Michael Moore caused a stir when he Tweeted his negative opinion of snipers, seemingly in response to the release of American Sniper.
In another Tweet the next day, the 60 year old director, defended his statements about snipers. But he also attempted to distance the Tweets from the American Sniper movie.
He explained that his views were learned from his father, a World War II veteran .
“Lots of talk about snipers this weekend (the holiday weekend of a great man, killed by a sniper), so I thought I’d weigh in with what I was raised to believe about snipers,” Moore wrote in his post. “My dad was in the First Marine Division in the South Pacific in World War II. His brother, my uncle, Lawrence Moore, was an Army paratrooper and was killed by a Japanese sniper 70 years ago next month.”
“My dad always said, ‘Snipers are cowards. They don’t believe in a fair fight. Like someone coming up from behind you and coldcocking you. Just isn’t right. It’s cowardly to shoot a person in the back. Only a coward will shoot someone who can’t shoot back. I don’t think most Americans think of snipers as heroes,” he added. ”
He must have been criticized by his liberal buddies for trying to backtrack on his first Tweet because he jumped back into the discussion:
We’ll skip the other two Tweets in this series because they are just as stupid.
So I guess we need to ask the self-proclaimed expert on the Law of Land Warfare, the Military Code of Conduct, Chivalry, interpreter of the Bible, and just plain Fairness on the Battlefield to explain when it is okay to shoot the enemy and not be a coward.
But first some questions for Michael Moore’s dad. I’ve seen in military films and read in historical accounts where Marines would walk the battlefield after a Japanese attack and shoot wounded survivors in the head. Were these Marines cowards?
He believes in a “fair fight”. Is it fair to take cover in a foxhole and shoot at attacking Japanese in the open?
The Marines had snipers in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War I & II. Is he calling his fellow Marines cowards? Did he call them cowards in person or do it in a cowardly way like a Tweet?
Back to Michael Moore. To keep from being labeled a coward, you must:
- Engage only in a ‘Fair Fight’ (whatever that is).
- Only engage the enemy if they can shoot back (I take this to mean they can see you).
- Don’t shoot the enemy in the back.
The only fair fight I can think of is two cowboys facing each other in the main street. Maybe Michael Moore thinks we need to go back to the Revolutionary War days where Armies lined up facing each other in an open field and slugged it out. Is using artillery support and air support against an enemy that had neither unfair?
I guess he would condemn to cowardice any soldier, in any war that participated in an ambush. Are fighter pilots who strafe ground troops cowards as the ground troops usually don’t have the means to effectively fight back? Is the artilleryman who pulls the lanyard sending a 155mm round downrange to burst in the air over troops in the open a coward?
IED’s have taken many American soldier’s lives. You can’t see an IED and you can’t fight back against it. Is the guy pushing the button to set an IED off a coward? Has Michael Moore come out against the use of IED’s as a coward’s method of waging war?
As has happened so many times in Iraq and Afghanistan, when an enemy combatant opens fire on a group of American soldiers, then runs away, should you refrain from shooting at him because he now has his back to you? Or is that okay because he shot at you first? Does the rule become you can only shoot at them after they shoot at you, that we must sacrifice a life in order to shoot back? Or can we shoot at them if we see them preparing to shoot at us? If yes, then that’s what Kris Kyle was doing, taking out enemy combatants that were preparing to take American lives. The fact that they can’t see you preparing to snuff out their life doesn’t change what they are doing. Conversely, the target of the enemy combatant that the sniper is about to take out most likely doesn’t know he is a target, making the enemy combatant a coward, correct?
Do we need to limit the engagement range to insure our enemies can see us so as to engage in a fair fight? Could anything be more stupid? You want to engage an identified enemy at maximum range to preclude or degrade his ability to attack you. During World War I, a US Marine Regiment relieved a French unit on the front line. The Marines were amazed to see the German troops across the valley walking around in the open. The Germans felt safe because they were over a half mile from the Marine’s trench line. French infantrymen rarely engaged past 400 yards, but the Marines regularly trained against targets out to 1000 yards with iron sights, not telescopic sights. The Marines opened fire on the Germans with devastating results. Were these Marines cowards?
When you try to set up overly complicated rules of engagement for yourself that the enemy is not obligated to follow, you set the stage for higher casualties for yourself while allowing enemy combatants to escape to fight (and kill) another day.