Reflection on American Sniper by Chris Kyle with Jim DeFelice and Scott McEwen

               American Sniper is the memoir of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and set the record for most confirmed sniper kills by a US soldier. I saw the movie when it came out but I had neverread the book until I came across it on GoodReads and wanted to check it out. You could describe Kyle as a sort of stereotype of a military guy, and I don’t think he’d be offended by that. He loved to fight, enjoyed battle, and hated America’s enemies. He hated them very much. I found some parts of his memoir hard to believe (specifically a story of him taking down “one of the biggest drug dealers” in an American city more or less by accident) but in general it was really interesting and exciting. I liked that his wife contributed to it, so you get her side of the story as well.

               The relationship between Chris and his wife, Taya, is probably the biggest conflict of the book. He basically lets her know several times that she comes second to his SEAL buddies and he reenlists despite her wishes for him to come home to be with her and their children. His relationship with all of them suffers due to his time away in combat. He’s also very immature. He fights people constantly and at one point missed his kid’s birthday party because he was in court defending himself against charges of assault. His relationship with his wife became even more strained when he started communicating again with an old girlfriend. I found all of these examples to be really gross aspects of his personality.

               I’m not sure which Chris Kyle loved more: his country or violence. Whatever it is, they are both very high up there for him and he made a great soldier. I think the key points he makes throughout the book about the Iraq War is that first of all, the soldiers did not decide to go to war. He found it disgusting that people were protesting his platoon as they deployed, as they were the ones making the sacrifice, not the ones deciding. In addition, he points out that if we want to go to war, we need people like him. War isn’t pretty and attempts to sanitize it are futile. He explains how, from the soldier’s perspective, all the claims of civilian casualties are kind of ridiculous since it’s a war- lots of people are going to die. There’s no war in history where civilians don’t die and in Iraq, the US forces were held to a much higher standard (obviously) than the insurgents. While my opinions about the Iraq War are unchanged, I do feel more sympathy for those soldiers who fought in it and didn’t earn the love of their country like WWII soldiers did. In the end, the sacrifice is the same no matter what the war.