Well, there it is.

Rating: 9/10 (19 January 2015)

Gotta say, as much as I, a bleeding-heart liberal in-good-standing, have political remonstrances about this flick, I've gotta give it beaucoup kudos as an artistic product. Eastwood set a tight focus for it, and he achieved an end-product that reflects that focus. And he deserves respect for that.
And, when I say "tight focus", I don't mean a one-note johnny. The hero is the tip of an iceberg: Maybe he really had the goods to do four tours of duty in Iraq and not be scarred. It's odd/coincidental; I just-so-happened to read a Wikipedia page about PSTD before viewing, and discovered that it can produce actual, physical brain changes. And I think _Sniper_ understands this, and addresses it in an artfully understated way. The hero isn't brusque with his post-operations psychiatrist, he isn't flippant or coy; he's just being who he is. And the shrink, one trusts, makes the right decision and invites him to join him in his particular ministry; attending to the needs of the rest of that iceberg that one doesn't normally see; those who meant as well as our "hero" did, but wound up, through tough luck or unexpected weakness, marred and scarred.
And, make no mistake, I still consider the 2003 invasion of Iraq a cowardly act, and a war crime. I consider people like the hero of this movie to have been abused by a system that continues to think America has some kind of divine right to be cowardly, yet thought of as brave; to be disastrously precipitous, yet thought of as agents of positive change; to be meddlesome, yet thought of as (small-'r') republican; to be profligate, yet thought of as "conservative". The hero's noble impulses to be a "sheepdog" were ill-used by the nation's power-jackals.
To me, the question of this movie is not whether he went through hell and kept his humanity. The question is whether his being oblivious to the cynicism of elites who harnessed his good will to the service of criminal ends, in principle, robs him of his humanity, in _our_ eyes.
Anyway, I hope this gives you something you can take away: In spite of the preponderance of imagery supportive of the heroics of the "successful" military man, the sharp lines and contours of that image--stating its case fairly unequivocally--serve as a Rorschach against which one can test one's own basic response to the ideal of noble (deadly) service to the state.