"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Friday, April 23
RIP
Pat Tillman is dead.
They said he was too small to play linebacker in college. So he became the Western Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year. They said he'd never make it in the NFL. He became a Pro Bowl safety.
By that time, they'd stopped saying he couldn't or wouldn't do things. When he said that he was leaving the NFL and millions of dollars to join his brother in enlisting in the Army, everyone knew he meant it.
He refused to give interviews, to have any media covererage of his military career, because he didn't want people to think he was doing it for the attention. He loved his country, served it, and now he's died for it, killed in an ambush in Afghanistan. Pat Tillman was 27 years old.
I suppose he wouldn't want to be treated differently in death any more than he did in life. He's not the first soldier to be killed in the war on terror and he won't be the last. All of those men deserve the honors that will be Tillman's.
I guess that's why I feel the Tomb of the Unknowns is the most American of monuments. We don't know if the men buried there were the sons of millionaires or sharecroppers. All we know is that they gave their lives in the service of their country, and that's all we need to know.
That's one thing that gripes me out about the recent scrutiny of John Kerry's military service. He went to a war he didn't believe in (which had to be unpopular with his crowd), and served his country honorably and well. Some people have suggested that if he didn't believe in it, he shouldn't have gone, but Kerry accpeted the duties of being an American as well as the rights.
George Bush, on the other hand, got out of it because his family pulled strings. All bullshit aside, if he hadn't been the sone of a prominent politician, he would not have been excused.
I'm not going to vote for Kerry in November, just as I didn't vote for Gore in 2000 despite his sterling military record. I think Bush is the best option right now and he'll receive my vote. But let's not run down Kerry's record. After all, the last small-boat commander with initials JFK worked out pretty well.
