What’s So Special About November 6th?
Remember Pat Tillman? He was the NFL safety from the Arizona Cardinals who, along with his brother, decided to honor the memories of those killed on 9/11 by quitting his covetous job and joining the Army. I’m sure they was glad to have him. He and his brother Kevin became Army Rangers and were shipped off first to Iraq, then to Afghanistan where Pat died.
The true peculiarity of his story starts there. The Army reported the circumstances of his death to his family and to the nation: he was killed while storming a position along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Read what the world was told in April, 2004:
Tillman, 27, was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. The battalion was involved in Operation Mountain Storm in southeastern Afghanistan, part of the U.S. campaign against fighters of the al-Qaida terror network and the former Taliban government along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, military officials told NBC News.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Matthew Beevers said Saturday that Tillman was killed Thursday night in a firefight at about 7 p.m. on a road near Sperah, about 25 miles southwest of a U.S. base at Khost.
After coming under fire, Tillman’s patrol got out of their vehicles and gave chase, moving toward the spot of the ambush. Beevers said the fighting was “sustained” and lasted 15-20 minutes.
A sad story, right? But he’s a hero, now, and America honors its heroes. The media played it up as a testament to the honor and courage of America for all to see.
But the Army lied. By December of 2004, after several months of inquiry, the Army was forced to rescind their original story and tell another one: Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire.
It ended on a stony ridge in fading light. Spec. Pat Tillman lay dying behind a boulder. A young fellow U.S. Army Ranger stretched prone beside him, praying quietly as tracer bullets poured in.
"Cease fire! Friendlies!" Tillman cried out.
Smoke drifted from a signal grenade Tillman had detonated minutes before in a desperate bid to show his platoon members they were shooting the wrong men. The firing had stopped. Tillman had stood up, chattering in relief. Then the machine gun bursts erupted again.
"I could hear the pain in his voice," recalled the young Ranger days later to Army investigators. Tillman kept calling out that he was a friendly, and he shouted, "I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" His comrade recalled: "He said this over and over again until he stopped."
Steve Coll, of the Washington Post, writes a superb eulogy in the above article. He honors the memory of Pat Tillman and honors the bravery and commitment of our troops on the ground while exposing the lies of our military machine who, it would seem, does neither. It make one wonder how many other lies have been told about the Oil Wars that we’ve not heard about? My father used to tell me: Once a person lies to you, you can never trust them again.
Pat’s birthday is November 6 - the day before the election. Coincidence or Fate? I guess the election’s outcome will decide this question as well as others. Last Thursday, TrughDig.com posted an article from Kevin Tillman who also enlisted and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that Kevin is discharged, he is free to speak his mind. I don’t think he’ll be backing the Republicans this time around:
It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Please read on. Here is a voice in anguish at the real cost of war. Here is a brave soldier awakening to the horror, the cost of war, weighing this against the romance of ideology perpetrated by our administration and our media. Here is a man who - more than the rest of us - has earned the right to speak out against the terrible state our nation is in. Right here is a National Tragedy. One of many.
That Pat Tillman was already a celebrity was a boon to America. Otherwise his story would fall into the same pit of obscurity that thousands of others have landed. Without his celebrity, we wouldn’t have know the length our military will go to cover it’s own ass, to the detriment of the families who sacrifice its children to feed the war machine. To the detriment of average American powerless to affect change.
Remember Pat Tillman. Honor his memory and the suffering of his family and the thousands of other families suffering from loss or having to adapt to a returned soldier hideously damaged in service to an uncaring ideology. Remember all this as you vote on November 7. May it give you wisdom.