Pat Tillman: Hero Or Sucker?

David Martin

05/02/04 "ICH" -- Pat Tillman crossed my mind a few days before the news broke. I wondered what had happened to him. Had he completed his military training? Had he gotten his wish to be sent to the front line of the war on terror? Then my questions were horribly answered. Like millions of other Americans, I was deeply saddened to read of his death in Afghanistan.

Who could not be touched by the sacrifice made by this singular man? He walked away from the cushy life of a professional athlete with its perks of unquestioning adulation, million dollar contracts, and commercial endorsements to take up arms in the defense of his country for a wage equivalent to an entry level security guard. 

Eulogies poured in. Teammates and coaches attested to his sterling character and admitted how insignificant their oh-so-serious pursuits on the playing field seemed after hearing of his death.

It might have been otherwise. All he had to do was play out his football career and, with the money he earned, he would be set for life. He could have spent the rest of his days navigating golf courses on creaky knees and contributing occasional face time to football telecasts. Instead he put his life on conviction's line and met his fate on the dusty killing fields of a treacherous land that has long been a graveyard for foreign invaders.

Here was a man for whom the label of hero, so overused recently, could be justly applied. And yet, I can't help thinking of Pat Tillman as something else. As hard as it is to say, I see him as a sucker.

Pat Tillman bought a lie, and that lie led him to his grave. He believed in the high school civics class vision of America - a land of freedom, justice, and democracy for all. He didn't see a country where corporations buy and sell politicians, and the scions of wealth needn't dirty their hands serving the nation. 

He thought he was to be a warrior defending the lofty principles handed down from our founding fathers. Instead he became a minimum wage rent-a-cop sent to make Afghanistan safe for a BushCo fossil fuel pipeline. 

He thought his leaders were telling the truth when they said, "Our enemies hate us for our freedom." He didn't stop to think about the blood-stained dictators (Saddam Hussein included) installed with the help of the CIA. Nor did he consider the tens of thousands of people killed or tortured by American-trained and supported secret police staffs or death squads. 

He didn't realize that the 9/11 attack that inspired him to trade his football helmet for a ranger helmet was made possible in part by his country's leaders who were too busy implementing their radical right wing agenda to pay attention to the terrorism warnings Bill Clinton gave them. Clinton, after all, was the hated, dope-smoking, draft-dodging, sexed up, liberal Democrat. Why should they take seriously anything he told them?

He believed in the fight to bring democracy to foreign lands, even though his leaders were doing their best to suppress democracy at home.

Pat Tillman was a sucker because, unlike the men who sent him to war, he volunteered for service. He could have joined a champagne unit of the National Guard to keep Phoenix or maybe even Houston safe from evildoers. I'm sure with his celebrity he could have jumped to the head of whatever waiting list there might have been for the cushiest jobs. He could have found "other priorities" to keep him at home. There was a football season coming up, wasn't there?

But no, such easy ways out weren't for him because he had something the cynical men who sent him to his death can't conceive of. Pat Tillman had integrity. He may have been a sucker. But his death will not have been in vain if his example can keep one other young person from making the same mistake he did.

Copyright: David Martin <damrtn48@ntplx.net>