How Snipers are Viewed by Soldiers: "Unacceptable to ordinary footsoldiers" [View all]

[kpete]

How Snipers are Viewed by Soldiers
by mmankoff


I think it might be of interest to those attentive to the heated discussion regarding Clint Eastwood's film, American Sniper, and the varied responses to the protagonist to quote from Max Hastings' Armageddon on the perception of snipers from the perspective of the infantryman. Hastings, the pre-eminent military journalist/historian of WWII, author of many books on that conflict, focuses on the last year of the war in the European theatre and carefully examines the experiences and thoughts of those fighting on the ground for the American, British, Russian and German armies.

The following quotation is from page 88.

"Almost every soldier on both sides shared a hatred of snipers, which frequently caused them to be shot out of hand if captured. There was no logic or provision of the Geneva Convention to justify such action. Sniping merely represented the highest refinement of the infantry soldier's art. Its exercise required courage and skill. Yet, sniping made the random business of killing, in which they were all engaged, become somehow personal and thus unacceptable to ordinary footsoldiers."

The sniper is perceived as a different sort of person, even by fellow soldiers. That difference is not one which is admired, but produces a revulsion that crosses national boundaries.

If Hasting's observations from WWII still hold, when the infantrymen are volunteers and not simply conscripts, it may be that those who lionize the American sniper Eastwood depicts, only do so because they have not experienced him close and personal. If they did, they might have second thoughts.



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/28/1360663/-How-Snipers-are-Viewed-by-Soldiers


btw, , sit down mr. eastwood, your chair is ready
mr pete read the book - says you left the TRUTH out.
He adds that it is also quite juvenile: "duck hunt with arabs".



from last year:
http://mpmacting.com/blog/2014/7/19/truth-justice-and-the-curious-case-of-chris-kyle