Home » Blogs » Question of the Day: Should Michelle Obama Have Attended Chris Kyle’s Funeral?

Question of the Day: Should Michelle Obama Have Attended Chris Kyle’s Funeral?

Robert Farago - comments No comments

Chris Kyle Sniper Author Shooting Memorial (courtesy marinecorpstimes.com)

“The first lady, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett attended the funeral,” cnn.com reports. That would be the funeral for Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl gunned down by gang bangers in The Windy City. Today, “Nearly 7,000 people, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, attended the service [for ex-Navy SEAL Chris Kyle]. Dozens of military personnel and others were seated in front of the podium near the Dallas Cowboys’ star at midfield, where Kyle’s coffin was placed at the beginning . . . Kyle completed four tours of duty in Iraq and wrote the best-selling book ‘American Sniper.'” It may seem indelicate to ask, but shouldn’t the First Lady, the VP or some top Obama aide have attended Kyle’s funeral?

Photo of author

Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the former publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

0 thoughts on “Question of the Day: Should Michelle Obama Have Attended Chris Kyle’s Funeral?”

  1. It may seem indelicate to ask, but shouldn’t the First Lady, the VP or some top Obama aide have attended Kyle’s funeral?

    Why would you want to insult Chris Kyle at his funeral by having such utter scum present to defile his memory?

    Reply
    • You mean this memory?

      I urge everyone here to read that article before jumping to conclusions about Chris Kyle. Just because someone kills a lot of foreigners and then brags about it with much bravado when they get back home doesn’t automatically make that person a “hero”. At least not in my eyes it doesn’t.

      Here’s an excerpt from the article:

      “She was … blinded by evil,” Kyle writes of the woman he murdered from a safe distance. “She just wanted Americans dead, no matter what. My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman’s twisted soul.”

      Were Kyle just a touch more literate, he might recognize the term untermenschen, a German expression that encapsulates his view of the Iraqis who took up arms to repel foreign invaders. From his perspective, they were incurably inferior to their “liberators” and possessed of an inexplicable hatred toward their natural betters.

      For some reason many Iraqis resented the armed emissaries of the distant government that had installed Saddam in power, built up his arsenal and apparatus of domestic repression, and then conferred upon the inhabitants of that nation the unmatched blessing of several decades of wars, embargoes, airstrikes, disease, and the early, avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.

      “The people we were fighting in Iraq, after Saddam’s army fled or was defeated, were fanatics,” Kyle insists. “They hated us because we weren’t Muslim. They wanted to kill us, even though we’d just booted out their dictator, because we practiced a different religion than they did.”

      Actually, most of them probably wanted to kill Kyle and his comrades because they had invaded and occupied their country. They were prepared to use lethal force to protect their homes against armed intruders who had no right to be there. Ironically, Kyle’s book offers evidence that he understands that principle; he simply doesn’t believe that it applies to Iraqis.

      Reply
  2. Does the Military require the thanks of the civilian government, No.
    Would there be sincerity if they had attended? probably not.

    The honors paid the motorcade expressed the heart of America.
    That is the deserved thanks for a job well done.

    Reply
  3. Attendance at Hadiya’s funeral was a political statement against guns–all three of these women are ardent gun banners. No such political benefit, or for that matter detriment, attached to the funeral of Chris Kyle, and as a general proposition, political officials will attend funerals of only high ranking officers, otherwise every service person would be entitled to the same honor. And then the business of government would not be done–maybe a good thing, maybe not. However, in the case of some military tragedies, the President or the VP has attended the arrival of bodies back in the U.S.

    P.S.:Technically, Mrs. Obama is not a political official, just a political figure.

    Reply
  4. In the cops defense, maybe it was raw milk. The government and large dairy producers are terrified of unprocessed pus free milk.

    Reply
  5. It is not indelicate to ask. In theory (only theory) those from Washington DC should have been at KC funeral. In reality, it would have been an insult and maybe or not to KC yet to the values of freedom and liberty. The attendance of the Washington DC vultures to the Chicago funeral was nothing more than political propaganda and using a sheep to benefit the wolf pack.

    Reply
  6. In a perfect world, the President himself would have attended, and when asked by the press for a comment or statement, told them that he would not dishonor the memory of an American serviceman by using the occasion for politics.

    Of course, if we lived in a perfect world, Chris Kyle would still be with us.

    Reply
  7. This appears to be yet another case of “shoot first and lie later”. If the actions by these cops is what we have to look forward to when the SHTF they will quickly become an endangered feces.

    Reply
  8. There was an incident in the city of Pittsburgh a month or so back where a female called the 911 for a domestic incident. The police arrived, but the male wouldn’t open the door for them, so they left. It turns out, he had killed her. Now there is an investigation as to why the officers left the scent. I’m not privy to all of the details, and I’m going off memory, but I’m assuming that’s why the Baldwin police wouldn’t leave the residence (Baldwin is a suburb outside of Pittsburgh). Also, I’m not sure of the details on this shooting, but I remember having read the article thinking “WTF were the police doing shooting in that instance?”.

    Reply
    • I agree. I also think it’s sad that there are no pictures of his victims’ families. He killed alot of people who were just defending their homes from a foreign invasion. He’s honored while they’re forgotten. Sad, indeed.

      Reply
      • If you consider AQ headchoppers from Chechnya, Syria, Egypt etc to be defending their homes in Ramadi. The types who attacked voting booths and funerals. That’s who were being shot.

        Reply
  9. Screw MIT applied economics professor Christopher Knittel and the jackass that thought we needed his holier than thou opinion on firearms…..

    Reply
    • Yeah, but Raese holds the Guiness record for “Most Times Defeated in Statewide Elections Without Getting the Message.” He lost Senate campaigns in 1984, 2006, 2010 and 2012 and he lost the Republican primary for Governor in 1988. None of them were really close. You’d think that by now he would have figured out that West Virginia doesn’t like him all that much.

      Reply
  10. If you listened to him, he still supports some type of restrictive gun legislation, just not Feinsteins abortion. Sounds like he wants his own firearm ban.

    Reply
  11. And now they’ve restricted the airspace over and around the cabin. That way there’ll be no witnesses when they execute him.

    [I know, I know, the tac teams don’t want their position and preps given away if Dorner’s watching TV news.]

    Reply
  12. gun control never excludes hunters.

    Yup.

    The primary difference between hunters and snipers is the target.

    Hunters who think the gun-grabbers will leave them alone are very mistaken. What’s going on is demonization and demagoguery in an attempt to divide-and-conquer the 2nd A community.

    Reply
  13. This dude is definitely done. They know he’s in the cabin, and they’ve got a cordon around it. He’s either going to be arrested, or dead, within hours.

    Reply
  14. If we allow civilians to own any “normal” small arms carried by the U.S. military, then grenade launchers like the XM25 CDTE or a Colt M203 (attaches to an M4) ought to be legal. As technology advances, the destructive power of small arms will only continue to increase. For example, the U.S. has been using the XM1060, a 40-mm thermobaric grenade, in Afghanistan for about a decade.

    So part of the point about the civilian “nuclear” argument is that their ought to be a limit to both the kind and amount of destructive power that any civilian should be able to muster. Therefore the nuke points to an implicit threshold that just about everyone can agree is well beyond the protections of the 2nd Amendment.

    Reply
  15. The first couple companies that do this are all about sentiment, but hopefully enough jump on board that it has real effect, whether that be a tangible effect, or just helps shift public opinion.

    Reply
  16. Needs clarification that Miller is one of the Baldwin officers. The news story linked to at the beginning clearly states that Miller is a Baldwin sergeant, but on here it is unclear.

    Reply
  17. Looks like the police are simply going to play Judge Jury and Executioner here.

    There is absolutely ZERO intent of even TRYING to bring him in alive.

    I guarantee that this fire was intentionally started by police with the sole purpose of executing him by flame.

    The People’s Republik of Kalifornya – wecome to your police state.

    Reply
  18. Ah, the good ol’ nuke vs. gun debate.

    Kind of a non-nonsensical comparison considering there is no practical way to set off a nuclear device in your immediate vicinity without being a casuality of the resulting blast. Well… unless you’re already in a shielded bunker. Underground. With a resaon to set it off in the first place.

    This is even assuming you could purchase, store, and reliably set off a nuclear device without blowing up yourself, your family, your friends, and thousands of your neighbors. And where would you store it? If you want to keep yourself, your family, and your neighbors safe, you wouldn’t keep it in a populated area.

    And what reason could you have for owning a nuclear weapon? If you really want to go by the 2nd Amendment, it seems pretty clear to me that any “arms” mentioned are meant for a civilian militia. Even the average soldier on the field or your law enforcement officer doesn’t have immediate access to nuclear bombs, so why should we?

    And unless you live in a remote area, there’s also no way to fully control or limit collateral damage from a nuclear explosion (not to mention the long term effects of radiation).

    So, your only option that leaves your conscience clear while setting off a nuclear device would be on a remote stretch of land or water that is uninhabited and in the process of being invaded by bad guys. Good luck with that.

    Now, really, how does that in any way relate to a owning a firearm?

    Seriously, what a outlandish argument and one that should only be expected from children.

    Reply
  19. What are people here suggesting? The guy wanted to die. He wanted to take as many cops with him as he could. Are they gonna risk an entry and have more good officers die over trying to give him a trial? No. Take him out. Save lives. People dont notice this was in the middle of a gunfight.

    Reply

Leave a Comment