Pat Tillman's Legacy - What Have We Become?

[bridgit]

Kevin Tillman

It is Pat Tillman's birthday 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 who 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.

[MikeNearMcChord]

1. Honor Pat Tillman and other soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors

who died in this immoral war and vote out the GOP! Bring them home and heal them.:patriot:

[bridgit]

2. that is my thought as well, friend...

:patriot:

[brokensymmetry]

3. Worth keeping in mind. n/t

.

[bridgit]

4. agreed...

[genie_weenie]

5. What is most disheartening to me

is that those keyboard and television champions of War and Death continue to spew forth the Call to War unabated. They will fight here on the homefront so they can send the lesser Americans to fight in Iraq.

These cowards who put words into the mouths of the dead...

These liars who would sacrifice another mother's son...

I can only hope that the Christian Hell as envisioned by Dante is true and those who have used all their power to spew hate and invective will be forced to swallow molten bronze and suffer to have their tongues eaten by worms for all eternity.

:mad:

[bridgit]

6. i was thinking that just today, what a great sense of heady power...

it must give the likes of g.w. bush to simply sign away the lives of so many while he, his wife, his daughters & fan & donor base skip off to that bullshit ranch and talk about how to keep their own conceited dreams alive while thousands upon thousands die all around them

it is disgusting to me as well their prideful lack of common good

[genie_weenie]

7. War Pigs,

Johnny Got His Gun, War is a Racket, Masters of War, Gunner Palace, Why We Fight, The Things They Carried and on and on and on...

How can it be people don't realize what is going on?

[bridgit]

9. there was another thread the other day regarding Turley's read...

on the national shame that flows most un-naturally from the, and let's call it what it is: The Clean Torture Act & Sub-Mind Of The Bush Doctrine; but many were responding to the apathy across the land. it has been a sleep walk, perhaps or more likely cause we are living our lives and don't mush think about it...i don't torture people even if hubby thinks i torture him with all my questions but you catch that drift; my sense is that you don't...

...but 'we the people' have been experiencing a waking dream-state through this cameo role we've played for these last years, just 'phoning it it', sleep walking as we abdicate our nation's loftiest of poetic freedom's & liberty's to people that will never care for us; never have never will

it is well past time for these War Pigs as you rightly say, to take their filthy money and go away, just go the hell away...

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

[me b zola]

8. Where are the recommendations?

I think of Pat and his family from time to time, I wish them peace and comfort. I wish like hell that Kevin had a loud microphone, this country needs to hear things from his perspective.


Tillman family, I will keep a candle lit for Pat that will burn through November 7th.

[bridgit]

10. Pat Tillman didn't fail, his as-such commander in chief has failed both...

he & this this nation with his misplaced, simple-minded doctrines of empire & hegemony imo; the recounting of that event sequence from the field are as heartbreaking for the Tillman's as they are as telling an indicator of the failures of: g.w. bush, to my mind it all comes back to w.