I saw A.S. opening night, and thought it was a pretty well done, depressing movie. I did not view it as a propaganda film at all. Normally the propaganda movies try to glorify the training and play up camaraderie. I really didn’t see it here. This film spoke to Kyle’s emotional dysfunction, and the overly simplistic view he had of the conflict. None of the people he was close to in the movie (wife, brother, teammates) with had the same view he did, and he obviously couldn’t understand that. Cooper and Eastwood did a very good job portraying that, which makes it odd for me to see people saying the movie glorified war.

re: #256 GlutenFreeJesus

That’s a really good point. Which I don’t think the movie fully explored, but I think that’s because Kyle didn’t understand it himself. He spent all that time over there, and (at least in the movie) never seemed to have any use for the Iraqis other than his terp. What’s particularly sad about that is the whole underpinning of counter-insurgency theory is that you can’t beat an insurgency by killing the insurgents, you have to get the population on your side. The Kyle of the movie (haven’t decided whether or not to read the book) didn’t get that, never understood why he was over there. I spent 13 months in Ramadi in from 2007-2008 (including 8 months before the Anbar Awakening) doing all I could to keep the people I was around alive (both US and Iraqis), and I have no doubt that if the Sunnis hadn’t *decided* to cooperate, no amount of sniper kills would have allowed us to extricate from the country even as poorly as we did.