Why Does this war (these wars) have no Heroes?
Fred Barnes asks the question: Why aren’t there any heroes being pumped up out of our current wars?
Instead of heroes, there are victims. The two most famous soldiers in the war are Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman (in Afghanistan). Lynch was captured by Saddam’s troops after her truck crashed. Stories of her heroism in a gun battle with Iraqis turned out to be false. She was rescued later from an Iraqi hospital. Tillman, who gave up a pro football career to join the Army, was killed by friendly fire. “The press made that a negative story, a scandal almost,” says a Pentagon official.
But Fred Barnes. Don’t you see? As you state yourself, it’s not like the United States have “heroes” for lack of trying. The Pentagon pumped up the two famous heroes, and their stories of valor deflated before our very eyes. The only reason they are victims is because the Pentagon, attempting to create myths, crushed out their very human stories. Jessica Lynch’s “victimhood” came up when she had to tell the cameras that the story of her rescue was cockamine, in a supposed dark moment in the initial “March Toward Saddam Hussein’s Statue”, a story designed to uplift America– a tale of valor and then “rescued” from the arms of well-meaning Iraqi doctors confused by the proceedings of American troops running in guns in tow. The scandal of the Pat Tillman story happened when it turned out that the Pentagon was making stuff up about him over whole cloth, to plaster on about during the NFL draft.
And, yes, Pat Tillman is a hero. Who ever said he wasn’t? Case in point:
“We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”
By the way, Mr. Fred Barnes… in regards to There are no household names like Audie Murphy or Sgt. York or Arthur MacArthur or even Don Holleder, the West Point football star killed in Vietnam (what is it about football that its stars become those selected to be our heroes of our war? Never mind…): you forgot to mention that other household name of the Vietnam War. He commanded a swiftboat. He won a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. The initials are JK. Remember him?
Sigh. To be honest, in the service of wars (just and unjust ones alike) — medals and accolades are meaningless to me. I can’t really rate. Because, if we’re not careful, we’ll end up creating half-men half-apes to fill that niche for heroes.