will still be non-state groups with evil members who act as conquering tribes (as described in Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State). Maybe they’ll be bankers looking to start a new Federal Reserve in this brave new world; perhaps they’ll be just a criminal gang who would rather loot than do the hard work of producing. They could even be a fundamentalist religious group, a philosophical order, or a school of scientific thought seeking to impose their answers on the whole world, even to the death.

Either way, the people those conquerors attack will fight back in a libertarian people’s war of national liberation, or they’ll be totally subjugated by tyrants. If they do fight for their lives, their homes, and their freedom, they’ll need volunteer soldiers who possess the same qualities as Chris Kyle. Liberty will ultimately be defended by hometown boys and girls who are damn good at killing people.

* * *

Chris Kyle photo by Cpl. Damien Gutierrez, USMC. Army combat photo by John A. Foley.  Hostage video screenshot by Nick Berg.  Iraqi insurgents, photo by the Department of Homeland Security.  SOI photo by the US Army.  All images obtained from Wikipedia.

7 Big Lies about the '7 Big Lies' in American Sniper

The specific “lies” I’m citing were taken from a crap sandwich on Alternet, but these 7 points have been repeatedly rehashed all over the Internet, so this article may as well respond to them too.  Long story short, Chris Kyle is either a modern-day Pol Pot bent on mass murder, or he’s the blameless all-American hometown hero who jumped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Regardless of what side of the fence people stand on, folks are going crazy over Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper.  This article doesn’t take sides; it merely seeks to set the record straight so the idiots continuing this debate can at least have a better-informed discussion.

1.      “The Film Suggests the Iraq War Was In Response to 9/11.”

Technically, the Iraq War was a response to 9/11.  It was a poorly conceived response, but the government’s official line was that 9/11 and Saddam Hussein were related.  The correlation between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda grew increasingly thin until it was nil, but America’s leaders sure as hell pounded the public with 9/11 rhetoric to rally support for the 2003 invasion.

As far as the jump from the 9/11 segment to Tour 1 in Iraq, it was done for the speed of the movie.  Being part of an elite counterterror force, Kyle knew the minute the second plane hit the towers that he was going to war eventually.  But how would that drag out a fast paced movie?  “Okay baby, America’s been attacked and we’re at war now.  So the audience is going to watch me do months of field training in Germany first.”  That type of ultra-logic doesn’t work well when summarizing 40 years of a man’s life into 2 hours, especially not right before Oscar season.

2.      “The Film Invents a Terrorist Sniper Who Works For Multiple Opposing Factions.”

Yeah, that was cheesy.  Transporting this character from Anbar province to West Baghdad is like expecting a Crip to operate in Blood territory; both gangs gun for the cops, but they sure as hell don’t work together.

While the “Mustafa” in the film was fictional, there really was a ridiculously lethal sniper in Fallujah and Ramadi, and HUMINT (human intelligence, for all you civilians) told that he was an Olympic marksman.  More importantly, he was damn good at his job of killing American troops and Iraqi security forces.  Let’s put into context how nasty things were in Fallujah and Ramadi: of the 4,489 American soldiers killed in Iraq, 1,135 died in Anbar province alone.  The jihadists in Anbar did not screw around.  RUMINT (rumor intelligence) reported that the sniper was killed in an airstrike in Ramadi.

3.      “The Film Portrays Chris Kyle as Tormented By His Actions.”

Uh, no, it doesn’t.  Anyone paying attention to key scenes and dialogue would figure out that the film actually shows Kyle as tormented by his failures.  Kyle said in the movie, and over and over again in the book, that his biggest regrets were the men he wasn’t able to save.  He wanted to kill more insurgents so they wouldn’t be able to continue killing Americans.

Take, for example, the scene where Kyle sits alone on the couch, having a flashback while staring at the blank TV screen.  One does not here any screams or lamentations in Arabic…

4.      “The Real Chris Kyle Made Up A Story About Killing Dozens of People In Post-Katrina New Orleans.”

I don’t know what issues Kyle was grappling with, but this was an uncool story for him to go around telling people.  However, this story is told neither in the book nor in the movie.  So what the hell does this have to do with the movie?  Nada.  Therefore, discussing this story in relation to the film American Sniper is… pretty dumb.

5.      “The Real Chris Kyle Fabricated A Story About Killing Two Men Who Tried To Carjack Him In Texas”

Again, it’s a messed up story, but has nothing to do with the book or the movie.

6.      “Chris Kyle Was Successfully Sued For Lying About the Former Governor of Minnesota.”

I wish the punching Jesse Ventura story was true.  I used to like Ventura until I figured out he’s not libertarian, but rather an independent, unaligned town crier who’ll buy into any conspiracy theory that’ll get him a little publicity. Frankly, I’m convinced the dude was broke and needed the money.

But this little drama wasn’t in the movie, so why are we debating it in relation to the movie?

7.      “Chris Kyle's Family Claimed He Donated His Book Proceeds To Veterans' Charity, But He Kept Most Of The Profits.”

Apparently Chris Kyle pocketed the $3 million he made from his own book about his own life, and only donated $52,000 to charity.  But those $52,000 were Kyle’s proceeds and they were indeed donated to charity.  Any questions?  Good. Frankly, that’s $52,000 more than I’ve donated to charity this year.  Furthermore, this little comment ignores all the personal expenses Kyle incurred in his one-on-one coaching and excursions with wounded warriors and psychologically disturbed veterans.

Taking a second look at the 7 most commonly cited “lies” allegedly perpetuated by the movie, only 3 of 7 have anything to do with the movie!  That’s just embarrassing, and it’s more straw man arguing than any intellectual with a drop of integrity could possibly take seriously.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what side of the debate you’re on if you haven’t read Chris Kyle’s book.  One reading of that book will add so much context to the movie, and also show how ridiculously ill-informed this entire debate has been.  Ultimately, if you haven’t read cover-to-cover the autobiography American Sniper—told in detail, in his own words—then you don’t have an informed opinion of Chris Kyle.

* * *

Mustafa screenshot courtesy of Olympic Rings and Other Things blog and is the property of.  Book cover image courtesy of Washington Times and is the property of HarperCollins Publishers.  Images used on this blog in accordance with Fair Use laws.