Sometime shortly after Pat Tillman's death, the Arizona Cardinals created a makeshift tribute to him outside of the team's headquarters in Tempe, Ariz. that included a place to write thoughts or share condolences with Pat's family. I made my way over to the facility to pay my respects and wrote a short note to the Tillman family -- something to the effect that I was deeply...
more Sometime shortly after Pat Tillman's death, the Arizona Cardinals created a makeshift tribute to him outside of the team's headquarters in Tempe, Ariz. that included a place to write thoughts or share condolences with Pat's family. I made my way over to the facility to pay my respects and wrote a short note to the Tillman family -- something to the effect that I was deeply saddened by his death and that I hoped the war in Afghanistan would end soon so that additional families wouldn't have to go through a similar experience. That was in April of 2004.
Here we are more than five years later and as I speak a new president is deciding whether or not we should send an additional 40,000 American men and women into this quagmire. I am more sad today than I was that day in Tempe.
To me Pat Tillman represented all that was great about America. He was a warrior on the football field and I was fortunate enough to get to see him play numerous times as a Sun Devil and then as a Cardinal. Any true sports fan who ever saw him play could not deny his ferociousness and his heart -- for he certainly didn't have the size. He was all heart on the field. Off the field, because he was famous here, I got to see glimpses into his character in interviews and promotional appearances. The guy was a renaissance man -- well read, intelligent, opinionated and spirited. These are things I admire in a person, so when you combined that with his athletic endeavors you have, in my mind, the epitome of a man.
When Pat announced that he was quitting football to join the Army I was shocked at first, but not surprised. It truly fit his character. However, I remember thinking to myself...damn him, he's going to get killed for George Bush's bullshit war. I think that's why I was so emotional when he died...why I was depressed for days afterward, and why I felt compelled to go down to the Cardinals facility to pay my respects.
Jon Krakauer's book, Where Men Win Glory, goes a long way toward explaining exactly why Pat joined the army and how (and why) he died. The book is both a tribute to Pat -- the kind he deserved back in April 2004 -- and a well researched assessment of the war in Afghanistan. Krakauer did Pat proud, and as difficult as it was to learn the details of his death by friendly fire, it's important for us to learn exactly what happened. This was undoubtedly a preventable death, but it was also a cover up as reprehensible as any we've ever witnessed by a government committed to selling a misguided war. To be honest, reading the details of Pat's death brought tears to my eyes.
But Krakauer does something else in this book -- he makes an eloquent case for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan at a time when so many Americans are banging the drums of war loudly. Why are we still in Afghanistan? What is our mission? What will our mission be if we send 40,000 more troops?
Krakauer makes a compelling case that we are in Afghanistan because Osama bin Laden wanted us to be in Afghanistan because he witnessed firsthand how being bogged down in that country could bring down an empire. You can certainly make the case that spending nine years in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Hell, we helped fund bin Laden and the Mujahadeen to help do exactly that so we obviously knew it would work. Like most Americans, I was in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan in order to capture bin Laden. But it has been seven years and we've succeeded only in making things worse over there and with no acceptable solution on the horizon we have to get out now before more lives are lost. Lets redirect our troops to hunt down and destroy al-qaeda, doing so with a global coalition. The Afghan "war" is not winnable. Reading this book made my feelings about withdrawal even more adamant.
Krakauer is a great storyteller. On the heels of "Under the Banner of Heaven" and "Into the Wild" this book further cements his reputation for me. I could not put this book down. It is an amazing story of a man the likes of which we'll never see again, set against a foreign policy disaster that I fear we'll continue to see repeat itself as long as it is the American government's policy to unilaterally invade countries whenever it deems it to be in its best interest. And until the American psyche changes, I have no faith we'll ever be a truly peaceful and peace-loving country. And that also makes me sad...for my son and his children.
Read this book and you'll not only learn more about a great man, but you'll also learn why you can't fight terrorists by invading the countries that harbor them.
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