"There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves and sheep dogs."

As spoken by Chris Kyle's father in the Clint Eastwood directed film "American Sniper" (2014), said to be "loosely based" on the real live story of Christopher Scott Kyle 1974-2013. The real Kyle was a highly decorated Navy SEAL sniper who served four tours in Iraq with over 150 confirmed kills. A hero in any sense of the word. 

I don't know anything about Kyle except the portrayal in the film and the Wikipedia page about him. And I mean no disrespect, but based on the narrative in the film Kyle is just as messed up, just as much a butcher as the Iraqi portrayed in the film who used a drill and amputations to terrorize. Kyle's weapon is a bullet, from up to a mile away.

Let's revisit that quote from early the the film:

Wayne Kyle: [to his sons] There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn't exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn't know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep.

Wayne Kyle: Then you've got predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They're the wolves.

Wayne Kyle: And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdog.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/quotes?item=qt2359001

Chris Kyle has been raised to be an aggressor. He's acclimated to killing and guns as a child, he finds ordinary life unsatisfying and joins the SEALS because he's "looking to be of service" and "likes to fight".

Fun fact I stumbled on: the Caribbean/Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal is WEST of the Pacific entrance.

A geographic oddity

How red are my hands? I descend from slave owners. My biological father developed weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, radiological, and advocated for them as somehow superior to nuclear weapons options. As a youth, American men and boys, not much older than me, were sent to Vietnam to burn women and children and villages, with napalm. Under 43 America murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, tortured many more. I can, of course, go on.

I, on the other hand, have done none of these things. At least not personally. Still, my life is rich and easy because other Americans have killed on my behalf. How red are my hands?

Today we again are all witness to yet another senseless war. As in every war, back to Troy, or Alexander the Great, thru to the War to End All War, or Great Patriotic War and countless others after that, virtually everyone on all sides is so convinced in their own cause they are willing to die and kill for it. Everyone who goes to war has reasons, everyone somehow justifies killing and dying. 

How can it be? How can some ordinary 18 year old German drop Zyklon B into a room full of people? How can an American pilot drop bombs knowing hundreds, thousands, even more, will die as a result? How can men in suits quietly sit around a table and order tanks and cluster bombs to shred the flesh of their neighbors? Their neighbors, their kin, their friends?

All too easily. All too easily. We now know from psychological experiments how easy it is to turn ordinary people into sadistic prison guards. You simply ask them, tell them these horrific things must be done. And they do it. 

Cruelty comes easily to humans. 

Hitler quite easily drummed up reasons to invade his neighbors. To him and the German nation WWII was totally understandable.  America, just as easily, drummed up reasons to invade Vietnam and more recently Iraq. And there are reasons. There are always reasons.