I haven’t seen American Sniper (AS) yet, but that is
due not to lack of interest but of time. That said, I can’t help but notice the
controversy the film has generated. Rather go down the path of identifying critics
and calling them out, I thought it would be more productive and instructive
instead to step back and think about what’s driving this stilted and heated “conversation”
between the fans of AS and its critics.
Let me first reflect on the
reasons why I named this blog, “on policy, etc.” Policy always concerns the policy problématique: how to interpret events
in the past to inform decisions in the present to improve the future. It’s easy
to describe, but nothing is harder due to the complexity of the social systems
policies are intended to influence, like the Iraq War. The implementation of
policy seldom goes according to plan, which results in policy resistance. Complex social systems exhibit behaviors that confound
straightforward logic and tend to yield results that are surprising, unexpected,
or counterintuitive. For example, US military
forces entered Iraq in 2003 expecting to oust Saddam Hussein and set up a workable
democracy. Deposing Saddam went mostly according to plan, but the insurgency
disrupted the UW policymakers’ plans for an early exit and eventually resulted
in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Chris Kyle spent four tours in the
Iraq, and it is important to remember that he was sent there by American
politicians to implement US foreign policy, and by all accounts he did his best
to do just that. However, I maintain that US policy in Iraq was ill-conceived,
which greatly increased the difficulty of Kyle’s mission. One of the great
phrases in the military is that a mission plan or policy “briefs well.” In
other words, it tells a good, simple, and convincing story, but left implicit
is the small problem is that the plan probably won’t work. So people like Kyle
then face the intractable difficulties of inflated expectations, simplistic
solutions, and unrealistic timelines that inevitably become more limited
possibilities, complex considerations, and extended timelines – that is, what
results when people try to achieve something hard in the real world. What’s particularly
tragic is when people are criticized for taking on these difficult tasks and
coming up short despite their best efforts, especially when they are undertaken
in the national interest.
AS is compelling because it highlights
the emotional toll such extended efforts exact, but there’s another point to be
made here: shouldn’t senior policy makers be held accountable for the decision
they make, the policies they craft, and the unworkable situations into which they
put people like Chris Kyle? If it’s the job of senior decision makers to craft
policy, should they be punished for doing it badly? It’s a story as old of
time, but such policies, like invading Iraq and setting up a democracy, are too
often implemented without sufficient attention given to the complexities,
details, and likely consequences of such actions. Policies are too often implemented
based on a feel-good, overly optimistic narrative that “briefs well.” It seems
that undertaking something as serious as war with its attendant costs in terms
of time, treasure, and lives, merits more serious consideration and analysis
than is currently the case. Certainly seeing the pain associated with Chris
Kyle’s life—both in the US and Iraq—should provide us with the incentive to
consider the way policy is crafted as well as holding senior government decision
makers to standards of truth, courage, and excellence as high as those
demonstrated by Chris Kyle.
