Pat Tillman

I was preparing a post that has to do with Pat Tillman, the former American football star who left his sports career to join the Army and was recently killed in Afghanistan.  But I realized before I post that, it would be better to post a standalone piece about Tillman.  The San Jose Mercury News just did a new piece on Tillman and the impact his death has had:  Sacrifice strongly felt 05/03/04.

In the days since the jarring news arrived that Pat Tillman was killed in a remote region of Afghanistan, the death of this athlete-turned-soldier has resonated deeply with an American public still coming to grips with living in a post-Sept. 11 world.

It goes beyond just saying that people have been touched by the uncommon selflessness of Tillman, the first prominent athlete to die in combat since NFL player Bob Kalsu was killed in Vietnam in 1970. Tillman has put a face on all of the more anonymous military personnel who have died in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But on the most basic human level, people are mourning this latest example of an age-old theme: The best among us die young. Tillman -- ruggedly handsome, fiercely independent and only 27 -- first turned himself into a world-class athlete with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals and then into an elite Army Ranger.

Now he is being transformed into a cultural icon.

John Scalzi quoted a number of tributes to Pat Tillman from AOL-J’ers in this post.  Including this one from Rick’s Place:

Here is a true patriot. someone who knew the value of service. He had it all and walked away to serve his country. To give up a career and possibly Millions of dollars to serve the country and ultimatlely make the greatest sacrifice of all says more about this man's character than anything he ever could have accomplished on a football field.

Rick follows that one up immediately with this comment:

I think it will be interesting to see how the confused anti war masses will spin this story and sacrifice of this patriotic american.

Now, I don’t think I qualify as part of the “confused anti war masses” on this.  For one thing, I’m not confused about admiring Pat Tillman’s service and sacrifice.  There'sbeen a lot of water under the bridge since then, of course.  Given the level of international commitment still for the Afghan war, I'm hoping we can still salvage something of that situation.  But I try to be realistic about these things - especially when we are sending patriots like Pat Tillman to kill and die in a foreign mission.  And I can't say that the prospects look good in Afghanistan, particularly with the huge requirements of the Iraq War.

But very few people have any trouble distinguishing between the service of ordinary soldiers and the policy-makers who send them to war.  Not even in the revolutionary armies of the French Revolution did the ordinary foot soldiers get to pick the wars.  And US law doesn’t not recognize the principle of selective conscientious objection, in which a soldier can decline to serve in a particular war they find immoral.  (The Catholic Church does recognize the moral principle of selective conscientious objection, as do many Protestant Christian denominations, although some of the more conservative Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists do not.)

And we have seen in the Iraq War just last week with the Nightline incident that both supporters and critics of the Iraq War could join in honoring the sacrifice of the fallen. And that despite the dissent of one media company pitching militant rightwing politics.