Sacrifice
Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan will always fascinate Americans, but probably
most clearly for a reason they won't understand because accepting it, like
acknowledging that we're going to die, pops the balloon of simplistic
pleasantries we use to disguise life itself. For all the reams of rhetoric
and frenetic reporting about his demise, there is one word that will pop
that balloon and the media is afraid to use it.
Fragging.
Those who write are aware of a need to watch for any term that becomes
repeated too much, as if insistently by a child in denial. Peacekeepers.
Humanitarian mission. Terrorism. And now, "friendly fire." Pat Tillman's
death was originally in combat, but now (sleight of hand), we're told it
was "friendly fire."
Even after reports have come out saying that seconds before his death
Tillman was exhorting his fellow officers to stop "sniveling" and start
getting ready to fight. Even after we've seen reports that he had three
closely-spaced 5.56mm holes in his forehead from a US M4 rifle. Even after
we're aware that early on, the Army had trouble getting many of its
"volunteer army" people to actually go on combat missions.
The difference between our Army today, and that grand victorious force
we saw in WWII, is that like our Vietnam-era Army, today's soldier is not
motivated by a desire to accomplish anything. He or she is there because
the Army is a good job and pays for college. In Vietnam, we conscripted
people to go fight, but in contemporary America, we've found a better way: 
limit opportunity so that the Army seems a relatively good job and then
compel them into it that way. The problem is that you can't force people
who are paid in corporate-style jobs to have any fire in them. They're
there to do the minimum and go home. They're not there to make a difference.
Let's not overstate Pat Tillman. He was probably the kind of person one
would want as a friend, slightly pompous but usually right. He knew how
to get a job done and had good values. He was, in contrast to the slacker
cubicle-warriors of the "volunteer" Army, probably a Colonel Kurtz-like
figure in that his attitude was one of accomplishment. He didn't care about
how embittered people were, how burnt-out, or how much they hated the Army
like any other corporate job. He wanted to go attack the enemy because
the task itself was more interesting and compelling than other things life
offered him. And they fragged him.
The reason Americans won't use the word "fragging" is that it recalls
the Vietnam-era problems we had getting our people to be motivated at all
in the field, and is one aspect of the war we cannot conveniently blame
on Bush and company. We're a dying empire. People no longer care. They don't
care because our economy is so "competitive" that only losers end up in
the Army, our society is so pluralistic and divisive that no one agrees
going to war is an ultimate good anymore, and because we all know that
while we labor in the fields, oligarchs get rich and lobbyists control our
future. Apathy is the word, because our society has rotted and is dying.
Tillman didn't get the memo, apparently.
Pat Tillman died because, whether in a misguided attempt to be a supermacho
"hero" or not, he wouldn't accept that kind of bewildered evasive selfish
action that is de facto in civilian America. His attitude was that if he was
gonna give up a few million a year to go fight, they should accomplish
something. He was clearly resented for his earnings. And if he was also
resented for spurring others on to rise above their selfishness, it explains
both why he was fragged and why our media would rather interview gay Nazi
aliens than use the word "fragging" to describe his death.
by Brett Stevens
August 1, 2007
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