Shock Factor: American Snipers in the War on Terror

EPILOGUE

America has always had a schizophrenic relationship with her snipers. On one hand, precision shooting is coded into our national DNA. To survive in the New World once required a combination of rugged individuality and the ability to use a rifle effectively. Shooting was not a recreational activity, it was a matter of life and death. It was a crucial life skill men took pride in and shared with their sons. Rifles became precious heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next as a sacred American rite of passage. In battle, our sharpshooters played a key role in securing our nation’s independence at such places as Saratoga and Cowpens. They also saved the young republic more than once, most notably at New Orleans in 1815.

As warfare evolved through the nineteenth century, sharpshooters remained an important component of the American experience in the Civil War and the Indian Wars, but there developed a sense that there was something odious about such tactics. Sniping violated another deep-seated American value, one of sportsmanship and fair play. That revulsion contributed to the Army’s refusal to establish a permanent sniper corps in peacetime. That lead to a lot of hard lessons in World War I and II, when poorly trained American snipers went up against crack German and Japanese shooters who were better equipped.

The Army’s riflemen came to consider snipers a necessary evil. When pinned down by enemy shooters, they called for our own snipers to help clear the way. At the same time, they looked with disdain upon those who carried scopes atop their M1903s, considering them little more than killers.

Legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle perhaps summed it up best in Brave Men: “Sniping, as far as I know, is recognized as a legitimate means of warfare. And yet there is something sneaking about it that outrages American sense of fairness.”

The importance of sniping was recognized most clearly in the Marine Corps, which established three stateside schools dedicated to the craft. Yet even within the Corps, it was a necessary wartime evil. Soon after VJ day, the schools were closed down and the minting of new shooters came to an end.

The same thing happened after every war. In the heat of battle, the call for snipers was heard from every fighting front. In peacetime, their bastard stepchildren status ensured they were the first element of the military cut as budgets withered.

That prejudice against snipers cost a lot of American lives in the twentieth century as our enemies remained far more advanced in this realm than we were. Only after Vietnam did we finally learn the lesson. Both the Corps and the Army established dedicated, and permanent, sniper schools. The craft was taught, but often money for our specialized equipment languished. American snipers often bought their own gear and ammunition to compensate for their government’s penny-pinching.

The War on Terror changed the American sniper’s status within the military, and our society. Time after time on these new battlefields, shooters proved their worth as agents of death and protectors of life. Countless American soldiers and Marines returned home to their loved ones because of the expert work of America’s snipers. As combat shaped and revised our tactics, our shooters grew to be the most skilled and experienced on the planet. Not since the earliest days of our nation have our snipers played such a transformational role on our battlefields. Their prowess and achievements have led to a renewed golden age for our small, elite corps of warriors, unseen since the days of the Messenger of Death standing high atop the ramparts defending the Big Easy.

And yet, with peace almost upon us as our forces draw down in Afghanistan, America’s snipers fear for the future. While new weapons and technologies that will make them even more effective on the battlefield are just now coming into service, the Army and Marine Corps face massive budget cuts in the years to come. If history is any guide, that does not bode well for our battlefield sentinels. The short-sided mistakes that followed World War I and World War II are being repeated, and unless Marine and Army snipers gain powerful advocates in Washington, their specialty may again disappear, or at least be imperiled. Should that happen, the next time America’s warriors are called to battle, they will be thrown into the fray without these angels on their shoulders.

Every shooter who has ever looked through a scope at America’s enemies knows the tragedies that will follow should we fall into the trap of our historical mistakes. The Shock Factor isn’t just about dominating a battlefield, killing the enemy or destroying him psychologically. It is about protecting our own. Without the men behind the scopes, the soldiers in the street will be forever vulnerable. That is the great lesson of the War on Terror, and every sniper prays our nation takes that lesson to heart.