FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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“They were all savages over there. We were the good guys.”  That’s the message of “American Sniper,” the Academy Award-winning movie based on Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s memoir of his four tours in Iraq. 

Imperialist Wars Need Racist Lies
This capitalist ideology, that some people’s lives matter more than others, is at the heart of patriotism and nationalism. These ideas are created to divide workers around the world.  They are necessary to win soldiers to go to war in the Middle East or a third world war in the future.
Racist anti-Arab chants are commonplace in boot camp. Kyle himself used the term “savages” as well as other racist terms continually. Clint Eastwood’s movie shows all the Iraqis as either depraved killers or hopeless victims.
Kyle built his reputation as a sniper during one of the most criminal operations of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the second siege of Fallujah.  This operation killed 5,000 civilians, displaced 200,000, and created an epidemic of birth defects and cancers.  These were Iraqi workers, students, housewives, kids who were just trying to survive.
Kyle is a representative and product of the racist, capitalist system.  This crazy racist bragged about sitting on top of the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina and killing 30 looters—disgusting even if it isn’t true. 
Among the movie’s lies is that the US invaded Iraq because of the 9/11 attacks. In fact, it was a failed effort to secure Iraqi oil and keep it away from China and Russia.  This created openings for Al-Qaeda, for the current ISIS control of parts of Iraq, including Fallujah, and especially for Iran.
The movie doesn’t show any American atrocities.  The torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib isn’t even mentioned. The use of white phosphorus is depicted as a tactic that creates smoke but it’s never admitted that it caused thousands of birth defects.

Veterans with PTSD Need Help, Not Pro-War Propaganda
This movie came out during a controversy about VA hospitals that underserve vets, especially those with PTSD.  The movie doesn’t provide any clinics or counseling—it just makes profits for Clint Eastwood and pro-war propaganda for the US bosses who are organizing to send more troops into the same situation.
Chris Kyle said he never worried about the Iraqis he killed, only about the Americans he couldn’t save.  Kyle does not represent the vast majority of US troops in any war. Navy SEAL snipers are the elite racists of the armed forces, trained not to feel anything, and more than a little bit crazy. Most troops know that the people they killed were real human beings. That’s why many suffer from PTSD.
The bosses invest a lot of time and money in their Special Forces, but wars are won for them by the masses of soldiers.  They have to infuse the rank and file with racist ideology.
The US relies on the oppressed, unemployed workers of all races to do its killing. If they understand that they’re killing other workers, then they either have to justify it some way, suffer from horrible guilt, or actively organize against the way things are.

Organizing US Soldiers in Iraq for Communism
While Kyle was in Fallujah, soldiers elsewhere in Iraq were talking about communism. While patrolling the streets of Iraqi towns, these soldiers questioned their presence in the war.
Late one night, while on night watch, a communist soldier asked a buddy, “I wonder what Iraq will look like in about 5-10 years from now? Will all this be worth it?”
The buddy answered that he would love to return to the country just to “check it out.” Again, when a fellow soldier died in an IED attack, soldiers asked each other if this was all worth it.
The answer that many soldiers gave, during the same time as Kyle’s tour, was a resounding “No!” It’s never worth giving one’s life for this rotten capitalist system. Thousands of US soldiers died in Iraq, half a million civilians were killed, and countless still suffer the harsh consequences of this war through their living conditions and illnesses.
“American Sniper” attempts to convince viewers that, despite everything, the Iraq war was all for a good cause. The only good cause is for soldiers to organize and turn the guns around to fight for international communism, not imperialism.
Through a communist revolution, workers can establish a society without racist ideologies like Kyle’s and Clint Eastwood’s.  Communist society will recognize the common interests of workers around the world. A united international working class under the banner of communism is worth fighting for!

Political discussions at work often stem from documentaries on Netflix or on the internet about popular contemporary issues, like conserving energy or avoiding pesticides and preservatives in food. I usually bring capitalism into the discussion.  People usually nod in agreement, but we don’t elaborate the idea. I have one friend who likes to watch a lot of documentaries about the politics behind agriculture and food.
Now that the end of his enlistment is in sight, there’s a sense of liberation and we are loose with what we say about our work place, the Navy, and even capitalism. I work with a lot of critical thinkers. I listen to them skillfully dissect movies, music, art and ideas.
They are open to criticizing capitalism and sometimes recognize it as the cause of some problems in society. When I talk about revolution, they think I am too idealistic but they don’t attack the idea with the ruthless criticism they have against a high-profit, low-quality blockbuster movie.
Recently, another sailor and I went to lunch. We sat down and he said, “So tell me about Marxism?”  I’ve talked a lot about capitalism, Marxism, revolution, and communism, but usually I’m the one who provokes it or I have already developed a relationship with the person on that political level. This showed me that the little comments I mention at work were not a waste of time. Some people are listening. It was motivating to hear a sailor go out of his way to understand revolutionary politics.
He wanted to know about Marxism. I told him that it is the best explanation of capitalism, and that it offers the best way to solve our problems in society. He was interested in the economics. We talked about the falling rate of profit and the natural price of commodities.
We also talked about how competition is essential to capitalism and leads to an anarchy of production and to war, and how resources would be better distributed in communism, where production is organized and cooperation and mass production benefits all workers.
At work I always mention that there is enough food in the world that every person can be adequately fed many times over, yet hundreds of millions of people are chronically undernourished – hungry, and many die from starvation. World hunger would not even be an issue in global communism.
At lunch I took a step forward in talking about communism with sailors at work, and my coworker took a step in furthering his own working-class consciousness. We talked about the need for workers to organize into a party and be ready for revolutionary opportunities that spring up in this unstable capitalist system.

--A Red Sailor

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