vituperation

April 30, 2004

Today, the story of two young men.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last two weeks — and I’m only speaking to Americans here — you’ve probably seen the young man pictured above. His name is Pat Tillman.

Pat led a very full life, from high-diving off bridges and cliffs as a child to climbing light towers while a student at Arizona State. Speaking of Arizone State, Pat graduated from that school in 3.5 years, with a degree in marketing and a GPA of 3.84.

Pat also played football. He got into Arizona State in 1994 on the last available scholarship, and was put on the bench. Four seasons later, he left the school as the Pac-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year. He went on to the NFL, and had three successful seasons playing for the Arizona Cardinals.

Pat was deeply affected by what happened here on September 11, 2001. So affected, in fact, that in the spring of 2002 he turned down an NFL contract for $3.6 million, choosing instead to join the Army Rangers with his brother, to go fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pat said he wanted to give something back to the country that had given him so much.

He refused to give interviews about his decision, and he made no public statement regarding it. He didn’t want a big deal made out of what he did. After several months of training he became a Ranger in December 2002, and was deployed to Afghanistan with the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Sadly, Pat was killed in combat last week. He died fighting to stop a group of people — religious fundamentalists — who want nothing more than to kill everyone who won’t convert to their insane set of beliefs. He died fighting for what he believed in, and that belief cost him the ultimate sacrifice. He died protecting the freedoms most Americans hold dear.

There’s a word for what Pat is, a word so obvious I don’t even need to use it. You know what it is.

Now meet Rene Gonzalez, a young man originally from Puerto Rico, currently a student at the University of Massachusetts. His undergraduate major was “African-American Music and Jazz Studies”, and these days he’s working on his doctorate in political science.

Rene is a shining example of what our colleges are producing, and he has no compunctions at all about letting us know what he thinks about things. Freedom of speech, and all that.

For example, he compares President Bush to Adolf Hitler, and the type of government in the U.S.A. to fascism. In his Amazon reviews, he fawns over things like the need for Socialism in the U.S. and all the great things Fidel Castro has done. He refers to Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as “zip coons” in one of those Amazon reviews, too.

Oh yeah, Rene also said of the contractors in Fallujah who were killed and had their corpses mutilated — let me quote him here so I don’t goof it up — that “it is hard to argue with the logic of the arguments presented by the Iraqi people that, in many ways, the “Americans deserved this”.” (link).

Rene also had a few words to say about Pat Tillman, which he recently shared in his college newspaper. I’ll let him tell you himself:

I’ve been mystified at the absolute nonsense of being in “awe” of Tillman’s “sacrifice” that has been the American response. Mystified, but not surprised … You know he was a real Rambo, who wanted to be in the “real” thick of things. I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures. Well, he got his wish. Even Rambo got shot in the third movie, but in real life, you die as a result of being shot. They should call Pat Tillman’s army life “Rambo 4: Rambo Attempts to Strike Back at His Former Rambo 3 Taliban Friends, and Gets Killed.”

…in my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, Tillman would have been called a “pendejo,” an idiot … This was a “G.I. Joe” guy who got what was coming to him. That was not heroism, it was prophetic idiocy.

Tillman, probably acting out his nationalist-patriotic fantasies forged in years of exposure to Clint Eastwood and Rambo movies, decided to insert himself into a conflict he didn’t need to insert himself into … It’s hard to say I have any sympathy for his death because I don’t feel like his “service” was necessary … He was acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in.

After all, whether we like them or not, the Taliban is more Afghani than we are. Their resistance is more legitimate than our invasion, regardless of the fact that our social values are probably more enlightened than theirs. For that, he shouldn’t be hailed as a hero, he should be used as a poster boy for the dangerous consequences of too much “America is #1,” frat boy, propaganda bull. (Link to Google cache of article, because the high volume of traffic Rene’s column has generated has totally fucked the college paper’s server.)

There’s a word for what Rene is, too, but it’s not the same word for what Pat Tillman is.

“It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

- Father Dennis Edward O’Brien, Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps

Update: Pat Tillman was posthumously awarded a Silver Star because he ‘was killed while performing his duty “without regard to his personal safety”.’