I have to admit, I didn’t know who Pat Tillman was. Not watching TV and not following sports has its isolating effects. But when a friend sent this, I ahd to pay attention.
PAT TILLMAN’S BROTHER BLASTS IRAQ WAR
Associated Press
October 21, 2006
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/frontpage/30126.php
PHOENIX - The brother of an NFL player who was killed in Afghanistan after
quitting the team to join the U.S. Army Rangers has spoken out.
Kevin Tillman, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan with
his older brother, Pat Tillman, has remained silent since his brother’s
death in 2004. But this week, he wrote a scathing indictment of the war in
Iraq, the Bush administration and American apathy (see below).
“Somehow, the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal
invasion becomes,” Kevin wrote on Truthdig.com, which purchased his work.
The brothers, both Arizona State University graduates, joined the Army in
response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They served together as
Rangers with the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment.
Pat Tillman, who played defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals, was killed
by friendly fire near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in April 2004. The
Defense Department is investigating allegations of a cover-up, including
failure by the U.S. Army to tell Tillman’s family for several weeks that he
had been killed by gunfire from his fellow Army Rangers, not by enemy fire
as they initially were told.
Kevin Tillman has not spoken publicly about the war or his brother’s death
since his discharge from the Army. But in Truthdig.com, Kevin wrote openly
about the war and America’s response to it.
“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.”
After playing for the ASU Sun Devils, Pat Tillman was drafted by the Arizona
Cardinals in 1998. He played with the team for four years.
On Sept. 12, 2001, he gave an interview in which he talked about how
“stupid” football seemed relative to world events.
“At times like this, you stop and think about not only how good we have it
but what kind of system we live under,” he said. “My great-grandfather was
at Pearl Harbor. And a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars. And I
really haven’t done a … thing as far as laying myself on the line like
that.”
Pat was on the verge of signing another contract with the Cardinals in the
spring of 2002 when he decided to join the Army instead.
The Tillmans were initially sent to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In 2003, the brothers returned to the U.S. for training to become Army
Rangers. After that, they were sent to Afghanistan.
…………
AFTER PAT¹S BIRTHDAY
By Kevin Tillman
Truthdig
October 19, 2006
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002,
and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in
Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has
written a powerful, must-read document.
………..
It is Pat’s birthday on 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 voiceÃ…Â until we got 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 that 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.
http://www.fahrusha.com
Fahrusha was named one of New York’s Psychic Superstars by New York Magazine.
Check out “The Write Stuff”, Fahrusha’s graphology column in Tiger Beat Magazine.
First Stop, Fahrusha http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183505,00.html
Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Rabindranath Tagore