Yeah, they've really done it now. Well, they did it a long time ago, and now it's come back to haunt them.
The news that Pat Tillman's death was caused by friendly fire, not by heroic and larger-than-life deeds, kind of makes one look at the war in Iraq and question it all. I'm not saying whether I'm for or against it. I think there were good reasons for going in, good reasons for the "war on terror," and such, but some bad decisions have been made. I haven't been keeping up with it as much as some people, so I don't have a very well developed opinion on it.
I do know one thing, however: Dishonesty sucks. It especially sucks when you lie about the "heroics" of two soldiers in the war who did basically the exact opposite of what their stories tell. Pat Tillman was apparently being hailed by enemy fire, and was killed gloriously in battle. Right. The truth, however, is that he was killed by friendly fire in a tense war zone. To me, it doesn't make the story any more heroic or any more shameful. In fact, I think whoever killed him should be ashamed. Tillman was just doing his job. But, of course, he's a famous NFL player, who quit professional football to go serve in the Army. Noble, indeed. Such a death wouldn't suit him, and wouldn't be good publicity... let's make something up, they said. A better story, something heroic. Yeah. Let's lie to the American public, they said. Huh.
Secondly... maybe you all remember the whole Jessica Lynch thing. Bigger, better, more bloated even than Pat Tillman's story. An All-American blonde girl from West Virginia fighting against amazing odds, going down shooting, emptying her entire clip, and finally getting captured in order to save those fighting beside her. An amazing story. One for the history books. All made up. In fact, she never fired a single shot. Lynch herself, in the U.S. News article, says she doesn't even know why they made up the story.
I remember when I first read the Jessica Lynch story. It was amazing. It was unbelieveable. So unbelieveable, in fact, that I didn't believe it. Then I noticed that every time I read the story in the newspaper or heard it on the radio, it got bigger and better, and more fantastic as it got told more and more. Suddenly, Jessica Lynch was no longer a soldier in the Army, she was the Army. She could have killed all those terrorists herself. I also heard she was offered a book deal to tell her story. I remember that she did write that book. She wrote it on the true story of what really happened. That story was not the one that was in the news. Oops.
Marketing for a war is what this is. It's really sad that it completely backfired. I personally don't like being lied to. I don't think very many people do. Next time there's a heroic war story, please tell me. But don't make one up just to satisfy me.
Posted by Shenlon at April 28, 2007 09:06 PM