American Sniper explicitly presents Kyle’s military identity as formed by the traditional US value system of “God, Country, and Family” (8). Laid out early in his memoir, this ethical structure underpins Kyle’s presentation of his deployments in Iraq as a higher calling rather than simply a choice of career, promoting this as “service” and “sacrifice.” American Sniper presents this belief system as an essential motivational mechanism, used by Kyle and his fellow soldiers to give meaning to the brutal day-to-day experience of war. The narrative shows Kyle using symbols of his religion and patriotism as active tools for effectiveness and morale during combat. By anchoring his actions to these fixed ideals, Kyle presents himself as having little or no hesitation or regret either during his military deployments or retrospectively. On face value, Kyle’s blend of faith, patriotism, and military ethos is used to strengthen his assertions that his actions in Iraq are justified and to position him as fighting with right on his side, although critical engagement with the text reveals a number of possible, more morally complex, readings.

Kyle engages directly with this theme by writing, “If I had to order my priorities, they would be God, Country, Family” (8). When he concedes that “there might be some debate on where those last two fall,” (8) his logic implicitly asserts that no reasonable debate can be had on the general application of this doctrine and, especially, that “God”—specifically, the Christian god—must come first for everyone. The assertiveness of Kyle’s voice, and his assumption that his values are universal, are recurrent devices for American Sniper’s sustained presentation of moral certainty.  

Kyle immediately establishes the role of “God” in his military identity in the Prologue. To justify his shooting of an Iraqi woman after she prepared to throw a grenade at US Marines, he says can “stand before God” with a “clear conscience” (4). Kyle here rhetorically bypasses all temporal criticism, justifying his actions only to—in his view—a higher religious authority, implying that he is not morally subject to temporal judgement. Although the narrative doesn’t acknowledge this explicitly, this shooting caused considerable public controversy at the time, after CNN reported that the woman was also carrying a toddler: In choosing his most (in)famous kill in the opening section, and justifying it by recourse to his religious beliefs, Kyle establishes American Sniper’s repeated use of Christianity to vindicate military violence. In his concluding section, Kyle rounds off this idea by stating that everyone he killed was “evil” and “deserved to die,” rhetorically framing himself as a god-like arbiter of ultimate justice. (432).

Kyle ties his Christian faith to explicitly militant imagery, having a “crusader cross” tattooed on his arm because, “I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in in red, for blood” (250). The connection of Christianity and blood plainly reveals the twinning of his identities as a Christian and a killer, making these aspects of himself psychologically self-supporting rather than conflicting. Although Kyle gives his own reason for the cross’s color, he does openly call it a “crusader cross,” citing a highly-charged image to frame his presence in Iraq as part of an ancient conflict rooted in religious and racial difference. The potentially supremacist and nationalistic connotations of the image become more explicit when Kyle links his tattoo to his stated “hate” of the Iraqis, calling them “damned savages” (250). American Sniper presents religion as a motivational factor on both sides of the fighting, although for Kyle, his Muslim enemies are “fanatics” who use a “twisted interpretation of religion” to justify their actions (99). Within the moral construction of the memoir, only Kyle’s religious beliefs act as a justification for violence.

This theme also draws on patriotic imagery. During the battle for Ramadi, Kyle pulls an American flag from his body armor and drapes it over the side of a building to draw enemy fire. When insurgents reveal themselves by “shooting at my flag,” Kyle and other SEALs shoot them (275). The dubiousness under the Rules of Engagement of killing combatants for firing on a flag rather than at the SEALs themselves, is bypassed in favor of its patriotic message: The synecdoche of the flag for US patriotism and identity makes the SEALs’ defense of the flag both literal and symbolic and therefore, within Kyle’s perspective, a justifiable reason for military engagement. The significance of patriotism is further developed when, after a night of combat, the soldiers salute the flag, recalling their national anthem in “dawn’s early light” (96). Kyle continues, “The reminder of what we were fighting for caused tears as well as blood and sweat to run freely from all of us,” (96) making the flag explicit as a motivational tool. The “tears” and show of emotion, normally taboo within the SEALs’ macho culture, are permissible specifically within this nationalistic context, giving the soldiers a method to process the fear and sadness of war while remaining aligned with their hardened military self-identity.