Chris Kyle killed

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by Iginla

And why were these people armed? Probably because their country was being invaded.

Sure he was killing "terrorists" but that doesn't make him a hero, it only makes him another brain washed American.

Great argument. You win no matter what. Whoever disagrees with you is brainwashed.

Do you always take the easy way out?

[Displaced Flames fan]

The media keeps saying gun range, but the fact is while this facility probably has a gun range it is much more than that. It is an expansive hunting ranch and these two were found killed in a remote part of that ranch. It is likely that they were doing something other than firing at targets with a dozen other shooters around them.

The visual of this guy shooting Kyle and Littlefield as they're firing at targets down range isn't a very accurate depiction of what happened (not that I know what happened). That's just what we get from the media, who think they know it all and jump to conclusions incessantly.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Cole436

The guy seemed to like his job a little too much for my liking.
Can't say I'm very sad.

I simply don't understand this mentality. People that loathe their jobs usually aren't that good at it. In Chris's line of work if he has a bad day or struggles with what he is doing, innocent people are killed as well as other soldiers that are young men and women simply serving their country regardless of the politics involved. I have zero issues with him taking pleasure in blowing the head off an insurgent with a rocket launcher in his hand. As long as he's not taking pleasure in slaughtering innocent people that's the way I would want my soldiers as if you can't handle it you can end up like the soldier that committed the murders. It takes a special kind of mindset to be a soldier and I don't fault people for not having that mindset and I certainly aren't going to fault people that do have the proper mindset in that you have a job to do and you can't let conscience interfere as it may cost you your life or the life of others.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

The media keeps saying gun range, but the fact is while this facility probably has a gun range it is much more than that. It is an expansive hunting ranch and these two were found killed in a remote part of that ranch. It is likely that they were doing something other than firing at targets with a dozen other shooters around them.

The visual of this guy shooting Kyle and Littlefield as they're firing at targets down range isn't a very accurate depiction of what happened (not that I know what happened). That's just what we get from the media, who think they know it all and jump to conclusions incessantly.

I was just re-reading the article, they were found in the woods basically.

That's something entirely different.

I'm reading a couple of books on PTSD right now, but the one prevalent thing that stands out is while these guys to an extent know that there is something wrong with them, they almost all choose to endure it in silence because the basic warrior code of showing no outward fear prevents them from easily sharing their pain.

One of the biggest symptoms of PTSD is these guys completely draw away from contact with people and become very solitary, mostly because they have trouble connect people with the concept of living things (not put very well sorry).

They also try to disconnect from their emotions.

One of the stories in the book is about a guy who came back from Vietnam and suffered in silence, he left his family and friends and moved out to a secluded farm, and every night he walked an armed patrol because he believed that the Viet Cong were still in the tree line waiting for the perfect chance to get him.

It took a long time for friends to even approach him because he'd become rather intense about being as far from people as possible, I think it took 10 years for them to convince him to put down the gun and get help.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I simply don't understand this mentality. People that loathe their jobs usually aren't that good at it. In Chris's line of work if he has a bad day or struggles with what he is doing, innocent people are killed as well as other soldiers that are young men and women simply serving their country regardless of the politics involved. I have zero issues with him taking pleasure in blowing the head off an insurgent with a rocket launcher in his hand. As long as he's not taking pleasure in slaughtering innocent people that's the way I would want my soldiers as if you can't handle it you can end up like the soldier that committed the murders. It takes a special kind of mindset to be a soldier and I don't fault people for not having that mindset and I certainly aren't going to fault people that do have the proper mindset in that you have a job to do and you can't let conscience interfere as it may cost you your life or the life of others.

If you look at it, special forces operators are a lot like fighter pilots, they are incredibly cocky, they've been broken down through their training to the lowest they've ever been, and then they're lavishly built up until they believe that they are the top 1% of 1% in the world at what they do.

They are also trained to never doubt their abilities, and to not rationalize what your doing when the bullets are whizzing over your head.

[flamesfever]

I recall dealing with a few vets who had returned from Viet Nam back in the 70's. We were cautioned to be very careful waking them up, as they could do serious harm if you woke them up too suddenly. I don't think we can imagine what some of them must have gone through.

[jammies]

The guy might have been a self-important jerk, but he was no war criminal. War has rules, and legitimate targets within those rules get killed without it being any kind of war crime.

Whether it's moral or not, is a whole other question. But it's not illegal. Once you take up arms as an enemy, you accept the risk of dying along with the intention to kill. Looking for justice in such a situation is for people who get to sit at home and theorize after the fact, not for someone who is part of an army and has a duty to fight.

And, for the record, I was vehemently against the whole Iraq war as both unjustified and counter-productive from the beginning. But asking the military to decide who and who is not right to fight is the first step to a far greater peril - the democratically elected government must decide these things, else you risk dictatorship by an army that feels it has the right to meddle in politics.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Great argument. You win no matter what. Whoever disagrees with you is brainwashed.

Do you always take the easy way out?

Even when he said he'd "eat his pubes" he took the easy way out by hiding them inside peanut butter (unless he's a different returning poster...).

[Thor]

Originally Posted by flamesfever

I understood it was a Canadian that was considered one of the best snipers.

Was, this guy broke his record a year or two later.

[mykalberta]

Lots of Neville Chamberlain disciples on CP I see, par for the course I guess.

Sad to hear about any Armed Serice person who has died so needlessly after surviving combat.

[Rerun]

I have a problem with a lot of stupid things that people have said in this thread but the one big thing is people here saying the guy enjoyed his job.

WTF??? Where does it say that? Sure he was good at it... in fact he was superb at it... but just because you're a great shot doesn't necessarily mean you enjoy shooting and killing people.
In fact if he enjoyed it so much why did he have problems? Sounds to me like what he did had a very negative psychological impact on him.

He quickly found a way to maintain contact with his fellow veterans and pass on what had helped him work through his own struggles, establishing a non-profit called FITCO Cares, said the organization's director, Travis Cox.
"Chris struggled with some things," Cox said. "He'd been through a lot and he handled it with grace, but yeah he did struggle with some things

Way too many idiots posting in this thread.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Great argument. You win no matter what. Whoever disagrees with you is brainwashed.

Do you always take the easy way out?

The irony is that his opinion is itself fromed from a pattern of thinking no better than brainwashing.

[Resolute 14]

That being said, I do agree with the general sentiment that taking people with severe mental issues to a gun range = stupid as hell. But that is an issue that plagues America as a whole, not just one man.

[mikey_the_redneck]

The suicide rate for veterans in America is jaw dropping. I think it averages more than one veteran per day. It's the biggest story nobody talks about.

It makes me wonder if the cause of many of these suicides are guys snapping from all the pharma drugs they get after being diagnosed with PTSD.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Essentially your objection to this guy is that he happened to be a soldier at a time when his country entered into a conflict you disagreed with. This has absolutely nothing to do with the soldier in question who was carrying out his duty. Shooting people is part of a soldier's job. If you object to the war, blame those policy-makers responsible for waging it.

True, but without soldiers (blindly?) following orders and carrying out their duties, policy makers would be left with only pawns on a map to play with.

When you voluntarily signing up for military service you do bear certain amount of responsibility for the heads you blow off.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by HPLovecraft

Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess. Guy was good at his job but seemed to enjoy what he did a little too much for me to feel comfortable.

I doubt he took enjoyment from killing another human being. He did what was required of him and I have no doubt that he was haunted by what he did.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck

The suicide rate for veterans in America is jaw dropping. I think it averages more than one veteran per day. It's the biggest story nobody talks about.

It makes me wonder if the cause of many of these suicides are guys snapping from all the pharma drugs they get after being diagnosed with PTSD.

I think the biggest problem with a lot of mental illnesses (unpopular opinion spoiler) is that we tend to over prescribe and really over medicate people with serious mental issues without driving to the root cause of some of these problems.

I think we are far too dependent on drugs doing the work.

[Dion]

Why soldiers get a kick out of killing

Surveys of WWII infantrymen carried out by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall found that only 15 to 20 percent had fired their weapons in combat, even when ordered to do so. Marshall concluded that most soldiers avoid firing at the enemy because they fear killing as well as being killed. "The average and healthy individual," Marshall contended in his postwar book Men Against Fire, "has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility…At the vital point he becomes a conscientious objector."

Critics have challenged Marshall's claims, but the U.S. military took them so seriously that it revamped its training to boost firing rates in subsequent wars, according to Dave Grossman, a former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and professor of psychology at West Point. In his 1995 book On Killing, Grossman argues that Marshall's results have been corroborated by reports from World War I, the American Civil War, the Napoleonic wars and other conflicts. "The singular lack of enthusiasm for killing one's fellow man has existed throughout military history," Grossman asserts.

The reluctance of ordinary men to kill can be overcome by intensified training, direct commands from officers, long-range weapons and propaganda that glorifies the soldier's cause and dehumanizes the enemy. "With the proper conditioning and the proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill," Grossman writes. Many soldiers who kill enemies in battle are initially exhilarated, Grossman says, but later they often feel profound revulsion and remorse, which may transmute into post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Indeed, Grossman believes that the troubles experienced by many combat veterans are evidence of a "powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...ill-2010-04-23

[Dion]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I think the biggest problem with a lot of mental illnesses (unpopular opinion spoiler) is that we tend to over prescribe and really over medicate people with serious mental issues without driving to the root cause of some of these problems.

I think we are far too dependent on drugs doing the work.

Drugs are the cheaper way of dealing with mental illness and it's route often taken by doctors. Talk therapy along with medication is the better option.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Flame Of Liberty

True, but without soldiers (blindly?) following orders and carrying out their duties, policy makers would be left with only pawns on a map to play with.

When you voluntarily signing up for military service you do bear certain amount of responsibility for the heads you blow off.

Lets look at that for a minute. The old 60's saying was "What if they threw a war and nobody came", its true to an extent, but its a far different scenario then wars like Vietnam and the later stages of WW2 where there was conscription. In a volunteer army you are always going to get people with a sense of duty, or country or adventure or even strict desperation that join the Military and execute the orders of the Commander and Chief.

Lets also separate out the concept of disobeying orders. you have an absolute right to disobey orders on an individual unit basis. If you feel an action is illegal. If a office commands you to gun down civilians or bomb a hospital or harm the innocent then you have a right to not only refuse that command but force clarification up the chain of command.

While the international community has constantly stated that the war in Iraq is illegal by the international court standards (which America is not a signatory) that does not make it an illegal war to a soldier because the order to go to war was a legal one based under U.S. law and sanctioned by the government and by the legal chain of command. so sitting there and stating that a soldier has a responsibility in that war of being able to claim its illegal is not true. That's why the people that fled to Canada for example that were service members actually broke the law and are AWOL. the only way that they could legally get out of that war was A) not to join the American Military in the first place (especially the ones that joined after Iraq stated) or claim conscientious objector status which would usually lead to a general discharge.

As for the second part, lets talk about the personal responsibility concept. Since they aren't doing anything illegal in terms of the American declaration of war, and they aren't under any obligation outside of that and they went there voluntarily then the responsibility isn't legal in any way. However we are seeing clearly that alot of these soldiers that are coming home are suffering a fate worse then any court could sentence them too and those people deserve some compassion. The Marine that did the killing here is not a monster or a homicidal maniac he's a messed up disturbed guy who is obviously bearing a lot of responsibility. In this case and chances are not for fighting some lofty nebulous concept of international law and an illegal war, but for seeing and doing things that would drive anyone out of their mind.