Say Anything Blog

Apparently then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal sent a memo to a four-star General at the Pentagon stating that it was “possible” that Tillman was killed by friendly fire and that national leaders should be made aware of that before they made too much of Tillman being killed by enemy fire.

Which doesn’t seem like much of a revelation to me, but then I’ve never really understood all the controversy surrounding Tillman’s death.  Initially it was reported that he was killed in action by enemy fire.  A month after his death, and after a full investigation of the circumstances, it came to light that he was killed by friendly fire.  Immediately the media, the anti-war opportunists on the left and Tillman’s family started crying “cover up.”  But I’m just not seeing it.

A month doesn’t seem like an altogether inappropriate time for a government investigation to run its course.  That the Pentagon made more of Tillman’s death on the battlefield than they should have before the full circumstances of his death were known is a PR bungle, at best.  After all, why would the Defense Department delay in making public the details of Tillman’s death for just a month?  It’s claimed that the delay was for PR reasons, but c’mon.  If that were true we’d have never heard about the friendly fire.

Outside of turning the fact of Tillman’s death into even more of a tragedy the news of it being caused by friendly fire isn’t really all that important.  It’s certainly not the controversy it’s been made out to be.

Which tells us that the reason we’re still talking about this “controversy” today, nearly three years after Tillman’s death, has more to do with the left and the media’s desire to keep “Bush’s wars” in the middle east from turning up any heroes than any real concern about government cover ups.

Tillman, at the time of his decision to quit football and go to war, was the latest in a proud (but sadly fading) tradition of American celebrities and athletes putting their careers on hold to serve their country in a time of war.  A tradition that includes luminaries from baseball’s Ted Williams to Hollywood’s Jimmy Stewart.  And while Tillman’s service of his country was all too brief, and ended not while gloriously engaging the enemy but rather because of a tragic accident, it was inspiring none-the-less.  That someone like Tillman would leave the cushy life of a celebrity athlete for the rigors military service because he believed in what we are doing in the middle east is something Americans can look up to.

But the left, and their allies in the media, don’t want Americans looking up at it.  They want Americans thinking that Tillman was a sap duped into a pointless war where he died pointlessly only to be held up dishonestly by our government as a propaganda icon.  And, to some degree, they’ve succeeded in doing that.

Which is even more tragic than Tillman being killed by friendly fire in the first place.