According to a prominent libertarian activist, the late "American Sniper" hero Chris Kyle is "essentially" the same as
mass murderer Adam Lanza, who killed 28 people in a 2012 shooting spree.
On Dec. 14, 2012, Lanza shot his mother to death before going to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and killing 20 first-graders and six staffers. He then killed himself.
According to Sheldon Richman, vice president of the
Future of Freedom Foundation, Lanza isn't much different from Kyle, a Navy SEAL sniper who killed 160 people during multiple combat tours in Iraq.
"Excuse me, but I have trouble seeing an essential difference between what Kyle did in Iraq and what Adam Lanza did at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It certainly was not heroism," Richman writes.
In an op-ed published on the Future of Freedom Foundation website and reprinted by
Reason.com, Richman writes that "the only reason Kyle went to Iraq was that Bush/Cheney & Co. launched a war of aggression against the Iraqi people."
Richman adds that "wars of aggression, let's remember, are illegal under international law. Nazis were executed at Nuremberg for waging wars of aggression."
Richman goes on to dismiss the notion that Kyle was a hero because he saved American lives by killing the enemy. The American military personnel Kyle was protecting were the aggressors, according to Richman.
"What American lives? The lives of American military personnel who invaded another people's country, one that was no threat to them or their fellow Americans back home," he adds.
If "an invader kills someone who is trying to resist the invasion, that does not count as heroic self-defense; the invader is the aggressor. If anyone's the hero, it's the latter," Richman writes.
The people who Kyle killed on the battlefield only threatened Americans because "American forces waged an unprovoked war against them," he adds. "No Iraqi asked to be killed by Kyle, but it sure looks as though Kyle was asking to be killed by an Iraqi. [Instead, another vet did the job.]"
Richman is referring to
Eddie Ray Routh, who is scheduled to go on trial for murder next month for shooting Kyle and another man to death at a Texas gun range in February 2013.
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