U.S. coalition forces killed at least 1,201 children In Iraq between 2003 and 2011. And that brings me to American Sniper, whose real-life “hero,” Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, was a child killer. Ever since I saw the film, I’ve been ranting to students and colleagues about it, complaining that its popularity exposes a sickness in the American psyche.
This column offers a slightly more nuanced perspective on the film–and even draws a hopeful conclusion from it. First, some context: In my writings, I often ponder why we wage war. One popular explanation is that war stems from the innate urge of males in one group to band together and attack members of other groups. This “deep roots” thesis is contradicted by masses of data, which reveal that war is a cultural innovation that arose less than 10,000 years ago.
Precisely because most people don’t relish killing or being killed, societies seeking to win wars must brainwash themselves into embracing militarism as a virtue. Margaret Mead made this point in her classic 1940 essay “War Is Only An Invention—Not a Biological Necessity.” “The deeds of warriors are memorialized in the words of our poets,” she wrote, “the toys of our children are modeled after the weapons of war.”
Dave Grossman, a former lieutenant colonel and psychology instructor in the U.S. Army, presents a similar view in his 1995 book On Killing. Data from World War II, the American Civil War and other conflicts, he contends, reveal that many soldiers avoid firing their weapons in battle. Most men, he concludes, are reluctant warriors, who fear killing as well as being killed. The “powerful, innate resistance toward killing,” Grossman asserts, can be overcome by various means, including intense training–like the kind that Navy SEALs undergo–and propaganda that extols the soldiers’ cause and vilifies the enemy.
Annual war casualties have plummeted by almost two orders of magnitude since World War II, a decline that some optimists hope may portend the end of war. The U.S., however, is bucking this positive trend, maintaining a military almost as big as those of all other nations combined.
Since 2001, U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have resulted, directly and indirectly, in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates that U.S. coalition forces are directly responsible for the deaths of at least 15,060 Iraqi civilians–including, as mentioned above, at least 1,201 children. The actual numbers are almost certainly much higher.
These facts surely unsettle even the most hawkish Americans. We see ourselves as the good guys, and we feel cognitive dissonance when confronted with contrary evidence. How can we possibly be the good guys if our soldiers kill innocent civilians, even kids? So we eagerly embrace propaganda like American Sniper, which assures us that those kids deserved to die.
Clint Eastwood’s film glorifies American soldiers and demonizes Iraqis with cartoonish simple-mindedness. Chris Kyle and kills Iraqi women and children because they are trying to kill his buddies. He feels awful afterwards, but that just shows what a good guy he is. (The real Chris Kyle, on whom the film is based, bragged in his autobiography that he had no qualms about killing any Iraqis, whom he called “savages.”)
I promised to conclude this column with a hopeful message. Here it is: If the urge to wage war were embedded deep in our genes, we wouldn’t need films like American Sniper to persuade us that our wars are just. If we Americans can learn to resist this kind of propaganda—whether coming from filmmakers, media, or politicians—world peace might be possible.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is an edited version of one originally published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
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