Honoring Pat Tillman Starts by Learning the Truth
“I’m afraid if I die, they’re going to make me into this symbol and they’re going to parade through the street … don’t let that happen.” -PT
This Thursday in Tempe, AZ, the Arizona State football team will don their desert camouflage apparel, affix the surname of a fallen hero on their backs, and trot through the Tillman Tunnel onto the field to face their Pac-12 rival Oregon.
The partnership between the Pat Tillman Foundation and Arizona State University has benefited many, particularly veterans, with over $8 million in scholarship support that spans over 105 universities nationwide.
If you were to read more about the foundation, per its website, the organization was founded upon a $1.25 million pledge to endow ASU with the Tillman Scholars-ASU Leadership Through Action™ program, honoring the legacy of Tillman and inspiring the “salute to service” embraced by the football team annually and source of inspiration for “Pat’s Run” and Tillman Military Scholars.
For those who are not privy to the story of Pat Tillman, former Sun Devil and Arizona Cardinal football star who walked away from his multi-million dollar deal to enlist in military duty following the events of September 11, 2001, the website offers a short lesson on the chronology.
Per the Foundation website, Corporal Tillman, led by patriotism and a desire to serve his country, the nation’s darling enlisted alongside his brother Kevin in July of 2002, committing to a three-year term. The next bullet point chronicles the time “after Pat’s death”; the entirety of Tillman’s two years as part of the second battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment operating in both Iraq and Afghanistan reduced to a thin, blue line with a rectangle at the end.
What transpired during those two years, hidden in that thin blue line, changes the legacy of Pat Tillman in its entirety. During those two years, Corp. Tillman grew confrontational of his role serving in the United States Army. He was an intellectual, well-versed in politics and avid reader of anti-war critic Noam Chomsky.
From the words of his platoon-mates, Tillman would watch bombs rip apart nearby cities, proclaiming out loud “this war is so fucking illegal.” In his personal letters home (those that were not destroyed by the military), Tillman expressed his concern that the rescue of Jessica Lynch was a media stunt (it was later revealed to be just that); that his future service and possible death would be used as media propaganda to support the overseas contingency operations; that he “was so against [President George W.] Bush.”
These sentiments, perhaps clues into the most intimate details of Pat Tillman’s psyche, are notably absent from the patriotic news reels and the pregame packages that adorn the video boards at Sun Devil Stadium each year to the tune of marching bands and presented colors.
There is much more to this story, enough to fill a 95 minute documentary, The Tillman Story (2010), which includes intimate interviews with Tillman’s family members and fellow squadron brothers — all of whom explicitly denounce the military’s fraudulent investigation, the general parading of Tillman’s legacy by ASU and others, and other actions that almost immediately followed the Corporal’s death.
“It is an atrocity that they would take a young man with honorable intentions who served his country and lie about how he died to promote a war,” Mary Tillman, Pat’s mother, said in the film. “[T]o use him as a political propaganda tool, basically. That is immoral.”
Following a 2007 congressional hearing that included testimony from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld among others, along with utterances of phrases such as “I don’t know,” “I don’t recall,” and “I’m not certain” a total of 82 times, the Tillman family is left with more questions than answers regarding the official narrative of their son.
More than eight years later, the truths of that thin blue line remain victim to the political machine of patriotism and misdirection of blame.
Meanwhile, Arizona State seeks to “honor Pat Tillman” the way they have continued to memorialize him for years — through the flashy, military-themed apparel lines sold for some profit and saluting his politically convenient values of service, tradition, and sacrifice.
Truth, however, arguably one of the most important values ingrained in the history of this country’s founding is absent from foundation websites and the yearly online articles. Tillman, in his own words, did not want to be remembered as a soldier, a fact that seems to get buried under all the desert camouflage.
Honoring Pat Tillman starts, and ends, by pursuing the truths of his death by fratricide, holding accountable those responsible for its eventual cover-up by U.S. military intelligence, and the answer as to why it happened at all. Anything other than that, in the absence of a true investigation, in the presence of satisfaction with that thin, blue line — is everything he never wanted.
Links:
Pat Tillman Foundation - About Us , The Pat Tillman Congressional Hearings , Veterans Today - Killing Pat Tillman
