Pat Tillman (left) and his brother Kevin stand in front of a Chinook helicopter in Saudi Arabia before their tour of duty as Army Rangers in Iraq in 2003. Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. 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 get out. Much has happened since we handed over our voice: Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that. Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military. Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat. Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes. Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground. Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started. Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated. Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated. Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated. Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated. Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe. Somehow torture is tolerated. Somehow lying is tolerated. Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense. Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world. Somehow a narrative is more important than reality. Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is. Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world. Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance. Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country. Somehow this is tolerated. Somehow nobody is accountable for this. In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites. Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday. Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman, Kevin Tillman http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
I have just emailed this to just about everyone in my address book. That was very moving and, unfortunately, very true. No one could have said it better.
"Why does ______ hate America?" is just a long running joke among the D&Ders.. Because usually when someone resorts to asking that question, they've basically completely exhausted their arguments and have no other leg to stand on when trying to challenge the statements made by someone, such as those made by Mr. Tillman.
getting it into his hands is one thing but having him read is another the guy can't even find the strength to read a PDB and if he does read it, question is will he understand it lets say by some luck ke understands it, he' still too stubborn to do anything about it just like some one said "W is a man of principle" whatever that means
This is a GOOD READ Mr Tillman and his brother always had my respect but this makes it grow and makes one Proud to be an American Something that is harder and harder to come by these days Rocket River
that letter says it all - i hope everyone who thinks that if you dont support the war you dont support the troops reads this. im passing it on to everyone on my email list. there are still alot of unanswered questions regarding tillmans death too. first, they lied about how he died by saying it was a taliban ambush - than it comes out that he was shot by friendly fire. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/06/tillman/index.html The Army apologized to Tillman's family in June. But last week, after looking into the previous investigations, the Pentagon's inspector general determined the Army never went through the process of conducting a criminal investigation. Tillman's family has criticized previous Army investigations and demanded to know why his uniform and armor were burned a day after he was killed. A 2005 report from Brig. Gen. Gary Jones contained sworn statements from soldiers involved in the incident who said they burned the items because they had taken pictures of the scene, walked around and knew how Tillman had been killed. Initially, Tillman's blood-covered uniform and armor were said to have been destroyed because they were considered a biohazard. http://artvoice.com/issues/v4n45/who_killed_pat_tillman Tillman never bought into the official line on Iraq, at one point, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article published nearly a year and half after his death, telling fellow Rangers fighting in Iraq that the war was, “so ****ing illegal.” Tillman’s mother clarified, explaining that her son believed the Afghanistan war was justified by the September 11th attacks, but adding, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq War.” He was also critical of the Bush agenda. A close friend told The Chronicle, “That’s who he was—he totally was against Bush.” Another friend, who served with him, recalled how Tillman admonished fellow Rangers to vote Bush out of office in the upcoming presidential election. Tillman, we now know, was also in contact with one of his favorite authors—America’s leading intellectual dissident, Noam Chomsky. According The Chronicle, Tillman had set up a meeting with Chomsky, to take place when he returned from Afghanistan, where he eventually finally wound up after serving his tour in Iraq. This image of an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war (at a time when most of the U.S. population supported the war), Chomsky loving hero flew in the face of the official Bush administration portrait of Tillman, painted by dutiful media whores such as Ann Coulter, who once described him in near-racialist terms as, “An American original: virtuous, pure and masculine, like only an American can be” (Max Blumenthal, blogging for the online Huffington Post, cited Coulter’s line, asking if we could have it in the original German). As both wars droned on, Tillman, the picture perfect recruiting poster boy, evolved into somewhat of a wild card. With a Chomsky meeting on the horizon, there existed a very real possibility that Tillman might go public with his anti-war anti-Bush stance in the weeks leading up to the 2004 presidential election, dealing a fatal blow to the very foundation of the Bush administration’s propaganda pyramid. That day, however, never came. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed on patrol in Afghanistan by three American bullets to the head.
So, we should start with having everyone remove the "Support the Troops" stickers from their cars and not allowing school children to draw pictures to send to the troops? That's going to be much easier than trying to get an ass backwards president to change his ways.
