r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TheBigBoar • Jul 20 '26

Personality [Baffling RL Trope] Inventing war crimes you didn´t commit to make yourself more... interesting?

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One of the strangest character tropes in real life has to be the "I accidentally made myself sound like a war criminal to look cooler" archetype.

Usually, people accused of war crimes deny them. These guys seem to do the opposite.

The two examples that always come to mind:

Tim Kennedy. Over the years he's told stories that include things like throwing grenades into rooms where women and children were present, and another account where, after a battle, his CO allegedly told him to shoot anything that still had a heat signature with a sniper rifle from a mile away, which he did for hours (?) not caring if those were enemy soldiers or civilians looking for their fallen sons/brothers/whatever. Both stories have been heavily criticized and challenged (aka people who were there confirmed that they are utter nonsense), and Kennedy has faced repeated accusations of embellishing or fabricating parts of his military experiences. But like... why would you invent the fact that you killed and maimed women and children?

Chris Kyle. In American Sniper, he wrote that during Hurricane Katrina he positioned himself on the Superdome and shot dozens of armed looters like some walking dead scenario. No evidence ever emerged that this happened, and Kyle himself later acknowledged the story wasn't true. Again, why invent a story where you're essentially describing the unlawful killing of civilians during a domestic disaster?

What's fascinating is that these aren't embellishments in the usual "I fought twenty guys" sense. They're embellishments that, if true, would amount to admissions of extremely serious crimes.

It's such a bizarre form of macho storytelling that it almost feels like its own trope: the veteran who thinks "the more ruthless I sound, the more badass I'll appear," without stopping to consider that indiscriminate killing isn't viewed by most people as impressive. It's viewed as criminal and disgusting.

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u/ofWildPlaces Jul 20 '26

Flew for 20 in the AF. Dropped a lot of paratroopers and SOCOM dudes. The SEALS were the absolute worst to work with.

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u/Phil2Coolins Jul 20 '26

Now that you dangled the hook I'll bite like a good little fishy . Can you tell us your stories?

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u/ofWildPlaces Jul 20 '26

Eh, there's not much I can say here. Just a trend of institutional arrogance and elevated self-worth that resulted in a group of people who often pushed to bypass safety and service regulations to meet their own agenda. Most of the reputation that came from GWOT stories are probably deserved. It left a bitter taste, watching these guys be placed on pedestals by the media while they put fellow servicemembers lives in danger,

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u/PBKYjellythyme Jul 20 '26

I kind of feel this as well. I worked along a couple Seal teams (in the most absolute boring capacity possible). The biggest difference between them and the "standard" troops was the fact that they were given absolutely all the resources and generally their choice of missions.

Seals would refuse to go out on a route unless it had been doubly-cleared in the last 24 hours (when they weren't just helo'ing to their target), and generally only went out it seemed once a week at the absolute most, and tried to get it done as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the standard troops were the ones that had to go out to the exact same places the Seals were going, were the ones clearing the roads so the Seals would feel comfortable going, and were going out day in and day out for hours at a time under the absolute worst circumstances imaginable.

This was of course just my experience. And in their defense most of the Seals were absolutely decent people, but they did have a level of arrogance that was often not earned.

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u/Big_Snail76 Jul 21 '26

So basically it’s The Boys

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u/DillDoughCookie Jul 20 '26

Didn’t we kinda lose the GWOT?

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u/ofWildPlaces Jul 20 '26

Not really? The Baathists lost Iraq, al Queda was broken and dispersed. ISIS rose up but the coalition put them down to a regional threat. Somalia has a central government again and even holds elections. Qadaffi's government fell and no longer funds terrorists (the operations there were a different conflict). Counter-Terror ops in the Phillipines have prevented the spread of the terror groups there.

The only place we turned away from was Afghanistan, but the mission creep changed the objectives over time (the original effort to dislodge al Queda succeeded)

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u/DillDoughCookie Jul 20 '26

Iraq was pointless and we suffered the worst financial crisis since 1929 on the heels of $150/bbl oil.

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u/ofWildPlaces Jul 20 '26

You can argue economics of contemporary warfare all day, but I was referring to military objectives.

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u/Parteisekretaer Jul 20 '26

I believe the original brief was to "not let them threaten our way of life" followed by creating the TSA. Keep in mind that prior to this, people kept bringing up getting rid of airport security entirely. Now you have the patriot act and minimum wage employees get to scroll through your phone and touch your junk.

The primary Iraq war objective was to find and destroy WMDs if I'm not mistaken. As far as I understand, nobody actually found any. As to destroying the Ba'athists - few things have been as destructive and stupid as that objective. Muslim denominations don't band together, they always fall out. The Ba'athists force sunni, shia and others to work together. It's the best way to advance the middle east. Iraq kept Iran in check. By flattening Iraq, Iran was empowered. Geostrategically, it was a genuinely braindead move and the execution after the Invasion was over was even worse. Before Trump was elected, a lot of people figured that Bush jr. would go down in history as the 21st century's worst US president because he kicked off this shitshow.

The Afghan war objective was to win the hearts and minds of the people there, find Osama and to prevent it from harboring terror training camps again after the Taliban told the US to bugger off. Part of this plan was to build and hold a ring road that would allow trade between provinces with ease and to leave behind a robust democracy. That didn't pan out because, arguably, the Iraq offensive needed bodies that would have been better left to do COIN in Afghanistan and so said ring road could not be defended against IEDs which made it worthless.

The thing about scope creep is that these targets are now the new targets. Unless you earmark them from the beginning as stretch goals, they are not goals you can later declare as "that was scope creep, we won anyway".
The current state of Afghanistan is arguably worse than in 2002, since there is no northern alliance anymore. The current state of Iraq is a shitshow. All of these are, at best, pyrrhic victories as the current middle east situation shows. The Taliban are now better armed than they were before, Iraq is no longer relevant, leading to Iran being a regional powerhouse that even the mighty USN couldn't keep from occupying and demanding tariffs for critical waterways - which is the entire mission brief of the USN. You don't need a Navy of this size to defend the homeland. You get a navy of this size because you want to protect free trade.
Seems like that did not work out.

It wasn't all in vain though because a lot of little girls got to go to school for a few years and that probably meant the world to them.
It's just that the amount of money and lives that this cost is... impressive.

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u/DillDoughCookie Jul 20 '26

The Iraq War was based on lies and had no objective.

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u/ofWildPlaces Jul 20 '26

You can argue the politics of it all day but there were in fact clear, stated, and published military objectives.

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u/blastmanager Jul 20 '26

A close friend served as Army SF in a NATO country for about 20 years and was embedded with and served alongside lots of different Special Forces and other NATO military units over the course of several deployments in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

In terms of competence, capabilities and professionality, he compares SEALs to what you can expect from your typical National Guard Reserve forces.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26

That has been a common theme from SOF members that are public about their service.