Images of Islamic State jihadists torching a Jordanian pilot vindicate the words of late "American Sniper" Chris Kyle, who described the enemy he and the military were facing in Iraq as "savage, despicable evil,"
The Wall Street Journal says in an opinion piece posted Wednesday.
"After seeing images this week of Islamic State jihadists murdering a caged Jordanian pilot by burning him alive, can there be any real doubt that Kyle was right?" the article claims.
But instead, "a corner of liberal America" has denounced Kyle and Clint Eastwood's movie about him, with HBO's Bill Maher referring to Kyle as a "psychopath patriot" and filmmaker Michael Moore posting tweets about snipers being cowards.
Also this week, former Minnesota Gov.
Jesse Ventura continued to attack Kyle, telling radio talk show host Alan Colmes that it does not mean much to describe Kyle as a "hero" because the Nazis had heroes as well.
To Kyle's opponent, the Journal's opinion piece says, Kyle, who was killed in 2013 by a Marine veteran, must have been inhumane because he did not have a guilty conscience about killing enemy fighters.
But the Islamic State advertises "the kind of butchery" that Iraqis had faced with al-Qaida, which was terrorizing cities during the Iraq War in which Kyle served, the Journal points out.
For example, Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez have written about the methods of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader who the United States killed in 2006. Their article, the Journal reports, recounts how an "Egyptian hostage was taken out of the trunk of one of the cars, dressed only in his undergarments, his entire body black and blue from beatings."
The Brisard/Martinez article recounted how the kidnappers tied the man's hands behind his back and asked him to state his name.
"He was about to apologize for his acts, but a man gave a sign to the 'executioner' standing behind the hostage, who grabbed the man’s tongue and cut it off, stating that the time for excuses was past," said the article. After that, the man's captors beheaded him.
It was on such executioners that Chris Kyle trained his sights.
While Maher, Moore and others like them may want to complain about the war and the United States' involvement, "the moral balance in that war was exactly the opposite," the piece concludes.
"No wonder millions of Americans admire Kyle and are flocking to see the movie that treats him like a patriot in full."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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