Kevin Tillman, Army Ranger on Iraq

by **Jim0322** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:48 am

Excerpt from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15403881/site/newsweek/

His brother Pat Tillman was the one killed by friendly fire. You really have to feel sorry for the men and women on the ground who have to follow the orders/policy of the government whether they agree or not.

Kevin and Pat joined the U.S. Army Rangers together in 2002. Both served in Iraq during the invasion. Both knew—or thought they knew—what they were getting into. Kevin writes on Truthdig.com that his brother talked to him “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 voice… until we got out.”

Kevin Tillman then writes that “much has happened since we handed over our voice,” and so begins the litany of shame:

“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.”

Tillman doesn’t stop there. He’s on a roll, he’s righteous, and more important still, he’s right:

“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. …”

The recitation becomes a dirge. In fact, this is a poem, and one with a power that reminds me of something I re-read recently in the collected works of Rudyard Kipling.

No, certainly not the Bard of Empire’s excessively cited “If,” that banal paean to stiff-upper-lippishness written in 1909 that has been quoted scripturally for most of the last century by pink-cheeked schoolboys and back-slapping businessmen. (“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ”… etc.) No. Kevin Tillman’s poem is reminiscent of one that Kipling wrote at the height of his powers, and of his anger.

After a gruesome military disaster in 1917, Kipling wanted to know why the men who sent the soldiers to their deaths day after day, week after week, month after month in a futile exercise of arrogance and stupidity still managed to escape punishment:

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

Kipling wrote such poems because he wanted action. He wanted punishment, vengeance, or at the very least some public holding to account. “Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?” he demanded. “When the storm has ended” would the politicians and bureaucrats have “sidled back to power” by the “favor and contrivance of their kind?”

Kevin Tillman is asking the same question, with the same well-sharpened edge of indignation. He is making this statement now in hopes that voters will listen. No, he does not offer solutions. No he does not have all the answers. But he does have one: the people who got us into this war should pay for it with their careers, their fortunes and what little pretense they can have to honor.

And, oh yes, there is one more thing you should know about the poem that Kipling wrote in 1917. The World War I debacle he described was in a place that gave his work its title, "Mesopotamia": the word the British used for the country before they called it Iraq. The officials responsible for the disaster there were never sanctioned. We'll see if that part of history repeats itself as well.

If this were not the words of a soldier but of a civilian, the current adminstration would accuse him of being unpatriotic and not supporting our troops. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

I hope we bring our troops home soon.
Jim

by **Wesley** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:36 am

I wish our troops home as much as anyone else. The fact is that we can't leave Iraq in such instability.

by **Darknut** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:35 pm

There is no law that states what type of invasion is legal so you cannot call any invasion illegal. I think he means to say that our invasion isn't supported or approved by the UN. The invasion was approved by congress in the US which makes the invasion legal.

However I do agree that there were more important things we could have been doing other than needlessly invading Iraq.

by **gowhitesox99** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:32 pm

true darknut...true.... couldnt we use all that $$$ for healthcare, soc security, education...etc......border security....

by **LONGTRANGBILL** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:17 pm

I feel like the living brother is an angry ass... that should be dead in place of his brother...

There will always be people that think a war is the wrong thing.

I personally just don't believe they should be public with there opinions because it just feeds into the "dissent" that all our enemies wish to perpetuate within our borders!!!

ONE NATION!!!!

UNDIVIDED!!!!

by **Jim0322** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:50 pm

Originally posted by LONGTRANGBILL
I feel like the living brother is an angry ass... that should be dead in place of his brother...

There will always be people that think a war is the wrong thing.

I personally just don't believe they should be public with there opinions because it just feeds into the "dissent" that all our enemies wish to perpetuate within our borders!!!

I was in the US Army Reserve. I got out just after the Iraq War ended under Bush Senior and luckily did not get called up for active duty. I see where the brother is coming from. When you are in the service, you live under a dictatorship and don't really have the right to express yourself or disagree. You lose the many rights than millions of Americans take for granted every day.

I think his brother probably felt betrayed by the army. His brother got killed by friendly fire. That happens unfortunately. However, they tried to cover it up and lied about what really happened. If my brother were killed and they lied to cover their mistake I would be enraged when I found out the truth. It would have been better to just admit the truth from the beginning.

Jim

by **LONGTRANGBILL** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:23 pm

yes i agree... and i was surely to harsh on him... i was in the marines... i know all about the dictatorship...

i just hate to think of the enemy laughing at us americans as we belittle our government...

bit then hell... i guess shit happens...

take care man

by **Chacal** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:14 pm

People expressing dissent within your borders are your enemies?

by **LONGTRANGBILL** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:06 pm

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by **cavalierlwt** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:20 pm

Insurgents have no concept nor opinion about dissent in America, I assure you, they couldn't tell you anything about a Democrat vs a Republican, anymore than I could have told you anything about the Russians during the Cold War. A Russian was a Russian as far as I knew.

I grew up believing that American protesters somehow lost Vietnam for us, somehow gave the Vietcong strength. I obviously grew up retarded. The idea that some jungle fighter is watching the nightly news and deciding whether or not he will continue to fight....christ, I want to go back in time and kick my own ass for believing something so stupid.

No dissent, one undivided country--yeah, we've seen that before.....Nazi Germany ring a bell?

by **Chacal** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:33 am

I've just seen it in "V for Vendetta". Good movie, should be required viewing in US schools...

by **]DP[Nuckle** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:12 am

It is impossible to bring them home right now.

Pat Tillman was a bad ass and I think the world of him for what he did. He signed up to go and didnt have to. He could have kept playing football but felt he needed to support his country. It is really bad what happened to him but friendly fire has been an issue in war forever and that will never change.

I feel like Pat Tillman died doing something he felt like he needed to do. I think he would smack his brother up side the head if he knew about what is going on now.

I am so tired of these type discussions.

Fact:

We are not coming home for a while.

Bitching about it is not going to help.

Very few people actually "want" us to be there.

Nuck

by **JimmyTango** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:39 pm

Originally posted by cavalierlwt
Insurgents have no concept nor opinion about dissent in America, I assure you, they couldn't tell you anything about a Democrat vs a Republican, anymore than I could have told you anything about the Russians during the Cold War. A Russian was a Russian as far as I knew.

I grew up believing that American protesters somehow lost Vietnam for us, somehow gave the Vietcong strength. I obviously grew up retarded. The idea that some jungle fighter is watching the nightly news and deciding whether or not he will continue to fight....christ, I want to go back in time and kick my own ass for believing something so stupid.

No dissent, one undivided country--yeah, we've seen that before.....Nazi Germany ring a bell?

I honest to god just lost a friend who thinks this way.

He served in iraq, made it back without a scratch.

He is an unlta conservative, it is republican or it is wrong.

So we are watching a Lewis Black DVD tht is funny as hell and he snaps because he is making fun of our Vice President. Starts yelling that it is a pivital moment in the countries history, we are on the brink of tearing apart, we MUST support the administration, etc etc etc. It was the strangest thing, it was like his brain completely stopped working.

I 'lost' him as a friend when I told him to shut the fuck up, it is a comedian who makes fun of anyone in the public's eye, this includes Dem, Repubs, actors, etc, etc and he might as well stop watching all TV besides Fox News as during any program you could see a wise crack against the administration. That is when he stood up and tried to strangle me. I shit you not.

I socked him in the stomach which got his hands off of my neck. Then he, not me, said we are no longer friends. Yup, he took the friendship privlages off the table. All because someone would dare make a joke about the vice president.

Talk about fucking pathetic.

This is the same comedian, BTW, we laughed his ass off when he makes fun of Clinton.

If you have not heard Lewis Black, you owe it to yourself, he is one of the best topical stand ups out there.

by **King** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:45 pm

Pretty bad when a "friend" puts politics before friendship. Sorry to hear that JT.

by **]DP[Nuckle** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 5:47 pm

Yea that sucks Jimmy. I may disagree with someones political views but I dont base my friendships on them. My friends and I rarely discuss politics.

Nuck

Kevin Tillman, Army Ranger on Iraq

Kevin Tillman, Army Ranger on Iraq

Who is online