MARK LEE GREENBLATT, MILITARY.COM
The movie “American Sniper,” based on former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s book of the same name, omits two incredible episodes from Chris’s life.
I’d like to share these stories with with you now in order to show another side of Chris, and to respond to some of the ongoing commentary about him.
First, some background: Chris is one of the nine heroes profiled in my book Valor: Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, which tells true stories of heroism by American troops.
I interviewed Chris back when he was still relatively unknown. Later, when he wrote his own book, Chris told me that he intentionally omitted these episodes from his memoir because he didn’t want to leave me hanging. That alone says a lot about Chris’s character.
As we worked together on his chapter, I spent a bit of time with Chris. Our interviews stretched over eight hours during one of his tours in Baghdad. We exchanged numerous emails to resolve outstanding issues and refine the text. Over that time, I caught glimpses into Chris’s mindset.
And it rocked my world.
His dedication to his fellow American troops was intense and overpowering. On several well-documented occasions, he deliberately put his life in grave danger to save other Americans. Protecting American lives, he told me, was his driving force.
So, when I heard some negative backlash about Chris – calling him “a hate-filled killer,” “coward,” or “mass murdering [sic] sniper” – I had to share my experience.
First, Chris wasn’t “a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people,” as one writer suggested in a British periodical.
That’s not fair to Chris. Not at all.
In our interviews, Chris certainly conveyed that he hated the insurgents, the Islamic fundamentalist militants against whom they were fighting, and that he was proud of killing many of them. There was no secret about that. He called them “savages” and spoke of them with unmistakable disdain. “They were complete dumbasses,” he said to me. “Just idiots with guns.”
When Chris appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show in 2012, he said “I’m killing them (referring to the insurgents) to protect my fellow Americans.” When O’Reilly insisted that Kyle liked it, Chris responded, “It’s not a problem taking out people that want your people dead … That’s not a problem at all.”
Forgive me, but that doesn’t seem terribly damning in my view. Heck, I freely admit that I hate terrorists too.
But Chris never expressed to me any comparable views about Iraqi civilians. It was all about the terrorists who were beheading and torturing civilians (Iraqis and westerners alike).
No, the Chris I knew was motivated by something far more noble — defending innocent civilians and his American brethren. In fact, later in his 2012 interview with O’Reilly, the host asked whether he had any regrets, and Chris said, “Yes — it’s the people I couldn’t save.” O’Reilly pushed him, saying: “The Americans you couldn’t save. The allied forces.”
Chris’s response was telling: “The Americans, the local Iraqis, anyone who I witnessed violence coming down on them and I could not save them.”
That flies directly in the face of the bogus “racist” claim.
Two incidents during the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004 illustrate this selflessness, this willingness to put himself in grave danger for his comrades. I feel compelled to tell these stories because they reveal Chris’s dedication to saving lives, not just taking them.
Maiden on the Midway 
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