The Duke of Death

 People seldom go to the trouble of
the surface of things to find the inner truth 
--The Shop Around the Corner (1941)

Informers inform, burglars burgle,
murderers murder, lovers love 
--Breathless (1960)

The way your head works
is God's own private mystery 
--Wild at Heart (1990)
________________________

[We said we were done with American Sniper; never say "never".]

Pity that American Sniper director Clint Eastwood took the advice of Kyle's widow to omit the sniper's killing at the hands of a fellow soldier on the gun range. It would have been a Hollywood-perfect wrap and would have provided far more nuance than the final cut allowed, but Mrs. Kyle wanted the happy, if not correct ending ("This is going to be how my children remember their father, so I want you to get it right.") Presumably, she will leave out the means of Kyle's demise from her family lore, as well.

Eastwood has long explored the ideas of revenge and reconciliation. His most recent films chasten the  braggarts and he is not kind to the too-proud gunman-for-hire, the Chris Kyle's of the world.

His first foray into complexity began with The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). The protagonist Wales must reckon with his enemies, lest his life become one of relentless murder ("...the war is over. I reckon we all lost a little bit in that damn war.") A life of revenge is supplanted by one of necessary reconciliation. It was a message to a war-weary nation which did not win in another war.

In Unforgiven (1992), Eastwood's gunman William Munny returns to killing to avenge the knifing of a prostitute. The past always creeps up, and Munny cannot holster his guns for long. Despite the aging gunman's desire to leave his murderous ways, the film ends in an orgy of violence.

Instead of a simple matter of avenging one wrong, he becomes caught in a spider web requiring the final revenge killings for the killing of his friend. The viewer is left to wonder if the best that can be hoped for in this Old Testament eye for an eye world is that someone might avenge Munny's death one day.

An interesting side story in Unforgiven is that of Richard Harris's English Bob ("The Duke of Death"). He is a foreigner of vague British background who repurposes himself in the American West after writing a book embellishing his prowess in the art of killing. His bragging earns him a serious whipping by the town's sheriff (Gene Hackman), as Bob must be taken down a notch for his braggadocio.

The Duke does not realize his hypocrisy:  "A plague on you. A plague on the whole stinking lot of ya, without morals or laws. And all you whores got no laws. You got no honor. It's no wonder you all emigrated to America, because they wouldn't have you in England. You're a lot of savages, that's what you all are. A bunch of bloody savages." The irony is that English Bob is the same as "the savages", though he imagines himself otherwise.

In Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Eastwood follows the stories of the men who raised the flag at Mt. Surabatchi on Iwo Jima in World War II. The character singled out for censure is the money-grubbing Rene Gagnon, who attempts to exploit his chance appearance in Joe Rosenthal's iconic photo to raise his social and economic position . 

Eastwood's sympathy is reserved for Ira Hayes, who was unable to surmount his combat trauma and could not reckon that with the celebrity thrust upon him. Hayes died drunk in a ditch of water some years after the war and his exploitation as a U.S. Bond salesman.

His treatment of gun fighters Josey Wales, William Munny, English Bob and Gene Gagnon differ from that of Chris Kyle. Kyle is every bit the self-promoter as English Bob or Gene Gagnon, but there is no repercussion that accrues to him because of Eastwood's restricted ending.

If Eastwood had shown the death of Kyle at the hands of another soldier, he would have been consistent in his message -- the past catches up with you. Unfortunately, in his decision to omit the story's end he delivers a film lacking in his previous gravitas.

After Seal team member Robert O'Neill decided to go public about his killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (following Matt Bissonette's firsthand account of the operation in his book, "No Easy Day"), Rear Admiral Brian Losey, head of the Naval Special Warfare Command, condemned the pair's decision. He warned serving members of special operations forces that Navy leaders "will not abide willful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety and financial gain."

Director Eastwood has detracted from his oeuvre's message that braggadocio in killing is neither noble nor an action without consequence. Had he hewed to the actual storyline, he would have maintained his consistent and solid position.

--Jim and Lisa

We Are the Sopranos

 I don't trust society to protect us.
I have no intention of placing my fate
in the hands of men whose only qualification
is that they managed to con a block of people
to vote for them 
--The Godfather, Mario Puzo

He died of old age, only somewhat prematurely 
--Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979)

The story of terrorism is written by the state
and it is therefore highly instructive…
compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable,
or in any case more rational and democratic
 --The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord
 _________________________

Yesterday at a bookstore Ranger noted a boxed set of the television series The Sopranos, and also skimmed the book "Hard Measures" by CIA wizard Jose Rodriguez -- a self-serving screed on the New World Order of enhanced interrogation and all the degradation tha implies.

Rodriguez discusses the special relationship of first narco-dictator in Central America with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); we supported him. Which leads to this essay.

We in the United States have become Sopranos, and we revel in this fact.  Our CIA and Special Operations Forces have become thugs and killers -- worse, assassins sans remorse who brag and have become movie and media icons for being heartless killers.  The Department of State, Department of Justice, National Security Council and Joint Chifs of Staff all enable this behavior (are co-dependents?)

Our courts have supported the behavior and to date no one has been convicted of torture or held accountable for extra-judicial murder (=assassination) on the part of the United States.  This is not the way a great liberal nation conducts business.  This does not win hearts and minds.  This does not make people love or trust us.  The Iraqi and Afghan peasants understand the secret prisons, the mindless drone that run these prisons and loose Hellfire missiles on their neighborhoods.How did we go from being the nation that helped defeat Nazism to become a caricature of Tony Soprano?  In World War II, President Roosevelt refused to allow assassination of enemy leaders to be U.S. policy.  The nation that claims to never forget has forgotten his historically moral and ethical position.

This new era was ushered in during the administration of John  F. Kennedy who, while presiding over Camelot, was no Galahad.  Kennedy planning the assassination of Castro and was complicit in the removal of Vietnam's President Diem.  The Vietnam War began with the lie that we were there to support democracy, and the lie was supported by the removal and assassination of a friendly leader of an allied nation.

In the subversion of Roosevelt's democratic no-kill policy into Kennedy's programs of assassination, 58.000 U.S. soldiers died trying to prop up the illusion of the former ideal.  Reality is ugly, and lies only make it more reprehensible.

Now, our citizens cheer as a glorious feat of U.S. arms when Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein swings from a crude rope, or Usama bin Laden gets whacked in his bedroom, but these are all just iterations of the Sopranos template, and the U.S. public does not get it.  We have become killers in the Nazi mold.

How is busting into a room and killing UBL any more, or less, justifiable than than shooting Representative Giffords or a class of children in Connecticut?  In one, the shooters are portrayed as iconic killers preserving our way of life, while in the other, the killers are little Charlie Mansons.  And in sad a sense, the ST6 shooters ARE both creating and preserving this new American way of life.

Senseless killing can never be justified.  SEALs busting into a bedroom are every bit as merciless as the men sent by UBL that flew planes into the World Trade Center.  If UBL had been killed while in a legitimate operation, that would be another matter.  The U.S. Cannot become Sopranos in our response to mindless symbolic violence and retain a claim to democracy.  When we violate our humanity, we forget what life and reality are about.

Ranger sees us as sinking in the La Brea tar pits on a fast track to extinction.  We abhor indiscriminate killings by spree shooters, but idolize spree killings by SEALs and Predator drones.  The analogy is lost on us while we wallow in a national whining session about gun violence in the U.S.  We are too fat, dumb and happy to see that exporting death from Soprano-type policies is being mirrored here in Super Bowl heaven.

We have embraced death, and there's no returning from that tar pit unsullied.  The only problem with the UBL murder in our paradigm is that it was not done in the trunk of a Cadillac or the back of a M113 (as was done in the Diem murder); at least UBL was thrown overboard with cement boots.

Americans have always loved the trope of the bad/good guy wreaking vengeance for a perceived wrong (Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider or The Unforgiven, Charles Bronson in Death Wish, Michael Douglas in Falling Down, Liam Neeson's Taken, etc.)  This idea of trying to right a wrong via a simple act of vengence is appealing, and these films usually depicted men (desperados) on a solitary mission to right some wrong; invariably, they, too, suffered as a cosmic form of vengeance if only in the form of bad conscience. Today, we accept violence as a way of life.  Popular culture has embraced Tony Soprano and imbued him with a panoply of human emotions.

However, Tony Soprano has more dignity than did Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama and their henchmen because he knows what he is, which is a killer.  Soprano has no pretension to being other than a mafioso, unlike the suits we elect to positions in government.  Ranger has not lost faith in his country, but it seems his country has lost faith itself.  In the nominations of the new Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, there will be no questions about morality or ethics during the theater called advise and consent.

Killing has been institutionalized as policy. Killers are us.

[Note: According to the Pentagon Papers, Diem was transported in the back of an M113 APC to the Vietnam Special Forces Camp Long Thanh (CLT), outside of Saigon, where he was dispatched prematurely into his next life.  Ranger was 17 at the time, but later as a young 1st Lieutenant he served at CLT as a U.S. soldier. The Diem murder was never discussed either in SF training or at CLT.

The camp was filled with political insiders and was a political sinecure for the VNSF even in 1970-71.  I often wonder what became of the camp after April 1975; probably relegated to the ash heap of history.]