When it comes to concocting stories to make their organization look good, there are no bigger bumblers than the U. S. Army, and "The Tillman Story," sickening in both origin and execution, is just the latest. It opens today, just another illustration of the sad fact that all through the long, bloody, losing war in the Middle East, we have heard tales of heroism and bravery, only to hear them recanted later.
I worked in an Army public information office many wars ago, so I have watched this from both sides. The impressive, embarrassing movie opens today.
Telling lies simply doesn't work. Eventually–maybe too late–the truth comes out, whether it's about an office burglary, a pregnant mistress, false Army service or harassing a co-worker. As an aside, I think the Wikileaks people are doing a great and patriotic job if they can eliminate just a few of the lies that keep us in the dark about what harm our government is doing to us..
Pat Tillman was a rare man, one we can all praise and, perhaps, try to emulate. A true scholar-athlete, a talented football player, he turned his back on a lucrative contract with the Arizona Cardinals (yes, even Bill Bidwill has given lucrative contracts) to join the Army and fight in the Middle East. He believed in his country and what it told him it was doing. When the NFL, the Cardinals and the Army cooked up a deal to give him an early discharge and be a public hero on the football field, Tillman refused.
And it killed him, and made up a cock-and-bull story that he had died a hero when he actually was killed–accidentally, it seems–by other American soldiers with itchy trigger fingers.
When the Tillman family (his divorced parents joined forces to fight for their son's name) complained loudly about not getting enough facts about the death, they were sent 3000 pages of redacted documents, and they complained even more loudly.
President George W. Bush, after eulogizing Pat Tillman, eventually had to admit that the soldier had been killed "in the fog of war." Even a non-fan of that President knows it was not his fault. Like the merest civilian, the Commander in Chief was told lies so that the Army could cover its own mistakes.
Of course, trying to make Tillman a public, flag-waving hero might have caused even more problems for the government; Tillman was an avowed Atheist, reading Noam Chomsky in Afghanistan.
Director Amir Bar-Lev, who wrote the screenplay with Joe Bini and Mark Monroe, interviewed many people along the way, and he covered the Congressional hearings in which many generals, their chests covered with ribbons signifying battles they had watched from afar, muttered and mumbled and suffered from major loss of memory. Their conduct was disgraceful and they betrayed Pat Tillman in death as they had in life.
Meanwhile, his brothers, his parents, his wife (a girlfriend since grade school) stood tall, showing more courage, class and dignity than a whole Pentagon filled with self-serving, brass-wearing weaklings. It's a sad, frustrating movie that makes one want to scream with impotent rage after realizing the wages of patriotism and honor.
The Tillman Story opens today at the Tivoli
—Joe