The undulation of a legacy
Do you remember Pat Tillman? I'm sure you do. He was the Arizona Cardinals football player who turned down millions of dollars to be an Army Ranger. An elite. A man among men. A patriot.
We can sing his praises all day. Praises that, with all due respect, all our soldiers deserve. The war is on, and they don't complain.
Well, they don't complain loudly anyway.
I remember reading about Tillman. I couldn't help but think there was something more to this person. He was the unbending patriot, willing to lay down his life for his country. And he did. When he died, it was a tragedy, just as much of one as every single other soldier's death.
But what I cannot get over was the cover-up. His family waited for five weeks to find out how he died. When the word finally broke that he was cut down by Americans, not Taliban fighters, I couldn't do more but shrug and shake my head. These things happen in war.
But what really got me was how the conservative pundits couldn't get enough of this guy. It was sort of a feel-good death for their viewers. "People like his should be talked about more in the media." It was, more or less, a smoke screen. With a story like this, FOX News does not have to talk about the other, much more disturbing facts.
And now we know that Tillman himself would not have approved.
According to some of Tillman's friends, he considered the Iraq war "fucking illegal." His family, never actually in the media's spotlight, called him a fiercely independent thinker critical of Bush and the war. He considered Noam Chomsky to be one of his favorite authors (as do I).
The Pentagon could hardly resist offering Tillman a contract to become the poster child of the recruitment effort. He turned them down. After he died, politicians who knew nothing of the man sang quiet lies and damning eulogies in praise and thanks to someone who would have been protesting their prior actions, were he not wearing a military uniform.
He did his duty, but didn't agree with it. That is true patriotism. Not this constant flag-waving, cheerleader crap we get back here in the states. And in the end, he really does set a positive example - not as the unquestioning republican idol, but as the patriotic liberal.
Tillman was like most of us. Current polls put 63% of Americans in opposition to the prez. Tillman questioned the war, but fought it anyway. Now that we know who the hero REALLY was, we can just secretly hope that the very mention of his name causes slime like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity to choke on their own hypocrisy.
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