I am sorry to read that Pat Tillman was a leftist and had a criminal background. It nevertheless does not diminish his tragic death and the heroism he displayed by volunteering to service his country in Afghanistan. However there are some disturbing revelations in this article about how he died and what he believed.
by Kyle Smith
In May of 2003, an enlisted infantry soldier named Pat Tillman wrote in Baghdad, “a bunch of EPWs [enemy prisoners of war] escaped from across the street today. Twenty escaped while four have already been caught. Nub [his brother Kevin, also a soldier] and I are rooting for the other sixteen. Sometimes it’s hard not to cheer for the underdog. P.S. — These are not military POWs, but civilians they’re holding for info.”
Tillman knew that many “civilians” had helped run Saddam’s despotic regime. Certainly he knew that soldiers in war zones do not ordinarily cheer for the escape of the people they are trying to capture or kill.
Pat Tillman was a complicated guy.
This week the fallen Ranger, patriot, all-pro NFL safety, Noam Chomsky admirer, atheist, convicted assailant, publicity hater, seeker and — yes — war hero is the subject of a Michael Moore-praised documentary, “The Tillman Story,” that explores the circumstances of his death in April 2004. A more complete picture of Tillman emerges in “Where Men Win Glory,” the book by the quest chronicler Jon Krakauer (“Into Thin Air”), which has just been published in paperback with new material about the reasons why Tillman’s death was not publicly termed a fratricide until the month following his demise.
There is a lot of Tillman to grasp, and a lot of Tillman to go around. He was the manliest of men, yet a week before he shipped out to Afghanistan his wife joked that he had become so sensitive he was practically growing breasts. Liberals and conservatives are equally interested in seizing his legend, and in defining what he symbolized. The left will revel in “The Tillman Story” and read it as a ferocious indictment of a coverup that went to the highest levels in a tawdry effort to market a phony war.
Conservatives will reply that Tillman supported the Afghanistan invasion (though he strongly opposed the Iraq war), that accidental fratricide is a blunt fact as old as war, and that it’s understandable that military officers would want to make certain of the facts (and get a second opinion, and drag their feet) before announcing that the most famous enlisted man since Elvis Presley had been ripped apart by bullets fired by his friends.
[…]
Every time he crossed that wire, he was on a mission to conquer the great within. At his worst, his gung-ho instincts betrayed his thirst for the ennobling, his warrior spirit — that flame Homer called thumos. In high school, a frenzied, out-of-control Tillman once joined a brawl that concluded with him savagely beating an innocent bystander he mistakenly thought had hit a friend of his. Tillman literally kicked his victim’s teeth in, and was charged with felony assault. When the judge learned that a conviction on this charge would void the teenager’s football scholarship to ASU, she lowered it to a misdemeanor. Tillman served 30 days in jail in 1994. Note that in Homer (whose “Iliad” furnishes Krakauer with the title of his biography), thumos is a quality that drives Odysseus forward — but one he must control in order to survive.
Tillman joined the Army for reasons that were stirring and selfless — or were they selfish? The question was much on his mind.
Though the point is disputed (by liberals, anyway), there can be little doubt why Tillman walked away from what could have been a multimillion-dollar payday as a strong safety in the NFL and enlisted in the Army. In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, Tillman said, “My great-grandfather was at Pearl Harbor. And a lot of my family has . . . gone and fought in wars. And I really haven’t done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that.” He added, “We play football, you know? It is so unimportant compared to everything that’s taken place.” He enlisted in May of 2002 — the same week he got married. (His little brother Kevin, who would be just down the road when Tillman was slain, enlisted beside him, having walked away from his own job — second baseman for a Cleveland Indians farm team.)
[…]
Tillman had said that he was repelled by the idea of his legend being “parade[d] through the streets” by the administration of George W. Bush, whom he derided as a “cowboy” for launching a “f – – – ing illegal” invasion of Iraq. But if Tillman could today talk to the soldiers who shot him, he would understand them. No matter how opposed he was to the Iraq invasion (at a time when American support was 79% and support among the troops “probably exceeded 95%,” according to Krakauer), he also wanted in. As a raw rookie, he was judged too green to come along when most of his team boarded helicopters and went off to engage the enemy at Iraq’s Qadisiyah Airbase a week after the war began. A few days earlier he had written, “My heart goes out to those who will suffer . . . most of those who will feel the wrath of this ordeal want nothing more than to live peacefully.”
Read the rest here: The complex, tragic life and death of Pat Tillman
