I haven’t seen American Sniper, but I know it’s in a theater-near-me.

It won’t be surprising that I’m not really a fan of war movies.  I’m also not a fan of war.  But, at bottom, I imagine there are very few who prefer annihilation over peace.

From the media buzz related to the Academy Award nominee, I understand that the film stands on the premise that, with armed conflict underway, there is merit in taking out one person who is in the process of killing dozens, even hundreds.  That seems logical.  I also understand from the scene in the trailer containing  the seemingly horrific dilemma of choosing whether to kill a child holding an enormous assault weapon, that the movie presents a level of moral complexity and related ways for viewers to take positions.

For example, I’m aware of reports of viewers’ responses ranging from enthusiastic support for anti-terrorist heroism, to total rejection of a glorification of combat, to the recent comments of friends – two uncompromising social progressives – who saw it as an anti-war film.  Beyond this, though, I have to disqualify myself from comment on the film itself.

So, why would I bother to write about a movie I haven’t seen?

American Sniper may have initiated an American conversation – or at least provided an important opportunity to listen across the range of positions viewers are taking.  It’s this potential for listening that has me writing – a potential that seems rich enough to explore – mostly because that kind of listening seems urgently relevant.  And today, that relevance has three specific anchors in real life.

• Close to Christmas, I posted a blog with a long quote from my Afghan friend, Zaher Wahab.  At the time, Zaher and his university colleagues were in protective lock down after five days of military siege on the city of Kabul.
• Early next month I’ll have the opportunity to be in conversation with original foot soldiers – people who walked and were beaten as they participated in the Civil Rights Marches originating in Selma, Alabama only 50 years ago.  My job is to assist all involved (including myself) with listening well.
• A few weeks later, I’ll be working with two organizations – one resolutely conservative, the other decisively progressive – to collaborate in support of military people returning from the Middle East.  Specifically, this partnership has the goal of establishing a wilderness-based program for Veterans to support re-entry with an emphasis on practical exploration of careers in outdoor professions.

For me, the conversation emerging from the popular response to American Sniper links all three of these situations.

For Zaher, directing an academic program in Kabul to prepare educators, the real possibility of sniper fire – of being direct or co-lateral damage – is ever present.  According to Zaher, recent years have rendered the presence of snipers – of military raids, IEDs and bombings – as elemental as air to the land and culture of that city.

But, today in Alabama, today in the American wilderness, the threat of sniper fire will be near nonexistent.  Nonetheless, the near in that last sentence holds a reverberating space in which the extensive implications of war and of all human violence are felt, intensely and often – a space American Sniper may have wrenched open to overdue public attention.

In the case of upcoming events in Alabama, the anniversary of the weeks leading up to the 1965 Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery comes in a time of soaring and unresolved racial tension across our country.

It is now a fact of our shared history that fifty years ago, violence happened on a horrific scale when Black Americans gathered in Alabama to march together in support of equal voting rights.  The organized race-based violence perpetrated on everyday citizens by state and local law enforcement officers casts a long shadow.  For Black survivors – for their loved ones and communities.  And for the Whites who persist in what they consider righteous hate.  In such an environment, as too many recent events have shown, armed violence and other hostilities are always possible.

This possibility – because it’s been amplified in relentless ways – is also never far out of mind for Veterans returning from active duty.  Understandable as such thoughts may be, the burden can be overwhelming to the people who live with them.  In treatment settings, this circumstance is often tagged post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Hand in hand with intrusive thoughts are other circumstances.  For example, Brandon Lay returned from two tours of duty in Afghanistan, to a joyful wedding and a new home.  For months he kept secret the echoes of trauma raging in his head.  Then his meth addiction and suicidal impulses nearly killed him.

“Life and death situations were real to me every day.  Wiping away the dirt from an IED … is it going to explode in (my) face?  That changed me.  I became numb.  I lost all hope of the future.  …  Thinking how wonderful it would be just to end it.”

Lay’s experience shows how violent aggressions – whether of war or society – can go stealth in the very people who live through them.  PTSD like Lay’s ends more tragically for too many Veterans.  Currently, 22 Veteran succeed with suicide every day in this country.  Air attacks, IEDs, snipers – real or imagined – don’t even need to be around.  At the mercy of the war that now rages within, Veterans are killing themselves.

This is how systems of violence work. The violence toward everyday citizens in Selma – and too many circumstances right now in this country – don’t have to rage across external circumstances for long before survivors internalize them.  Statistics show with troubling persistence that rates of psychological distress are much higher for Black Americans than for other ethnic groups.

And we know from the prolific and rigorous research into PTSD, that any of us who survive of violence – in the streets, in schools or churches, within the walls of our homes – is more prone to psychological distress.  More prone to pervasive sadness, self-denigration, lethargy and helplessness – internal experiences that can show up as passivity and withdrawal or, in more obvious cases, be expressed as aggression – as rage and destruction.

So, that leaves PTSD the certain fate of the people of Kabul – today, in days or months to come, and, most tragically to that community, almost to a person.

This fate was also Chris Kyle’s, the man whose story is the basis of American Sniper.  And too, Kyle’s fellow Veteran – the man who shot and killed him.

Finally, there’s this perspective.  Garret Reppenhagen, a Veteran who was himself a sniper in the Middle East conflicts described the long-term impact of violence as moral injury.

“As a sniper I was not usually the victim of a traumatic event, but the perpetrator of violence and death.”  In the wake of the 9/11 Commission’s report revealing that Iraq had, in fact, not been involved in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Reppenhagen lost all ground for justifying his actions. “It fueled the post-traumatic stress I struggle with today.”

Reppenhagen’s position – which he clearly claims as his own – includes an active commitment to listening to the many experiences and perspectives of returning combat Veterans – of anyone who lives through violence. And then, beyond the listening, to take responsibility for his role in creating the problem.

So, this is why I’m here.  In this mix of stories that tell of real violence and its survival.  If American Sniper‘s only contribution is bringing Americans into conversation about war – about any violence and its inescapably traumatic impact – that effect is, to my mind, a laudable civic service.

Now, we need actually to talk.  We need actually to listen. We need to deeply understand the burden, the quiet horror, in the long shadow of violence.  And as we gain understanding, we must be willing to move beyond that to action – to do that we need to instill a new American Way.

One that includes commitment to listening across our inevitable differences in life experiences and so in our ways of viewing and living in the world.  And a way that directly applies our core American values to reconciliation. To the freedom, liberty and pursuit of happiness guaranteed as civil rights – to real outcomes that may be sustained.  An active American morality in which public sponsorship of organized violence no longer makes sense.