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Arizona_Mike
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Mark Twain never lived to see the rise of Hitler. Fine-sounding sentiments, but the fact that we still have (thank God and the U.S. military) Jews in the world, prove his statements to be errant nonsense.
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LisaA
Guest
Indeed. What is it about today’s culture that we take “advice” from people who have absolutely no knowledge or expertise in a subject? Mark Twain was a gifted storyteller and amazing individual. One of the true American icons. But he was not an expert in human aggression, war, or evil.
The Left hates facts unless they push a favored narrative. If not they can be dispensed with.
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Exiled_Child
Guest
(This was supposed to link to Son of Niall’s post.)
If anyone ever asks me what my political stance is, I’m going to quote Mark Twain and say, “I am an anti-imperialist.”
Mark Twain
Vice President of the Anti-Imperialist League, 1901-1910
From the New York Herald, October 15, 1900
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with he Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Phillippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do
I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which had addressed ourselves.
But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Phillippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem…
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
warprayer.org/
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Path_Finder
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I posted the full post earlier, I am still wondering what is wrong with Fundamentalists and Evangelicals. What if someone substituted one’s skin-color for where you are mentioning ‘creed’ which is also a protected right.
Also, rather than making general remarks about groups of people, perhaps you could add specific sources.
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Path_Finder
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Mark Twain probably believed this in an absolute way and not making exceptions. Not a case by case basis.(This was supposed to link to Son of Niall’s post.)
If anyone ever asks me what my political stance is, I’m going to quote Mark Twain and say, “I am an anti-imperialist.”
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Path_Finder
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National Public Radio had Bradley Cooper on Fresh Air, their evening show last night. It was very enlightening about the movie. They even played some sound bites from the movie such as in the auto-shop when Kyle was at home.
A vet came over to him in the auto-repair store and thanked him for saving the lives of fellow soldiers. I guess that isn’t a spoiler because it was on the radio.
A vet came over to him in the auto-repair store and thanked him for saving the lives of fellow soldiers. I guess that isn’t a spoiler because it was on the radio.
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Exiled_Child
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Arizona_Mike
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How do you think Mark Twain would have suggested we react to the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the Holocaust, Exiled Child? Stand by and watch as Jews were systematically exterminated from Europe, then the rest of the world? Or wait and hope “diplomacy” could resolve things before too many more Jews (and Catholics, and homosexuals, and the infirm and the mentally ill, and trade unionists, and gypsies, and many others) were murdered in the name of the state?
Most wars are bad. But there are just wars.
Twain was fiercely anti-Catholic and an anti-theist in his later years, if not an outright atheist. To what extent did his attitudes against religion, which were widely quoted and admired in what were then called “free-thinking” circles at the end of the 19th century, contribute to the rise of the Progressive movement, (which opposed the traditional values of Christian culture and sought to place greater power with the state) from which the German National Socialist movement drew its adherents and ideology?
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Mike_Dye
Guest
You know the old saying, “There is nothing new under the sun.”. It’s the same Michael Moore, Jane Fonda mentality that spit on and gave the finger to us us Viet-Nam vets when we came home, that whine about this movie…It doesn’t change a thing… soldiers will still go to war to protect innocent people and still come home and be spit on…never was a big deal then and is not now.
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Exiled_Child
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Sorry, Mike, I didn’t see your post 'til just now. I do agree that if ever there was a truly Manichean war, it was World War Two. That being said, though, U.S. involvement in it had precisely nothing to do with the Holocaust. Besides, it was Russia that almost all of the heavy lifting in that war, not America.
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Kount_C
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Code:
One of my co workers was a Tunnel Rat in Nam, he also said he loved killingBut that is how he put it, he loved killing, things it was fun.
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Hobbes42
Guest
But… but the Communist Sub-human Slavs couldn’t possibly have done something so good as defeat the Nazis! That is an honour sir, that must be heaped upon Good Anglo-Saxon Protestants from the City on the Hill!
(Sarcasm, for the odd American who for reasons endemic to our culture, cannot understand it)
(Sarcasm, for the odd American who for reasons endemic to our culture, cannot understand it)
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DaveBj
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I hold no brief, either for the Soviet regime that was in power until the 1990s, or for the current regime. However, Exiled Child is correct – it was the Soviet Union (not just Russia) that did most of the fighting and dying during the Great Patriotic War, as they call it. And in a way it is only right that the Soviets should have done the heavy lifting, since they not only ignored the war in Europe between September 1939 and June 1941; they contributed to the German war effort. What is unfortunate is that those who did the fighting and dying between June 1941 and May 1945 were not the same as those who drafted and signed the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in August 1941.
(Yes, I know that this is off-topic, but I’m the OP, and I don’t mind.)
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LisaA
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But do not forget the Americans played a significant role in Europe and WE did the heavy lifting in the Pacific war. My father was a Ball Turret gunner in WWII and I assure you the Yanks were quite invested in the outcome.
WWII had two theaters and America was involved in both of them and instrumental in the Allied powers’ victory.
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DaveBj
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Quite true. I should have been more specific that I was referring to the European Theater of Operations.
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Arizona_Mike
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My relatives who were KIA and their widows and children would probably disagree with you on the latter thought.
Although the individual Russian soldier was tough and brave, we can also say with certainty that if the Red Army hadn’t been purged of their ablest, most intelligent, and boldest commanders in the years before WWII due to the fratricidal paranoia of Stalin and his apparatchiki, they wouldn’t have taken such heavy losses and could have defeated Hitler, probably without the need for Allied assistance, far earlier. If you willingly cut two of your own arms off before going into battle out of stupidity, you shouldn’t expect accolades for your bravery and strategic acumen.
Stalin and his toadies came close to losing the war as early as Barbarossa. If the Soviets subjugated the people under your control so harshly that they initially (and naively) welcome the Germans as better than the Soviets, they only had themselves to blame. And if they mucked up their economy so badly with decades of centralized planning that they ran out of war-fighting materiel, and had to rely on American donations of food, ammo, and petroleum, again, they survived because of the U.S., not on their own merits.
Whether the American public at large was aware of the depths of extermination campaign against the Jews, they certainly were aware of Hitler’s anti-semitism and his barbarism, which was far worse than anything else seen in central European history. Americans stepped up, despite not having their own territory at risk as the Soviets did, and paid the price in blood to try to free Europe.
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Midwest88
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Brock McIntosh, a U.S. veteran, wrote a piece for Salon saying he thought the movie is propaganda.
salon.com/2015/02/07/im_a_u_s_veteran_and_american_sniper_is_filled_with_lies_partner/
salon.com/2015/02/07/im_a_u_s_veteran_and_american_sniper_is_filled_with_lies_partner/
It’s always the anti-war servicemen that come out when the opportunity strikes. And historical accuracy? Ha! I wonder what he thought of Selma, Lincoln or Camp X-Ray. He probably held those movies more favorably given the subject matter of each.
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Arizona_Mike
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I think every film that touches on political matters (and war is inherently political) is propaganda, if we define propaganda as a work that promotes a particular political point of view. We now only call things “propaganda” when they express a view with which we disagree. The movies that promote OUR point of view we call “brilliant,” “insightful,” or “cutting-edge.”
I also can’t think of many war dramas that purported to represent actual events that did not include elements that were fictitious, exaggerated, anachronistic, or out of chronological order. That’s why they are considered entertainment and not documentaries.
Even documentaries advance a particular political point of view, by choosing which interviews to do, how to edit those intervews (pace Michael Moore, whose interviews are so heavily edited they bear only the slightest trace of reality), and which contradictory interviews not to include.
I once saw an interesting documentary on HBO about an MMA fighter. Much of the focus was on his attempt at a comeback fight, and how his girlfriend’s emotional manipulation was harming his training and his life. I later I saw the DVD, and listened to the commentary track by the director. He made the comment that all documentaries gather a lot of source footage, and then the director has to make a choice as to what storyline to advance during the film. He said they chose to pursue a storyline that their relationship was mutually destructive, but he said that they could have just have easily selected footage to show that she was often helpful and supportive and trying to help him overcome his demons.
Once you turn on any camera, once you decide where to point it and what to film and what not to film, or what to photograph and what not to photograph, you are promoting a particular view.
All art is propaganda.
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Arizona_Mike
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I read McIntosh’s editorial on Salon. The “lies” he claims to have discovered are as follows:
I’ve read quite a few military autobiographies over the years, and many of them include similar elements as Kyle’s account - incident of savagery by the enemy, descriptions of the enemy using terms that are far less offensive than “savage,” acts of war that are usually brutal - why is this particular memoir so offensive to liberals? There are hundreds more, from WWII to now, that demonstrate that, yes, War is Hell.
And that’s apparently it for the “lies” the film portrayed.There were a lot of other elements that were admittedly altered by the screenwriter, such as the Syrian ex-Olympics sniper who, although a real person, was not killed by Kyle and was not a major figure in the book. Changing elements around to create a more linear storyline happens in every film based on true events. (That’s why they say they were “based” on true events.)
To me, it just sounds more like an anti-war vet wanting to yell more about Bush and WMDs than a real look at how the movie dramatized elements from the book.
- Cooper’s character was shown agonizing over shooting a child about to attack a U.S. military unit with a grenade. (This incident did not, in fact, happen as the movie showed it, and Kyle said in his book he never shot a child, but did shoot a woman in the incident.). McIntosh does not seem to have a problem with Eastwood’s addition of the child for dramatic impact, but because “Hall [the screenwriter] implies that killing civilians is a war crime and U.S. military members are sent to prison for it.”
- The film shows every person that Kyle shoots as armed or carrying an IED, but Kyle says in his book that he was told to shoot every military-aged male in Fallujjah, which had been ordered evacuated by the Iraqi government, and implies that Americans shot Iraqi civilians with murderous abandon.
- McIntosh’s 3rd “lie” is rather unclear. He takes exception with scenes that show Kyle watching the attacks in Africa, which were one of several reasons he enlisted, and seeing the attacks on 9/11 after he was already a SEAL. Both incidents happened in the book and do not seem far-fetched. McIntosh is angry that there was no mention in the film or book that WMDs were the reason we invaded Iraq, as if that was the only reason advanced at the time, or that the belief that there were WMDs in Iraq (which clearly there were, at one time - those Iranians who died of mustard-gas exposure were probably not hypochondriacs) was not a bipartisan belief that was advanced by both Republicans or Democrats. Not sure why McIntosh thinks this was a “lie” in the movie, unless he is upset that the characters do not act or behave like he thinks conservatives should act or behave in a movie.
I’ve read quite a few military autobiographies over the years, and many of them include similar elements as Kyle’s account - incident of savagery by the enemy, descriptions of the enemy using terms that are far less offensive than “savage,” acts of war that are usually brutal - why is this particular memoir so offensive to liberals? There are hundreds more, from WWII to now, that demonstrate that, yes, War is Hell.
- After Marc Lee’s funeral, the film depicts Kyle as telling his wife with a grim countenance that Lee “lost it” and that led to his death, and that Kyle never said those kind of things about Lee.
And that’s apparently it for the “lies” the film portrayed.There were a lot of other elements that were admittedly altered by the screenwriter, such as the Syrian ex-Olympics sniper who, although a real person, was not killed by Kyle and was not a major figure in the book. Changing elements around to create a more linear storyline happens in every film based on true events. (That’s why they say they were “based” on true events.)
To me, it just sounds more like an anti-war vet wanting to yell more about Bush and WMDs than a real look at how the movie dramatized elements from the book.
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